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Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

> "The Sun convert light elements to heavier ones via fusion." Fact.

Do we have proof of that? Honest layman question.

Er... yes? That's how stars work. What is the alternative explanation?

The alternative explanation is that God created stars. And that He did it such that they seem to create heavier elements through fusion. But that's just an illusion. Because, you know, the Universe is only 5000 years old.

And that alternative will pass fact checking, unless they exclude literal readings of the Bible.

Why would you include religious texts in a fact checking process unless the subject is religion?

Because some people believe them to be the ground truth? Any "fact" that contradicts their understanding of their favourite religious passage is obviously fake news. Dinosaurs? Fake. Evolution? Blasphemy. Round Earth? Idiocy...

OK, so I picked an extreme example.

But as others have pointed out, choosing accepted fact checkers is subjective and contentious. Do we then need fact checkers about fact checkers?

Many claims have moved from conspiracy theory to fact in recent decades. Now there's a class-action case about CIA experiments with LSD, and the principal investigator will testify. Before Snowden's leaks, how many people thought that the NSA was intercepting so much stuff? Consider allegations about using poor people to study effects of terminal syphilis, measure Pu excretion rates for body-burden calculations, or look at symptoms of lethal full-body irradiation. Which of those (if any) are unconfirmed conspiracy theories?

> And that He did it such that they seem to create heavier elements through fusion. But that's just an illusion.

[citation needed] ;)

I'm extrapolating there, based on arguments I've read about geology and evolution.

Seems to me that the question of how stars function is completely separate from the question of how they and the matter in the universe came to exist.

You can do spectroscopy on the light emitted from stars and see what elements it's made of.

This, combined with our understanding of physics, both offer overwhelming support for the notion that stars are powered by nuclear fusion.

> support for the notion

So it's a theory, not a proven "fact." Can we know for 100% sure before we replicate a sun and see the expected behavior and output?

I'm just taking issue with the liberal use of the word "fact" in my comment's parent. It seems to have become as diluted as "literally."

With that definition of fact, very very few facts actually exist at all.

Curious you drop the adjective "overwhelming" in your quote and confuse scientific theory with hypothesis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory "In modern science, the term "theory" refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science. Such theories are described in such a way that any scientist in the field is in a position to understand and either provide empirical support ("verify") or empirically contradict ("falsify") it. Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge, in contrast to more common uses of the word "theory" that imply that something is unproven or speculative (which is better characterized by the word 'hypothesis')."

Seems like a fair point to me. If science is really about reproducibility, then this is a fair question. How can we say with absolute certainty until we run a falsifiable experiment?

Note that I'm not disputing our understanding of how stars work. The point is whether our understanding is based on reproducibility.

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