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Worldbuilding

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    $\begingroup$ The aliens would also have to come up with a plausible explanation for why the spectral lines of other stars are different from those of their own star. Which might be semi-plausible if the spectra of all remote stars is a strict subset of that of their own star (some kind of wavelength-dependent occlusion could just possibly be used to explain away that), but would be far harder to explain if the spectrum of even one, let alone many, remote stars are even partial supersets of the spectrum of their own star, which is likely to be the case. $\endgroup$
    – user
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 6:25
  • $\begingroup$ @aCVn Umm, yes? That is what I was talking about in the third paragraph? $\endgroup$
    – Ville Niemi
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 6:30
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    $\begingroup$ You're probably right. The way I read it was that it didn't touch on the issue of supersets of the system's own star's spectrum; my point was that it would be awfully difficult to explain away that while keeping the idea of stars somehow being "reflections". $\endgroup$
    – user
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 7:23
  • $\begingroup$ @aCVn Yes, that is the "but not identical" part. I guess we were thinking the same thing but I skipped so much detail it wasn't obvious. $\endgroup$
    – Ville Niemi
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 10:02
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    $\begingroup$ From what I understand, parallax was actually part of the reason for a theory that the planets moved around the Sun, while the Sun and everything else moved around the Earth. Until fairly recently in human history, parallax between stars was too slight to be detected, but should have been detectable unless stars were absurdly big and absurdly far away. It could be fairly argued that saying the Sun revolved around the Earth was less hand-wavy than assuming that stars could be so large as would be necessary to make the heliocentric model work. $\endgroup$
    – supercat
    Commented Apr 17, 2019 at 14:34