What if stars were just holes, with light shining through.. behind a hugeee black mass?

Question

i am bored....

Answer 1

We would probably try to find out what else was behind that huge black mass.

Answer 2

wat if life is jus a dream...  an nothing is real???

Answer 3

Then the Ptolomeic system would have been correct.

We can see them moving and doing things out there - those stars are such busy little bees. They certainly aren't pinholes obviously.

Just please don't go post "what if c-a-t spelled 'dog'?" on the philosophy section, as that is how your question translates into that category's lingo.

Answer 4

Life doesn't feel much like a dream when you run into on-coming traffic.

Answer 5

Spectroscopy  - every flame casts a shadow as well as light.  the shadow tells what matter the flame is made of.  Stars cast these shadows as well.

Doppler - the doppler effect of light causes consistent and systematic transformation of the shadows cast from the matter.  

A pinhole would not have the same shadow.  

A pinhole would not have doppler effects.

Some of those pinholes go supernova, then make hubble-visible nebulas and star-remnants that change over time.

Answer 6

... Then  the  spectrum of the light coming through the holes would follow the "black body" equation.  But it doesn't, not even close.  Light from stars has lots of "element lines", which tell us what elements are in the surface of the stars.   Also, the stars move, and that shifts the element lines -- you  would not have any shift with light shining through holes.   For a 3rd thing, a lot of the stars rotate so that one edge is rotating toward us, and the other edge is rotating away from us.  That makes the shift in the lines different from one edge of the stars to the other.

For all of these reasons, and several others, we can be sure that stars are not holes with light shining through.