Empirical Evidence
Theories of nucleosynthesis are tested by calculating isotope abundances and comparing with observed results. Isotope abundances are typically calculated from the transition rates between isotopes in a network. Often these calculations can be simplified as a few key reactions control the rate of other reactions.
Read more about this topic: Nucleosynthesis
Famous quotes containing the words empirical and/or evidence:
“To develop an empiricist account of science is to depict it as involving a search for truth only about the empirical world, about what is actual and observable.... It must involve throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature, by means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise.”
—Bas Van Fraassen (b. 1941)
“No further evidence is needed to show that mental illness is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)