"Teach the controversy"? Uh....NO!

Here in Colorado, we're once more faced with a brigade of  semi-literate knot heads that want to try to inject their idiotic brand of pseudo-science into classrooms under the aegis of "teaching the controversy" .In other words, teaching creationist nonsense along side evolution. I guess they figure that if they can toss up enough gibberish - and because creationism is simplistic compared to evolution-they can get the rank and file of their captive student audiences to gobble this piffle up.

Phil Plaitt, a physicist, in a post on Jan. 22nd,  warned of this impending bollocks:

"I live in Boulder, Colorado, which is a bastion of scientific research. There are four major space science centers here (CU-Boulder, SwRI, the Space Science Institute, and Ball Aerospace), two major atmospheric research centers ((UCAR and NCAR, as well as NIST and many other well-known science research centers.


But the state of Colorado, apparently, still wants to live in the 15th century: Just a few days ago, a bill was introduced into my home state’s legislature that would allow teachers “to miseducate students about evolution, whether by teaching creationism as a scientifically credible alternative or merely by misrepresenting evolution as scientifically controversial.”

Those words are from my good friend and tireless hero for science Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, an organization that has the goal of educating people about real science. The antiscience bill HB 13-1089 is one of the Orwellian-named “Academic Freedom” thrusts by creationists, where legislators claim they just want teachers to have freedom about what they can teach, but is in fact a clear and obvious attack on scientific fields that disagree with the beliefs of the conservative lawmakers. Don’t believe me? Here is the opening shot of the bill:

“The provisions of the acts direct teachers to create an environment that encourages students to intelligently and respectfully explore scientific questions and learn about scientific evidence related to biological and chemical evolution, global warming, and human cloning.”

If this were really about academic freedom, why is it so specific? Why not include all fields of science, instead of just those three? In fact, why not include all academic fields? I’d be fascinated to see literature, art, and math added to that. Or religious study…how about supplementary texts that show the contradictions in the Bible? I wonder how that would go over".
------------

He goes on to note that all the co-sponsors of this bill are, to a person, Republicans.  Well, what would you expect of the STUPID party? The party hijacked by Tea Party extremists, religious fundie crazies and warmongering fools? The party that is so detached from reality they deny any human responsibility for global warming-climate change. That alone shows the worth of the bill, as we must always consider the source.


As it is, our students - especially in high school - are falling behind across a broad swatch of disciplines compared to other nations such as Sweden, Norway, Germany, Singapore and China. Do you think THOSE nations dilute their hard science courses with unproven, impossible bullshit - such as dinosaurs being alive at the time of "Adam and Eve" (see also:  http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/12/idiocy-beyond-belief-charles-pierce.html   )

As I showed in a number of earlier blogs, e.g. http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/01/of-russet-dinos-and-first-dino-birds.html, no creationist arguments can be supported.  The Bible itself, the source book for much of this crap, can't even get scientific facts partially right, e.g. http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/04/more-bible-based-scientific-idiocy.html, which is no surprise since it was scribbled by scientifically illiterate nomads. So why in the hell would anyone of normal I.Q. want to teach this ancient bull pockey to any student of the 21st century?

The answer has to be to brainwash the student into being a religious goober or pawn. An unthinking yokel who lacks any questioning or critical thinking aptitude. The fact is, any state which turfs out evolution to accept Adam and Eve and creationism, is already dumb as a sack of hammers. Any state which attempts to mount the Ten Commandments on court house steps, as if our jurisprudence is based on them, is also a collective pack of morons. But it seems that if this asinine bill isn't slain where it stands, Colorado may join the ranks of the dumb Confederate states, like MS, AL, TX. None of us living in this state want that, given we pride ourselves as having the 2nd highest proportion of university grads in the nation - and we interpret that to mean that those university educated ought to side with reality, not mythology or ancient fairy tales.

It would be a cruel injustice to our students to force them to listen to two "sides" of how the Earth and life on it originated and evolved. There is only ONE side, and that is what needs to be taught. And it isn't a matter of being "afraid" of creationism, but rather realizing that every minute consumed by this bullshit is a minute lost for teaching scientific principles and reality - even made more difficult now with state wide tests gobbling so much precious class time.

The (majority) Dems in the Colo. state house need to shut this baloney law down and never let it come up for a vote again. Spreading ancient bull crap is not democracy, it's all about endorsing buffonery!

The Whoring of Science Continues Unabated..

In a passionate and incisive 1982 essay (The Whoring of Science) appearing in The New Scientist, physicist teacher Ralph Estling decried the ever increasing use of science by supposedly qualified Ph.D. scientists to promote rubbish, religion and ideology. He took particular aim at a whole group of "scientists" in the early 1980s who were pushing newfangled foolishness based on quantum mechanics. Chief among these was the belief that by simple macroscopic observations one could alter a system and change reality.

It was physicist Paul Dirac who noted that an observation can affect an outcome for an experiment but he specifically meant at the sub-atomic or quantum level- not the macroscopic level! In other words, the probability density distribution (UU*, with U the wave function) and the 'expectation value' (say for a position (x,y,z) is changed, or can be changed.

Since human groups, populations constitute macroscopic (not microscopic) entities, it is clear that Dirac's "altered observation on outcome" premise doesn't hold. Indeed, this has been one of the biggest complaints of quantum physicists over the past 30 years: seeing their work perverted and extended far, far beyond its proper domain, and especially to assist in promoting esoteric religious systems and beliefs.

Needless to say, whenever a theory like QM is overextended into arenas it's not applicable, the conclusions and results must be specious. Paul Davies term for this sort of misuse of science, no matter who did it - was "the whoring of science". Taking a perfectly decent system of analysis and testing and converting it into a "whore" to serve one's needs, personal ambitions or agendas.

Of course, ANY such tactics for doing so extend and amplify the claim of science -whoring and that includes going beyond using quantum mechanics for mumbo-jumbo as Davies called it. In the last blog I referenced the example of Jason Lisle's use of it (via biblical gibberish) in his new book, Taking Back Astronomy which one reviewer on the amazon site correctly noted, ".. this outlandish and hollow hermeneutic takes the science of Astronomy back in time to 1611 - the year Galileo faced the Inquisition...". Well he got the point!

People don't seem to recognize, and it's incredible Lisle doesn't if indeed he is a Ph.D. scientist, that established sciences like astronomy are not simply overturned on whims or desires. Nor on the specious, self-serving use of "evidence" which is to say, constraining its interpretation to only what a bible puncher might allow. In this way, the science become "whored".

Let's look at a couple of examples, apart from those in his goofy book. Lisle in one dvd entitled “The Young Sun” attempts to convince gullible viewers that he can show the Sun is “young” so fits in with the Genesis fairy tale that the Sun can be no more than 6,000 years old (since in Genesis the Earth was made before the Sun, an impossibility anyway as I’ve shown in a number of blogs). as opposed to 4.8 billion years old.

Lisle's claim is absolutely astounding in context, especially for a self-proclaimed "Ph.D."- given that it stands all of stellar evolution, astrophysics on its head, especially nuclear fusion: the basis for the Sun's energy! These are things EVERY budding astrophysicist is taught in his first graduate course in stellar astrophysics or stellar evolution. Thus, there are differing nuclear cross sections for differing fusion reactions and also differing time scales.

A key quantity in obtaining these time scales is the energy liberated per (nuclear fusion) chain defined as: W(rho) = rE, or W = (rE)/rho which is in ergs/gram for example. (I.e. the total ergs of stellar energy given off per gram of stellar matter available for reaction.)

E is found from specific nuclear fusion reactions, such as p + p -> D2 +e(+) +v, where two protons fuse to yield deuterium, a positron and a neutrino(v). The key quantity is r, defined as the reactions/cm^3. Obviously, the greater this value the shorter the energy generation time scale and the smaller the value the longer it will take. It is defined (see, e.g. Astrophysical Concepts, p. 331, by Martin Harwitt:

r = B (rho)^2 X1X2/ T^1.5 * exp^-3[2π^4e^4mH (Z1^2)(Z2^2)A'/ h^2kT]^1/3

where B is a proportionality constant, rho is the density, h is Planck's constant (e.g. h = 6.62 x 10^-27 erg-sec), k is Boltzmann's constant = 1.38 x 10^-16 erg/K), T is absolute temperature of the reaction, i.e. in K deg, and X1 and X2 are the concentrations associated with atomic numbers Z1, Z2 while A' is the reduced atomic mass, i.e. A' = (A1 A2)/ (A1 + A2).

Then working out 'r' for the proton-proton fusion cycle one can (after a lot of work) obtain the time scales for each chain part and the energy yielded for each, viz. (cf. Harwit, op. cit., p. 336):

p + p -> D2 +e(+) +v (1.44 MeV, Time = 14 x 10^9 yrs.)

D2 + p -> He3 + y(gamma ray) [5.49 MeV, time = 6 secs)

He3 + He3 -> He4 + 2H1 [12.85 MeV, Time - 1 million years]


Note that the last branch of the cycle already takes 6 million years, for each fusion to furnish 12.85 Mev (millions of electron volts of energy, were 1 eV = 1.6 x 10^-19 J). Thus, this cycle alone takes almost 1,000 times longer than Lisle's time of 6,000 years, as the supposed maximum age of the Sun.

The only mildly problematical time frame in the p-p cycle is for the initial fusion, which yields 14 billion years or about three times the age of the current Sun. Thus, at face value, this translates into only about one fusion every 14 billion years for the first branch of the proton-proton reaction. While that is extremely long, the Sun fortunately has a vast number of protons available in its core, so that – at a temperature of 10 million Celsius, enough can fuse to initiate helium production and energy given off. Moreover, the key "catalyst" speeding the reaction time up is the phenomenon of "quantum tunnelling" whereby a lower energy particle can surmount a higher energy barrier (what we call the "Coulomb barrier") by virtue of its wave-like properties.

To fix ideas, let us say a particle (say proton) of kinetic energy K, must overcome a barrier of energy V ("barrier potential"), via the process of "tunnelling". Consider a deBroglie wave (p = hL or L = (mv)/h where L is the de Broglie wavelength) arising from (p+) of form: U(x) ~ sin(kx) where x is the linear dimension along displacement and k, the wave number vector (k= 2π/L).

Now, though the associated energy K < V (the barrier "height"), the wavefunction is non-zero within the barrier, e.g.

U(x_b)~ exp(-cx)


So, visualizing axes for this:

E
!
!________ V
!K --->*
! ! !
! ! !
! ! !
!-------------> x

with the "barrier" at height V, we visualize the particle(*) on the left side "tunneling" over to the right side where it may have wave function, U(x) ~sin (kx + φ), where φ denotes a phase angle.

Note that if the barrier is not too much higher than the incident energy, and if the mass is small, then tunnelling is significant.

Note also that the penetration of the barrier is a direct result of the wave nature of matter! In effect, this wave nature - which is uniquely quantum mechanical in origin- allows a higher energy barrier to be penetrated by a lower energy particle, something totally without parallel in classical, Newtonian physics

In other words, without the benefit of quantum tunnelling, the first reaction time in the p-p cycle would be inordinately long and have to be disallowed as unphysical.

Beyond this we know the photon diffusion time (the time to make it from the edge of the solar core to the Sun's surface or photosphere) is calculated to be nearly 1 million years. This takes into account all the changed random directions the released photons undergo as a result of absorption and re-emission by particles along the way out. No core photon makes it directly through, but instead undergoes millions of interactions en route resulting in collisions. Again, 1 million years for a photon's diffusion time belies Lisle's young Sun argument!

Let's move on to other claims made in his book, not covered in the previous blog.

Lisle insists that the Big Bang theory has a problem with the uniformity of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), or the horizontal problem as it is known. But the CMB is one of the best pieces of empirical evidence for the Big Bang there is: a 2.7K "after glow" from the original high density temperature of 10^9 K. Furthermore, there's no other physical explication for this pervasive radiation, which displays a perfect blackbody spectrum.

So what is Lisle getting at? In fact the uniformity problem is no problem at all! What Lisle is referring to is the discovery of the so-called relic structures associated with the Big Bang, by astronomer George Smoot and his team at the University of California at Berkeley, in 1992. ‘Discovery’ of course, is inevitably an oversimplified reduction of a long, arduous process of investigation. In this case, the investigation made use of data obtained from NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite. These data were in the form of very small temperature differentials (dT), from which density variations (d(rho)) could be deduced. (In principle the temperature variations of the form dT/T are taken as a proxy for density fluctuations in the early universe.

To make a long story short, these variations were found consistent with the postulated characteristics of an inflationary cosmos, as opposed to an always uniformly expanding cosmos. Indeed, an inflationary phase would feature an exponential rate of expansion by way of doublings over very small time periods. Most models with inflation posit 85-90 doublings over periods ranging from 10^-43 to 10^-35 s. The COBE findings accomplished two things: 1- they provided further empirical support for the Big Bang; 2- they refined our understanding of the type of aftermath (i.e. exponential expansion) that ensued in its wake. They did something else: they showed indirectly that as much as 90% of the cosmos is in the form of dark matter! Dark matter is something Lisle can't account for either in his "creation" scheme, mainly because it fits within no presumptive expectations of cosmic order. (But it can be fully explained using Einstein's general relativity by inroducing a repulsion term arising from a negative energy density).

Lisle also claims that spiral galaxies can't be billions of years old as they would now be too tightly wound up due to differential orbital rotation of their stars. (In the 1970's Vera Rubin and Kent Ford using newly developed image intensifier techniques found that the stars, even in a galaxy's far periphery, orbited at nearly the same angular velocity. This finding has lead to the postulation of dark matter. Certainly an astrophysicist should be aware of this finding.)

In fact, here I dealt with Lisle's problem in a previous blog (though it was not specifically directed at him, though it addressed the issue of the spiral windings in terms of density waves, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/05/density-waves-as-galaxy-shapers.html

as well as other factors.

Lisle's complaint of the spiral arms being "too tightly wound" for the spirals to be billions of years old vanishes once one asks: How tightly are the arms wound? As I noted in the above referenced blog, one must recognize that an orbit in a spiral galaxythat appears closed (e.g. elliptic) in one reference frame may not be so in another. As an example, assume the (polar) coordinates for a galactic rotating frame are given as (r, φ) with:

dφ/dt = dΘ/dt - OMEGA_p

where OMEGA_p is the angular velocity of the rotating frame. Then orbits are described by a Hamiltonian (recall the Hamiltonian adds kinetic and potential energies of the system):

H = ½(p_r^2 + p_φ^2/r^2) + V(r) - p_φ OMEGA_p

where the p_r, p_φ are the particle momenta referred to the associated coordinates, and V(r) is the gravitational potential. The point is that H can change depending on the coordinates, and what is presented for the previous frame as H = E - J OMEGA_p (with simplification, p_φ = J) may well be different for another frame.

In other words, Lisle's generalization of a generic "more tightly wound" spiral falls through because he doesn't factor in coordinate perspective differences based on the above considerations. As is the case with his fault finding with the dipole fields of the gas giant planets, he fabricates a pseudo-problem to confer status on his religious bunkum. Again, a whoring of science.

At the end of the day, one must ask the question that the same reviewer (earlier referenced) did:

How could a Ph.D. in Astrophysics devolve into a pre-scientific shaman?

This is a question I've also always asked myself, including my own experience with a Ph.D. post graduate advisor who was similar to Lisle in being a creationist fundie (though I never took any of the guy's religious opinions seriously). Anyway this reviewer answers the question in terms of Lisle:

It all comes down to misplaced faith and who signs the paycheck. The author, Jason Lisle, is an employee of Answers in Genesis (AiG), a credulous Young Earth Creationism disinformation clearinghouse. As such he has signed the following "Statement of Faith:"

BASICS ARTICLE 3: "The account of origins presented in Genesis is a simple but factual presentation of actual events and therefore provides a reliable framework for scientific research into the question of the origin and history of life, mankind, the Earth and the universe."

GENERAL ARTICLE 6: "No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record."

This conceptual straightjacket routinely produces results that range from the mildly amusing to utterly ridiculous

Thus, we see how the Lisle paradox is resolved. By hitching his "star" (no pun intended) to AiG, Lisle has been able to sidestep all the usual painful and tortuous processes to which 99.999% of newly minted Ph.D.s are subject, including struggling years as a postdoc, then having to crank out peer-reviewed published paper after paper for YEARS to even attain tenure consideration at a respectable university.

This way, with AiG, Lisle gets an immediate "in" and a steady paycheck to boot. No worries on having to please a tenure committee! All he has to do for it is to sell all bone fide scientific principles and processes down the proverbial river.

Or to put it the way Paul Davies would: happily engage in the whoring of astrophysics for his own ends.

IDIOTS R US: Why Certain Pastors Shouldn't Spiel on Astronomy

As I noted in many other previous blogs, I really get pissed when know nothings and dolts tread into territory they know nothing about. This includes certain FLA "pastors" still trying to obtain online bible degrees so they can officially run their I-net churches as proper bible thumpers. Reading their codswallop is always a hoot, but especially when they prop up certain pseudo-scientists, who probably purchased their Ph.D.s in candy stores.

One of these is one Jason Lisle who I lambasted before as no kind of an "astrophysicist" but more an ASS-tro-physicist. If one googles his name one will bring up nearly a hundred pages, mostly full of kudos and applause thanks to the websites of his fellow bible bangers. But we do know one thing here: when someone uses science as a forum to push his religious beliefs, without any evidence, that’s no longer science but pseudo-science.

The most laughable thing is to read some comments to the effect I am "jealous" of this twit. Jealous? Well, maybe of Mickey Mouse too, that I can't be a cartoon character! NOT! But, of course, the 'jealousy' claim is coming from a brain dead zom-bot who doesn't even know the difference between an epicycle and the eccentricity of an orbit, yet purports to lecture me about astronomy!

According to this blowhard dingbat (referring to Lisle's latest excursion into pseudo-science, Taking Back Astronomy) this "real" Ass-tro-physicist:

" debunks the most widely accepted evolutionary ideas about astronomy. Readers are given solid answers to many questions, including the speed of light, the big bang, extra terrestrials, the reliability of the Bible."

Of course, neither this dithering nitwit nor Lisle evidently realizes astronomy has NO evolutionary components (that's why we have evolutionary BIOLOGY) and that Extra-terrestrials are not part of astronomy proper. Nor is any "reliability of the Bible" (which I already showed erred in its Gen:1:1-3 portrayals of Earth forming before the Sun. (Note: Astrophysics does incorporate stellar evolution, but those models are based on well established nuclear energy cycles, e.g. proton-proton cycle, and how the alterations in the mean molecular weight of stellar cores direct their future physical changes. Not that the bible-lubbers would understand any of this, far less how it differs from Darwinian Biological evolution. Hell, these boneheads can't even distinguish between the theory of Abiogenesis and evolution, or between the Big Bang theory and the Nebular Hypothesis!)

Let's look at some of Lisle's idiocy that this pretender cites (and he has the chutzpah to assert I don't have a "real" post-graduate degree, when he doesn't even have a real H.S. degree!)

He writes:

"Many of the planets of the solar system also have strong dipole magnetic fields. Jupiter’s magnetic field, for example, is extremely powerful. The magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune are also quite strong. If these planets were really billions of years old (as secular astronomers believe) then their magnetic fields should be extremely weak by now. Yet, they are not."

Here, the first error appears in saying 'many of the planets' have strong dipole magnetic fields. It seems this guy can't even count or work out proportions. Last I checked there were 9 planets (even putting Pluto back in the mix) and only FOUR had relatively strong dipole fields: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. (Earth has only a moderate to weak field, at ~ 1 Gauss)

The next error, this great ass-tro-physicist makes is in assuming that the strength of a planet's dipole field is causally related to its age. This isn't necessarily so, and having a powerful dipole field doesn't mean a planet MUST be young!

Jupiter has a quite large magnetic field, but also has a large amount of hydrogen that is highly compressed to form liquid metallic hydrogen in its core. This material at super-high pressures easily enables electrons to be "squeezed" out from the liquid hydrogen - thereby forming the basis for a putative current. Add in Jupiter's rapid rotation - once in under 10 hours- and VOILA! - you have the basis of a magnetic dynamo: a means of generating very large magnetic fields via the mechanism of a rapidly moving electrons. (Note: formation of magnetic fields from electric currents will be a future Basic Physics blog)

Dynamo action also prevails in the Sun, which is why we have powerful sunspots forming. The solar magnetic fields are thus sent to its surface by the action of convection on the subsurface dynamo and we observe solar cycles every 11 years (every 22 years by the same polarity orientation).

My point is that the basis of the magnetic dynamo effect means we can easily explain Jupiter's powerful dipole field on the basis of the existing physical factors, without any appeal to its age. If Jupiter thus formed some 3.8 billion or so years ago with those pressures, rapid angular momentum in place (on account of it being transferred from the primordial Sun) then we have all the pieces in place. That Lisle isn't honest or sensible enough to present this (more plausible) alternative shows he's no real scientist, no matter how many letters he has by his name!

The magnetic dipole field strengths of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, can also likely be explained in the same way, since all are of the sizes, masses to feature liquid hydrogen cores as well, so electrons can be made available in the same way as for Jupiter, and all also feature rapid rotation rates: exactly what we need for a magnetic dynamo to generate a strong field.

Thus, the most UNREASONABLE explanation is that the planets are "only a few thousand years old" - especially as the MOON ROCKS brought back from the Apollo missions all date up to 3.9 BILLION years old! Any idiot would know that, unless of course they don't accept radio-nuclide dating, in which case all their degrees needs to be withdrawn!

Another bit of gibberish is the following:

The moon moves about an inch and a half further away from the earth every year due to this tidal interaction. Thus, the moon would have been closer to the earth in the past. Six thousand years ago, the moon would have been about 800 feet (250 m) closer to the earth (which is not much of a change considering the moon is a quarter of a million miles, or 400,000 km, away). So this “spiraling away” of the moon is not a problem over the biblical timescale of six thousand years.

If, however, the earth and moon were over four billion years old (as big bang supporters teach), then we would have big problems. This is because the moon would have been so close, that it would actually have been touching the earth less than 1.5 billion years ago. This suggests that the moon can’t possibly be as old as secular astronomers claim

This is so laughable, it's almost no contest. Like having a brawl with a drunk. First of all, there is NO connection between the Big Bang and the formation of the planets, Sun! This stuff is so elementary it's a wonder Lisle wasn't flunked out of his elementary astronomy class one time. The formation of the planets-Sun some 4 billion years ago is based on THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS, i.e. that the primordial gas cloud that gave rise to the solar system was a nebula that collapsed under gravitational action 4 billion years ago. This has NOTHING to do with the Big Bang which uses the isotropic 2.7 K background radiation to conclude that the cosmos was incepted some 13.9 BILLION years ago in an enormous explosion of super-hot temperature and density.

It seems here our friendly pastor, like his clueless ASS-tro-physicist hero, can't do simple arithmetic even in distinguishing 13.9 billion years from 4 billion. Well, seeing what other crappola Lisle has produced (not to mention our unqualified pastor) I'm not surprised!

The other joke is the complaint that "it would actually have been touching the earth less than 1.5 billion years ago". But that's the point! The best theory we have (other than the capture theory, which has numerous dynamical problems, i.e. the synchronous rotation for the Earth-Moon system is highly unlikely via capture) is the Moon-from-Earth origin formation theory: that the Moon was ejected FROM the Earth roughly 2.2. billion years ago. The high similarity (and ages) of discrete Earth rocks with lunar basalt rocks from several Apollo missions makes this a very good theory. But these two bozos believe it works against us!

As we can see neither of these morons has clue one. Lisle the ASS-tro-physicist has no business writing about astronomy (he ought to be barred for malpractice) and the pastor has no business writing about ANY science, period.

Enough said!