The "Whoring Of Science" - Jason Lisle's 'Young Sun' Delusions Take The Prize

                    How Jason Lisle ever got a PhD in astrophysics is a mystery inside an enigma     

The term "the whoring of science" - so far as I know- was first used by New Scientist contributor Ralph Estling in his eponymous (1982) essay. Therein 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.  He reserved his most vigorous putdowns for the academics whom he believed misused their pedigree - and degrees- to pump baloney.

There is often a fine line between a scientific postulate or theory and sophisticated bunkum extracted from it. In some cases it takes a thorough background or training in the specific science to recognize bunkum or pseudo-science when and where it appears.  On the other hand, other displays of scientific quackery aren't that difficult to identify or figure out.  

A case at hand in the modern venue, are the works of a religious crank named Jason Lisle.  This guy somehow managed to get an astrophysics Ph.D. from the University of Colorado and parlay it into an entire creationist science industry.

At the end of my Feb. 13th post, a commenter raised the issue of whether there were any published, peer-reviewed takedowns of Jason Lisle's absurd theories about a 'young Sun' and 'young Earth'.  I replied that there wasn't much I could find to go on other than my own posts from July 22, 2011, and a couple of other web takedowns, e.g.  

The Cognitive Dissonance of Jason Lisle - YouTube

And:

Jason Lisle - RationalWiki

Why? Likely because most academic astrophysicists (with intense time pressure to publish or perish) weren't motivated to invest the time to skewer obvious snake oil and codswallop, especially if it meant having to purchase Lisle's Ph.D. thesis (which I did.)  The other possibility is they were averse to drawing attention to the fact one of their premier astrophysics departments bestowed a Ph.D. on a proven crank. How could he be other than a crank if he believes (according to cockeyed 'asynchronicity theory' he invented about starlight) that light gets to us "instantly".   (See the upper video Youtube link).  To cut to the chase, if he had popped off about that during an oral defense I'd have flunked his ass forhwith. No degree!

It's incredible that Lisle himself doesn't grasp that established sciences like astronomy are not simply overturned on personal whims or desires. Or ancient myths scribbled down in a scripture thousands of years old. 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" as Estling claimed.

 Lisle in one goofy 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, i.e. 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 blog posts). as opposed to 4.8 billion years old.

Lisle's claim is absolutely astounding in context, especially for an astrophysics Ph.D. recipient- given that it stands all of stellar evolution, astrophysics on its head. Epecially nuclear fusion: the basis for the Sun's energy! These are things EVERY budding astrophysicist is taught in his first undergraduate 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 = (r e)/r  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.)

r, the rate of energy generation is found from specific nuclear fusion reactions, such as the first fusion reaction of the proton-proton (p-p) cycle,  e.g.

¹H + ¹H + e^- ®  ² H   + n + 1.44 MeV

 where two protons fuse to yield deuterium, a positron and a neutrino(n). 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 (r)² X1X2/ T ^1.5 · exp ^-3 [2π 4mH (Z1 ²)(Z2 ²) A'/ h^2kT] ^1/3

where  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 fusion chain and the energy yielded for each, viz. (cf. Harwit, op. cit., p. 336):

 ¹H + ¹H + e^-  ®   ² H   + n + 1.44 MeV, (Time = 14 x 10⁹ yrs.)

 ² D   + ¹H ®  ³ He + g + 5.49 MeV  [5.49 MeV, time = 6 secs)

³ He + ³ He ®  ⁴ He + ¹H + ¹H  + 12.85 MeV, [Time ~ 6 million years]


Note that the last branch of the p-p 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^-19J). 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 (e.g.  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. with the "barrier" at height V, we visualize the particle of kinetic energy K 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!   Did none of Lisle's  Ph.D. committee ask him about this in his oral defense? Were they not even remotely aware that getting his Ph.D. was simply a ruse to be able to use his credentials to promote creationist quackery and pseudoscience?

See Also:

Why Jason Lisle is wrong in his Solar Super-granulation Polarity finding

And:

 Jason Lisle an Astrophysicist? Don't Make Me Freaking Laugh!