Walt Brown's super-tectonics

On 12-29-2003, whatever wrote:"They say they are finding clams in
the closed position, which infers that
they were buried alive, it says they
are finding these clams in sedimentary
rocks all over the world, including,
Mt.Everest.http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=articles&specific=5
P.S. I thought Pelecypods included the
clams, oysters, etc..."This apparently refers to the statement by Walt Brown:"21. Petrified clams in the closed
position (found all over the world)
testify to their rapid burial while they
were still alive, even on top of Mount
Everest."Pelecypods do include clams. Still, clams can be buried in closed, growth, position by any number of processes. A good hurricane or storm can wash a layer of sediment onto the bottom of a continental shelf, lagoon, estuary, or tidal flat and bury any number of clams in growth position. With rising sea level or a prograding coastline, these sediments can eventually be buried by additional sediments and preserved within the rock record.Having looked at readily available sources, I have, as of this time, been unable to find any documentation that closed clams have actually been found in growth position on top of Everest, although being marine limestones, their presence is entirely possible. The only references to the type of fossils found on Mount Everest that I found was Odell (1967) and Gansser (1964). Neither publication mentioned anything about pelecypods /clams being found on Mt. Everest. I would be very interested if anyone knows of even one published scientific paper that actually documents the presence of clams on top of Mt. Everest. (Or is this a Young Earth Creationist urban legend?)Both Gansser (1964) and Odell (1967) reported that only the plates of crinoids, specifically crinoid stems, have been found in the partially metamorphosed limestone, which comprise the top of Mount Everest. The fossils were found in samples retrieved by a team of Swiss climbers in 1956 and a team of American climbers 1963. Crinoids are a group of stalked marine echinoderms related to sea urchins and starfish.Some web pages are:1. Introduction to the Crinoidea
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/echinodermata/crinoidea.html2. Ron Fine's Crinoid Stems
Ron Fine's Crinoid Stems3. Crinoid Stems
Crinoid Stems
Page not found - InfoWestThe crinoid stems clearly indicate marine deposition at sometime in the past. Their presence is consistent with the rock containing them being assigned to the Ordovician-age Mt Jolmo Lungma Formation, which comprises the top of Mt Everest above 8600 meters above sea level as mapped by Bortolami (1998). Curiously, crinoids are only abundant as fossils in Paleozoic age, Ordovician to Carboniferous period, rocks. It is curious that the Noachian Flood would deposit and not later erode "sediments" that Young Earth Creationists would date to the early stages of their "Flood" and leave nothing dating to the waning age of their "Flood". Also, it seems that Walt Brown falsely exaggerates the diversity of fossils found in these rocks. Technically speaking, it is incorrect to describe a few crinoid plates as being "seashells and other ocean-dwelling animals".One Walt Brown statement is:"19. The top 3,000 feet of Mt. Everest
(from 26,000-29,000 feet) is made up of
sedimentary rock packed with seashells and
other ocean-dwelling animals."An additional observation reported by Odell (1967) refuted the claim that sedimentary rocks are found at the top of Mt. Everest and his ideas about the origin of the marine fossils on top of Everest. Odell (1967) noted that the "limestones" containing the crinoid fossils are actually fine-grained, thin-bedded grey calc-schists. According to Odell (1967), the rocks containing marine fossils on Everest are not sedimentary rocks as Walt Brown falsely reports, but rather sedimentary rock, limestone, that has been metamorphose into calc-schists. It is impossible for the rock containing the crinoids, even the apparently imaginary clams of Young Earth Creationists, to have been newly deposited sediment. Rather it is sediment that was deposited and metamorphosed by tectonic processes and deep burial before being uplifted and exposed by erosion.Underlying the Mt Jolmo Lungma Formation and comprising the bulk of Mt. Everest is not grantite but rather metamorphic rocks of the Namche Migmatite Orthogneiss and the Black Gneiss Complex as mapped by Bortolami (1998). Within the area of Mt. Everest, the Namche Migmatite Orthogneiss consists of fine grained biotite-amphibole-epidote schists and diopside-grossular-epidote fels with variable amounts of quartz, plagioclase and calcite called the North Col Formation. It also contains pure marbles and marbles with silicate layers that form a strikingly visible layers. One such layer is the Yellow Band, lying between 8200 and 8600 meters above sea level on Everest, which is composed of marbles and phyllites with quartz and carbonates (Bortolami 1998).The lower parts of Mt. Everest are mapped as Black Gneiss by Bortolami (1998). It consists of biotic paragneiss and micaschists. These rocks are clearly derived from the metamorphism of sedimentary rocks. The strata underlying the metamorphosed limestone of the Mt Jolmo Lungma Formation consist entirely of highly metamorphosed rocks (Bortolami 1998).Sills of Tertiary granites are locally present. However, they are very much younger than the bulk of the strata comprising Mt. Everest and unconnected to their origin (Bortolami 1998). A very long and complicated tectonic history is indicated by the rocks that comprise Mt. Everest.These observations refute the contention, as stated by in message 4 by Mr. whatever":" however its a granite mountain, was this under the
oceans at one time, if so, then why is it granite,
if the oceans bottom is suppose to be basalt."However, Mt. Everest isn't a granite mountain. It is composed of highly metamorphosed rocks, some of which were sedimentary rocks. The local granites were intruded later into these rocks as molten rock. Also, the strata is rather chopped up by faulting that has likely displaced the marine strata from whatever rock it originally lay on.References Cited:Bortolami, G., 1998, Geology of the Khumbu Region,
Mt Everest, Nepal. In A. Lami and G. Giussani, eds.,
pp. 41-49. Limnology of high altitude lakes in the
Mt Everest Region (Himalayas, Nepal).Memorie dell'
Istituto Italiano di Idrobiologia. vol.57. Istituto per lo
Studio degli Ecosistemi, Verbania Pallanza, Italy.http://www.iii.to.cnr.it/pubblicaz/mem57/04_Bortolami.pdfGansser, A., 1964, Geology of the Himalayas,
John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., New York.Odell N. E., 1967, The highest fossils in the
world. Geology Magazine. vol. 104m, pp. 173-74An interesting article is:G.E. Gehrels, P.G. DeCelles, A. Martin, T.P. Ojha,
G. Pinhassi and B.N. Upreti, 2003, Initiation of
the Himalayan Orogen as an Early Paleozoic Thin-
skinned Thrust Belt. GSA Today. vol.13, no.9, pp. 4-9.It is found at:Attention Required! | CloudflareAttention Required! | Cloudflare(2003)13%3C4:IOTHOA%3E2.0.CO%3B2The paper refutes Walt Brown's super tectonics because it shows multiple generations of mountain building separated by long periods of time recorded in the rocks of the Himalayas.Some web pages:1. Himalayan tectonics
404: Earth and Environment2. Geology of the Himalayan Mountains
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~wittke/Tibet/Himalaya.html3. Colisiones continentales y Orogenesis
http://tlacaelel.igeofcu.unam.mx/...D/colision/colision.html4. The Himalayas: Two continents collide
http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/himalaya.html5. Some Visual Evidences of the Himalayan Formation
http://rip.physics.unk.edu/Nepal/NPB.html"How do We Know that the Himalayas are Still Rising?Scientists can measure the movement of plates and
the rise of the Himalayas through a system called
Global Positioning System (GPS). This technique
has been used by planes and ships for a long time
to determine their position.The scientists first set up several survey points
at different places in the Himalayan region.
They place a GPS receiver in each survey points
which records its position from several
satellites circling the earth above it. The
measurements are done continuously each time the
satellites pass over the survey points. The
survey points are linked by radio telemetry and
e-mail to the headquarters. The scientists
use the data thus collected to measure the
relative motion of the points with an accuracy
of 3 mm.Using this technique the scientists have been
able to find that the Indian plate is moving
northward at the rate of 18 mm a year and the
Himalayas are rising at about 5 mm a year."6. Deformation Kinematics of Tibeatan Plateau Determined
from GPS Observations by Jinwei Ren at:
http://center.shao.ac.cn/APSG/pdfs/Renjinwei.pdf7. Jouanne, F., J. L. Mugnier, M. R. Pandey, J. F.
Gamond, P. Le Fort, L. Serrurier, C. Vigny, and J. P.
Avouac (1999) Oblique convergence in the Himalayas of
western Nepal deduced from preliminary results of GPS
measurements. Geophysical Research Letters. vol. 26 ,
no. 13 , p. 1933. - Abstract no. 1999GL900416 at
http://www.agu.org/.../abs/gl/1999GL900416/1999GL900416.htmlYours,Bill Birkeland[This message has been edited by Bill Birkeland, 12-29-2003]

Another informative post, Mr. Birkeland!Here are two pieces of literature that mention either Brachiopoda or Mollusca:Mentions Brachiopoda: Jin Yu-gan (1979) Animal fossils from the Jilong Formation (Permian) at the northern slope of Mount Everest , A report of the scientific expedition in the Mount Everest region, 1975, Geology, Monograph. Sci. Press, Beijing, China, p. 93-112.Mentions Mollusca: Ku sheng wu, Ed. (1975) A report of scientific investigation in the Qomolangma Feng region (paleontology, volume 1) 1966-1968, Monograph, Sci. Press, Peking, China, 423 pp. (Note: Qomolangma Feng region appears to be the Tibetan side of Mt. Everest)However, without actually reading the papers, it's impossible to tell exactly where the fossils were found.

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Pelecypods do include clams. Still, clams can be buried in closed, growth, position by any number of processes. A good hurricane or storm can wash a layer of sediment onto the bottom of a continental shelf, lagoon, estuary, or tidal flat and bury any number of clams in growth position. With rising sea level or a prograding coastline, these sediments can eventually be buried by additional sediments and preserved within the rock record.

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I'm afraid that I introduced some confusion here. Clams are indeed pelecypods, but no pelecypods are found at Mt. Everest, as Bill has reported above. Sorry about that ... insufficient sleep last weekend. My point however stands. Whatever has been misinformed by his favorite professional creationists.

Perhaps whatever will learn from this example and find a less ridiculous source of "information".What do you say, whatever?

Walt Brown's "hydroplate theory" is thoroughly refuted by virtually everything we know about the ocean floor, from bathymetry to heat flow, sediments, and beyond.Cheers,
-Chris Grose

TC! Good to see ya!

Walt Brown's Hydroplate theory seems to be the most popular of the young earth creation theories. While arguing for the deluge as a late glacial flooding event, I ended up arguing a number of times with people who believed in the Hydroplate theory. It is hard to argue against something when you only get bits and pieces of it second hand, so I picked up Walt Brown's latest book and read it, pure nonsense of course. I even called Walt Brown up on the phone and got nowhere with him, I pointed out several problems with his theory which he simply refused to believe. (He is very much in love with his idea that comets and meteoroids were all ejected from the earth at the time of the flood by the way.) So what I did was to take the math he had in his book and expand on it to show that what he was saying was of course impossible along with a few other simple examples of things his theory is unable to explain. I mailed it in a letter to Walt Brown and of course never got an answer, just to be fair, I later resend the information in a e-mail to him, also of course got no answer. So here are a few simple questions Walt Brown can't answer along with a mathematical example that shows why the Hydroplate is impossible. I apologise in advance for some of my math, I took the starting numbers from Walt Brown's book so he would have one less point to argue, and my math skills are rather basic which also goes to show how little it takes to disprove the Hydroplate theory.Dear Walt Brown;Those numbers you wanted Walt.We had talked on the phone on Tuesday evening 8-19-03 about the heat released by the springs of the deep. Just the addition of about half the curent volume of ocean water to the oceans would have resulted in raising them to the boiling point, even if the preflood oceans were nearly frozen, 32 degree water plus an equal amount of water at even as low as 400 degrees will raise the flood waters to the boiling point and of course the fountains of the deep were proably much hotter. Of course the super heated water would have flashed into steam as soon as the pressure was reduced, however this would have resulted in the heat being delivered first into the atmosphere which would have in turn heated the oceans. Now I know you are saying that most of the heat was shot out into space and that frozen ice fell back to earth as hail and rain. Now if the Fountains of the deep were active for 40 days and the Mid-Atlantic ridge has a lenght of 46,000 miles and had a wall of super heated steam and water shooting out into space for 40 days, we could expect the following. Nearly all the water would have flashed into steam, Now a 46k mile long wall of steam at about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit exiting from under ten miles of rock, would vent out in all directions. Which would create a fast moving wall of super heated steam moving away from the mid oceanic ridge on both sides in opposite directions at near the speed of sound like from a steam explosion. The opening of the Fountains of the deep, would be much like as if someone had opened a large valve on a very high pressure steam boiler, much of the steam and water would shoot straight out, but due to the expansion of the steam a fair amount would spread to the sides of the stream like the high velocity gases from a gun barrel. As you undoubtable already know considering your background, when the hot gases exit a large gun behind the projectile, they flash out in nearly all directions. Any steam in the fountains of the deep would do the same. Since the water would be rapidly eroding the hydroplate above it, the exit nozzle sides would be cut back at an angle would increase the side spray. As the fountains cleared the surface, the steam would flash out to the sides and would create an expanding 'bubble' of steam much like the expanding shock wave of an explosion. This shock wave would travel like most powerful compressive waves travel at about mach 1. Due to the tremendous pressure of the fountains of the deep suppling the steam for this expansion being on going, this wall of expanding steam would cover the globe in a matter of hours. For example; how long would it take for a plane traveling at mach 1 from the nearest part of the mid oceanic ridge to reach the farthest point away from the ridge?-it would take only a few hours. This would result in earth's entire surface temperature rising to the boiling point and beyond, killing nearly all life almost at once over the entire planet. As the fountains continued to release steam into the atmosphere, the atmospheric pressure would of course increase as a vast volume of gas in the form of steam is injected into the atmosphere, think of a large gun if the gun flash lasted for forty days. There is also the matter of other gases which would be released as well as is seen in the release of fluids from great depths. Any steam rising above the atmosphere and falling back would create a blanket of steam and ice crystals which would add their weight to the atmosphere as well. Space is only cold in the shade, on the sunny side of the earth space is quite hot, water shot into space on the day light side of the planet would be turned into steam, not ice. You would have in effect a temporary canopy with all the problems that such would entail. A Venus like heating of the planet caused by a run away greenhouse effect would probably result, which if it trapped enough heat to be self-sustaining, would render the planet permanently uninhabitable.Your fountains of the deep being steam geysers blowing droplets of water as you alluded to in your MIT experiment with super heating distilled water until a sudden steam bubble blew the water to the ceiling, would work much better than a jet of water. With a possible height of only 17 miles a water jet stands no chance of clearing the atmosphere. The water hammer effect probably would not be large enough to supply the necessary energy since the flexible nature of crust above the camber resting on top of the water like a lid, would probably dampen any very large water hammer pressure surges anyway. To supply the necessary pressure for escape velocity, you need a pressure surge about 13 times the pressure present in the waters of the deep. A pressure of this magnitude would bulge and crack the overlaying plate rather than exiting from underneath the edge, which by the way works better for you since once the fountains crack has opened wide the water would shoot out at more of a horizontal angle where as a new crack near the edge would shoot vertical. The expansion effect of the water shooting in the vacuum of space, is only good for 14.7 psi which would only be equivalent to adding the weight of an another foot of rock which in comparison to ten miles is nothing. You didn't reveal your fantastic factor, so I can't discuss it until you reveal it. So while a pure water jet would rise to only 17 miles, a steam jet would rise much higher. Steam is far lighter than water, so the pressure of the fountains of the deep could support a far taller jet. Steam is lighter than air and so naturally tends to rise. With the expanding shock wall of steam racing away on both sides of the fountain of the deep, the back pressure would support the center of the steam jet creating an area of high pressure. This would result in a center portion shooting straight up under high pressure at high velocity. Water droplets carried aloft would be shot upward at enormous speeds like gun projectiles. At the surface of the Earth, if atmospheric resistance could be disregarded, escape velocity would be about 11.2 km (6.96 miles) per second. Using Torricelli's Theorem to calculate the velocity of an escaping ideal fluid results in a fountain speed for water only of 3044 feet per second, which is only 8.28% of escape velocity. So while such a jet could certainly lift large amounts of water high in the atmosphere which would rain out over the earth, launching material into space this way is not possible. But with steam the height of the 'h' in Torricelli's Theorem is much higher so the exit velocity is also much higher which supplies far more kinetic energy to the fountains. But with water having a critical point of 3,208 pisa would limit the effect to too small of a size to be effective in achieving escape velocity which is probably part of the reason why NASA doesn't use water or steam rockets to launch things into space. Little if any of the ejected material could have under the most favorable and improvable conditions may have somehow been blasted clear of the earth, the math in general rules it out, so it is clearly impossible for any large amount of water or rock to have been launched into space.In the first paragraph I used 1000 degrees as the temperature of the fountains of the deep because that would be about the temperature found at those depths today. The reason I did so is because the temperature profile of the inside of the earth did not change significantly at the flood. In your book you used the example of a high pressure shear friction to melt the earth at the time of the flood, which would not occur deep inside the earth, for under great pressure materials flow plastically. This flow generates heat of course but it is much less than shear friction. Then there is also the elasticity of the earth to consider as demonstrated by land tides. The heat generated by the flexing of the interior of the earth under the hydroplate theory would not be enough to melt the earth. The simple way to prove this mathematically is to look at the size of the energy input, the weight of material moved at the surface of the earth. We should be able to ignore the effects of the shifts in the hydroplates since they were floating on water and the pressure on the camber bottom would be the same the world over. Using the 46,000 mile long length of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, a Hydroplate thickness of 10 miles and both sides where eroded back 400 miles. This means a total of 368 million cubic miles of rock was removed and transferred to other parts of the planet. The weight of the transferred basalt rock would be 4.858 x 10-18 power tons. Heat of impacting falling rock can be ignored since the heating effects would have been limited to the surface hydroplates since the water chamber below would have isolated the plates. We can use the weight of the transferred rock twice since it has been moved from one side of the balance of the buoyancy scale of the earth's surface to the other, like moving a weight from one side of a teeter-totter to the other. So using the figure of 9.716 x 10-18 tons descending 10 miles creates 3.3652 x 10-26 cals, which would melt a iron sphere at standard pressure and temperature with a radius of 758 km and of course there is the reduction in size due to the higher melting temperatures at greater pressures. However, only a small portion of the energy is available to be turned into heat, otherwise the earth would be too viscous for the movement to occur. So only a small percentage would be available as 'wasted' heat energy. For this example we will allow a generous 10%, or 3.365 x 10-25 cals which would melt an iron sphere of 352 km radius minus the allowance for the greater heat and pressure inside the earth, so the shifting of weight and pressures acting on the surface of the earth at the time of the flood is far to small to have supplied the energy necessary to have melted the inside of the earth. The heating of the earth due to the gravity potential of descending heavy elements inside the earth requires melting before the materials can separate and descend, the heat created by flexing the earth is not great enough to trigger this effect. So as I stated on the phone, the flexing of the earth you specified is not near large enough to melt the interior of the earth. This lack of energy input means that the earth has not experienced a recent internal heating event and just before the flood, the temperature profile with depth was pretty much the same as it is today. Which means that the fountains of the deep coming from a depth of 10 miles would have been about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit which as pointed out in the first paragraph, would have boiled the entire surface of the earth. Since this clearly did not happen at the time of the flood, there could not have been a very large scale release of water from great depths, to avoid over heating the earth's surface the flood waters had to come from sources with cooler temperatures.There was two more questions I didn't ask you on the phone, I was concerned about the cost and the time it was taking, so I will post them below.3. Question- "On the Grand Canyon, if it was formed all at once by the draining of flood waters, how were the side canyons cut which drain small areas?."For if
the side canyons were cut this way, we would see large scale flood
erosion on the plan areas above and around the Canyon like what is seen
in the Washington state scab lands. We should find large scale dry
channels and water falls, and large plucked blocks and rocks carried by a
large stream of fast moving water. Also, how could this sudden flood cut
side canyons? Wouldn't there just be one massive canyon running from the
former lake to the sea? Plus the grand canyon has some sharp bends in it,
why would a massive super flood make turns, wouldn't it just flow over
and cut through the obstructions? The issue of lava dams in the Grand
Canyon was not mentioned ether, these dams formed after the canyon was
already partly formed and each dammed the river until it was able to cut
through the dam. These dams were massive and took a great deal of cutting
for the water to get through, so when did these dams form?4. I work in a large building that is covered in limestone, Niagara Limestone probably quarried from Lannon Wisconsin, and I have seen a number of fossils such as clams, sea bottom plants and many of the slabs have sea bottom surfaces. looking at these limestone slabs, you can make out an ancient sea floor. On some of them you can see the bottom surface with a long weed that fell over and is laying flat with maybe a clam. Such surfaces would take time to form, and there are many of them in the quarry deposits, they are used as natural planes to split the stones to make slabs. A trail I like to walk on goes by the edge of one of the quarries in Lannon and the limestone goes down for over 200 feet, the big trucks look like toys at the bottom and the limestone goes down deeper yet and all the way down through the whole deposit are found these fossil claims, plants and surface traces. To me these indicate that the limestone was deposited in tranquil waters over a very long period of time. Rapid formation of this deposit could have only occurred miraculously, no natural means described in the book or that I can think of, could have created this deposit in a short time period. How could these trace fossils of sea floors with plants and clams be formed rapidly? Wisconsin is a long way from the sea, so were did the sea plants and clams come from?

Right back at you Coragyps Cheers,
-Chris Grose
OYSI

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4. I work in a large building that is covered in limestone, Niagara Limestone probably quarried from Lannon Wisconsin, and I have seen a number of fossils such as clams, sea bottom plants and many of the slabs have sea bottom surfaces. looking at these limestone slabs, you can make out an ancient sea floor. On some of them you can see the bottom surface with a long weed that fell over and is laying flat with maybe a clam. Such surfaces would take time to form, and there are many of them in the quarry deposits, they are used as natural planes to split the stones to make slabs. A trail I like to walk on goes by the edge of one of the quarries in Lannon and the limestone goes down for over 200 feet, the big trucks look like toys at the bottom and the limestone goes down deeper yet and all the way down through the whole deposit are found these fossil claims, plants and surface traces. To me these indicate that the limestone was deposited in tranquil waters over a very long period of time. Rapid formation of this deposit could have only occurred miraculously, no natural means described in the book or that I can think of, could have created this deposit in a short time period. How could these trace fossils of sea floors with plants and clams be formed rapidly? Wisconsin is a long way from the sea, so were did the sea plants and clams come from?

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Powerful things, rocks.

roxrkool, It would appear that oceans covered parts of the USA, it is interesting, though, that they are now above sea level, confirming, the bible, that the waters rushed by the mountains to the place prepared for the waters, kjv psalm 104. Its also interesting the waters are pressing downward, and that the mountains are still rising upward, even to this day, etc...

And we know why the mountains are raising upward. You don't!The waters are NOT helping push them up.

Yeah, oceans covered this part of the US about 250,000,000 years ago. There's a reef made of the "skeletons" of corals, mostly, about 6000 feet beneath my chair. The reef is as much as 1200 feet thick in places. It grew in place - but it didn't grow in a year. Or in a millenium, or in just one or two million years. It's produced over 1.5 billion barrels of oil since 1952, and still makes 30,000 barrels every day.Below the reef are other limestones that formed during an earlier time that the sea was here. Above it are limestones and shales that formed more recently. Chevron didn't find the reef by pretending it formed in a one-year flood 4000 years ago. They used geology. That's what runs your car and heats your house. Mythology doesn't find oil.

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roxrkool, It would appear that oceans covered parts of the USA, it is interesting, though, that they are now above sea level, confirming, the bible, that the waters rushed by the mountains to the place prepared for the waters, kjv psalm 104. Its also interesting the waters are pressing downward, and that the mountains are still rising upward, even to this day, etc...

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--That seawater exerts a downward force is not the reason mountain building takes place now or at any time before. Even if there were no oceans at all plate tectonics would probably still take place, albeit the oceanic lithosphere would be rather thin and much more elevated than it is now due to isostatic balance, but I don't want to go off on a tangent there. Eustasy has fluctuated all throughout the deposition of the geologic column and that it was once higher than today does not confirm the veracity of the bible. Of course it doesn't argue against the veracity of the bible either, but your point was incorrect nevertheless.Cheers,
-Chris Grose
OYSI[This message has been edited by TrueCreation, 12-29-2003]

--While the topic of discussion is Walt Brown's hydroplate theory, a little over a year ago I wrote a brief rebuttle to one of his mechanisms for the formation of strata, liquefaction. Instead of posting a link to the short essay, I will copy the relevant portions because I will probably revise it sometime in the upcoming months.--One of Brown's evidences for liquefaction as a means for stratification in the geologic column is the well documented 1929 trans-atlantic cable breaks. In 1952, Heezen and Ewing presented evidence that a large-scale turbidity passed across a segment of the North Atlantic seafloor. On November 18, 1929, the New England and Maritime Provinces of Canada were hit by an earthquake which was centered off the edge of the Grand Banks, Nova Scotia. As a result of the earthquake, during and after thirteen transatlantic telegraph cables were broken: ten of which parted in two places and three which broke in three places. The broken cables lay along the steep continental slope that descends southward off the edge of the Grand Banks and on the distant gently sloped seafloor. No cables which lay on the continental shelf were broken. As Brown briefly explains in his book, each break was timed accurately by the automatic machines which recorded transmissions, whose locations were determined by measurements of electrical resistance of the cables.--An interesting correlation was discovered after this data was studied. Eight cables high on the continental slope were broken instantly during the earthquake and the remaining five snapped successively in order of their position downslope [Fig 1].Figure 1

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Profile of the sea floor south of the Grand Banks showing the position of transatlantic cables broken by the landslide and turbidity current began by the Earthquake. Times are labeled in accordance with the format, Hrs:Min. [After Heezen & Ewing, 1952]--Heezen and Ewing [1952] suggested that poorly consolidated sediments on the continental slope slumped resulting in a landslide which broke the first eight cables. The motion loosened the weak cement binding the minerals together and threw the unconsolidated material on the bottom violently into suspension. This created a turbidity current which began to flow as a heavy turbulent liquid. The current was forced down on the base of the gently sloping ocean floor, breaking the cables as they violently ripped through them.--Because the timing of the breaks were calculated accurately, we could then deduce the speed of the current. Back-of-envelope calculations reveal that the current was traveling at ~58 mph near the base of the continental slope, but as time passed, it had slowed to less than ~14 mph when it snapped the last cable, 295 miles downslope.--This data [Fig 2] was then used for comparisons with artificially induced turbidity currents in experimental tanks [Kuenen, 1950]. From the calculations Kuenen deduced that with the velocity it must have proceeded far beyond the last cable break, even on the essentially flat seafloor. Kuenen suggested, as a tentative estimate that it may have transported fine sands 500 miles from the toe of the landslide, and spread at great depths over about ~100,000^2 miles. The hypothesis has been partially confirmed by the dredging of "clean sharp sand" from many points within the area.Figure 2

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A powerful earthquake off Newfoundland in 1929 caused a submarine landslide on the edge of the continental shelf. Submarine cables in the slump area broke immediately but cables downslope broke up to several hours later. Apparently a dense current of suspended sediment traveled several hundred kilometers across the sea floor. (Recreated [Dutch, 2000 online document])--In Brown's book, which is available in its entirety online he argues the following in an attempt to support liquefaction as a vaible mechanism for stratification:

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...a large wave, a tsunami, would have rapidly radiated out from the earthquake’s epicenter. Below the expanding wave, liquefaction would have partially liquefied sediments on the seafloor allowing them to flow downhill slowly.10 This sediment flow loaded and eventually snapped only those cable segments that were perpendicular to the downhill flow.

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--In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - Examples of Liquefaction--As explained earlier, the cable breaks were timed accurately and so the velocity of the turbidity (or supposed tsunami) can be calculated. The data (figure 1) show a relative exponential decay in velocity as depth and ocean floor declination begins to diminish. However, the dynamics of tsunamis predicts the inverse.--At oceanic depths of over 20,000 ft, unnoticed tsunami waves can travel at nearly 600 mph, 10 times that observed at Grand Banks. Scientists can predict when a tsunami will arrive at a given destination because wave velocity varies with the square root of water depth. Tsunamis will increase in speed with increased depth and will decrease as depth decreases. It is clear then that the 1929 cable breaks could not have been caused by a tsunami.--Liquefaction is not a viable process by which the entire geologic column could be stratified. Of course, copious other more directly implicit details from other geologic data thoroghly refute this phenomena as a responsible cause for the Phanerizoic rock.Cheers,
-Chris GroseGilluly et. al, Principals of Geology - Second Edition, 1959.Kuenen, P. H. Marine Geology. New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1950.Heezen, B. C. and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the 1929 Grand Banks earthquake, American Journal of Science, vol. 250, p. 849-873, 1952.Brown, Walt., In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 7th Edition - Center for Scientific Creation – In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the FloodDutch, Steven., Natural and Applied Sciences: Wave Erosion and Marine Geology, 2000. - File Not Found - UW-Green Bay

TrueCreation, I suppose it would depend if the techtonic plates are moving, or floating, It just doesn't seem feasible for the rigid basalt layer to subduct under the continental plate, it makes more sense that it crushed under the continental plate, meaning presently the techtonic ocean floor plate is likely 5 to 10 miles thick, a massive floating plate floating on a layer of fractured rock and water, which is in turn pressing down into the soft malleable inner earth, with the water also pressing down because of the effects of the gravity of the moon, causing the inner earth in turn to press up hydraulically against the mountains, the floating ocean techtonic plates seem to me to be hydraulically responsible for the uplifting.
P.S. Oil, Coal has been proven to be formed in short periods of time, not that all the sediments, on the earth were formed in the biblical flood, however the sediments of the earth average over 1 mile in thickness, for what ever reasons, because oil can be formed in short amounts of time if both pressure and water are present, one can not conclude that the oil fields are necessarily all that old, from a world flood perspective, etc...however, if one discludes the biblical flood, one would need millions of years to account for the sediments, etc...[This message has been edited by whatever, 12-29-2003]