Where did the flood waters come from and where did they go?

Deerbreh, it sounds like you are unaware that there exist creationist computer models built by *mainstream* tectonic simulators that demonstrate catastrophic plate tectonics involving 'runaway subduction'.

Baumgardner is unarguably a major contributer to the mainstream field of tectonic simulation.

Yet Hager has only respect for Baumgardner's computer program. Indeed, there is universal agreement that Terra, created to prove the Bible literally true, is one of the most useful and powerful geological tools in existence. "Baumgardner is seen as one of the world leaders in numerical models of mantle convection," says Hager.

There are good physical reasons for believing that subduction can occur in a catastrophic fashion because of the potential for thermal runaway in silicate rock. This mechanism was first proposed by Gruntfest [6] in 1963 and was considered by several in the geophysics community in the early 1970's [1]. Previous ICC papers [2,3] have discussed the process by which a large cold, relatively more dense, volume of rock in the mantle generates deformational heating in an envelope surrounding it, which in turn reduces the viscosity in the envelope because of the sensitivity of the viscosity to temperature. This decrease in viscosity in turn allows the deformation rate in the envelope to increase, which leads to more intense deformational heating, and finally, because of the positive feedback, results in a sinking rate orders of magnitude higher than would occur otherwise. It was pointed out that thermal diffusion, or conduction of heat out of the zone of high deformation, competes with this tendency toward thermal runaway. It was argued there is a threshold beyond which the deformational heating is strong enough to overwhelm the thermal diffusion, and some effort was made to characterize this threshold.The important new aspect addressed in this paper is the dependence of the viscosity on the deformation rate itself. Although this deformation rate dependence of viscosity has been observed experimentally in the laboratory for several decades, the difficulty of treating it in numerical models has deterred most investigators from exploring many of its implications. Results reported in the previous ICC papers did not include this highly nonlinear phenomenon. Significant improvements in the numerical techniques that permit large variations in viscosity over small distances in the computational domain, however, now make such calculations practical. The result of including this behavior in the analysis of the thermal runaway mechanism is to discover a much stronger tendency for instability in the earth's mantle. Moreover, deformation rates orders of magnitude higher than before throughout large volumes of the mantle now can be credibly accounted for in terms of this more realistic deformation law. This piece of physics therefore represents a major advance in understanding how a global tectonic catastrophe could transform the face of the earth on a time scale of a few weeks in the manner that Genesis describes Noah's Flood.Recent papers by several different investigators [10,13,18,19] have also shown that the mineral phase changes which occur as the pressure in the mantle increases with depth also leads to episodic dynamics. The spinel to perovskite plus magnesiowustite transition at about 660 km depth is endothermic and acts as a barrier to flow at this interface between the upper and lower mantle. It therefore tends to trap cold material from the mantle's upper boundary layer as it peels away from the surface and sinks. Numerical studies show that, with this phase transition present, flow in the mantle becomes very episodic in character and punctuated with brief avalanche events that dump the cold material that has accumulated in the upper mantle into the lower mantle. The episodic behavior occurs without the inclusion of the physics that leads to thermal runaway. This paper argues that when temperature and strain rate dependence of the rheology is included, the time scale for these catastrophic episodes is further reduced by orders of magnitude. In this light, the Flood of the Bible with its accompanying tectonic expressions is a phenomenon that is seems to be leaping out of the recent numerical simulations.

Genesis 7:11
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

Tranquility Base writes:Deerbreh, it sounds like you are unaware that there exist creationist computer models built by *mainstream* tectonic simulators that demonstrate catastrophic plate tectonics involving 'runaway subduction'.

TrueCreation writes:I really don't think you supported your claim that it is 'bunk' anywhere in your rant--correct me if I am wrong. In fact, the curve looks EXACTLY like that used in Shubert and Turcotte's heat flow diagram (see Mantle Convection in the Earth and Planets [2001], pg. 61)--which is a direct derivative of the eustatic data.

Tranquility Base writes:Deerbreh, it sounds like you are unaware that there exist creationist computer models built by *mainstream* tectonic simulators that demonstrate catastrophic plate tectonics involving 'runaway subduction'.

Tranquility Base writes:Baumgardner is unarguably a major contributer to the mainstream field of tectonic simulation.