Heat release from tectonic friction

Ok. But have you thought about what this rate of plate motion means?The San Andreas fault is measured to move at 1.5 inches per year. Here is a link that lists 206 earthquakes from the years 1769 to 1989 (220 years) with a magnitude of 6 or greater. This is an average of .93 earthquakes per year with the plate movement at a rate of 1.5 inches per year.Using your average estimate of 10 feet per day this would be 44,000 inches per year. {10*12*365=43,800}At this rate of movement, earthquakes would occur 29,000 times more frequently than they currently are. {44,000/1.5=29,333} which would produce 3 earthquakes with M >6 per hour {.93*29,000/365/24}3 earthquakes per hour on average over the last 4300 years on a 1000 mile fault line!!??And there are maybe 40,000 miles or so of fault lines throughout the world.But wait there's more ...

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Seismologists have observed that for every magnitude 6 earthquake there are 10 of magnitude 5, 100 of magnitude 4, 1,000 of magnitude 3, and so forth as the events get smaller and smaller. This sounds like a lot of small earthquakes, but there are never enough small ones to eliminate the occasional large event. It would take 32 magnitude 5′s, 1000 magnitude 4′s, 32,000 magnitude 3′s to equal the energy of one magnitude 6 event.

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SourceThe world would be in constant earthquake shake. Not to mention Tsunamis etc...A bit silly, huh?The idea of plate tectonics just needs to be abandoned if you are going to propose a flood model. It just can't happen at the rate required of it.HBD

Hi Trixie ... I am no expert in geology or earthquakes but here is some numbers I came up with.I figured there would be 3 earthquakes per day of magnitude 6 or greater for every 1000 mile of fault. See Message 9 for how I arrived at this number.According to Richter magnitude scale a magnitude 6.8 earthquake releases 1.0PJ of energy. If even half of that is converted to heat (which actually more like 80% should be) that will result in 1.5PJ per hour of heat energy for every 1000 miles of fault line.If there is about 40,000 miles of faults across the globe (which is a is a rough guess) that would mean world wide about 60PJ per hour of heat would be released.I found this that says that it takes 5.6 x 10^24 Joules to raise the temperature of the hydrosphere 1 deg K.This would translate to 1.1 x 10^(-8) deg K per hour {60 x 10^15 / 5.6 x 10^24). In 4300 years that would equal less that 1 deg K.I don't know, maybe I am doing something wrong here, I am not sure what though?? Of course this is only calculating energy input from earthquakes not from lava flow into the ocean or thermal vents.Another point though is that most of the heat generated by an earthquake would be trapped underground and may not have a chance to heat the oceans.But there are more problems than this anyway. Three magnitude 6.0 or greater quakes every day for every 1000 miles of fault line?Also the plates are moved by convection currents under the crust. Convection currents are caused by differential in temperature; the hot magma rises and the cool magma sinks back to the core. What would the temperature differential need to be in order to move the plates 29,000 times faster than they are moving today? The whole idea is just crazy.HBD

I don't think that heat from friction would have played a significant role in raising the temperature of the hydrosphere (see Message 10). I thought I would try to estimate the heat input from magma later today and see what that comes out to. Actually that is one of the points that need to be brought up in calculations based on this model. The continental plates move by convection currents that are caused by heat differential in the interior of the earth. This heat is generated primarily by radioactive decay. YEC proposal of accelerated decay could explain the increased heat needed for the increased convection current rates needed to move the plates faster. However, I don't think there could be enough heat differential to account for 20,000 times the rate of convection. The crust may have been thinner and the molten portion of the mantle extend further into the upper crust, which would have allowed for better transfer of motion from mantle to plates.So possibly that could account for some increase in the rates of plate movement - what if it was 100 times faster and account for increased radioactive decay. But that comes no where near the rate it needs to be to move the Americas 3000 miles away from Africa in 4300 years.You know if YEC models proposed a earth that was "young" as in around 100 million years old, they may be have some credibility in their models. But try to cram all of earth's history in to 6,000 years ... it is just untenable. The problems are off by orders of magnitude, not just a little bit here and there.HBD

Faith, you seem like such a nice person and I do admire your faith. I don't want to hurt that in any way, but I don't think that having faith means denying reality. I too am a person of faith and believe fully in what is acclaimed by the Apostles Creed. But I have completely abandoned the idea that the earth is very, very young (ie. 6,000 years). To believe that forces me to deny reality. A young earth is not one of the pillars of my faith.So all I ask of you is that you do look at things with an open mind and realize that God gave us both the Bible AND reality. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive. (I know you will say the bible IS reality, but what I mean by reality is what we can observe by studying the creation). I gave some estimates of the heat generated from friction in Message 10. I was really surprised at how little affect that amount of energy released would have on the ocean temperatures. I will try to come up with the amount of heat from lava flows later today. But honestly, I don't think it will be a huge factor either - the hydrosphere is just too immense and can absorb enormous amounts of energy.Also check out Message 22 for some additional problems with this model.Another point of reality is that there is just no way there was this amount of tectonic activity as recently as 2000 B.C.E. There are just too many know civilizations that date from that time that did have large cities and population centers in major fault areas - in particular the Arabian plate and Indian plate. This would have affected Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and India - all with civilizations older than 2000 B.C.E. So now we need to cram most of the plate movement into a couple hundred years immediately after the flood. You would be better off assuming that the continents were created close to their present positions. Why does a YEC model need to have land masses gathered into one place to begin with?So even if the heat factor is greatly exaggerated, it doesn't make the model anymore tenable.HBD

Calculations regarding the heat produced by lava flow at divergent plates under water.Figure half of the estimated 40,000 miles of faults are divergent plate boundaries. That would 20,000 miles of lava per day 10 feet wide and I will figure 10 feet deep that can transfer heat to the surface. That works out to 1.06 x 10^10 cu. Ft. of lava per day forced into the ocean. Convert to cm^3 and you get 3.00 x 10^14 cm^3.Use a density of 2.5 g / cm^3 (granite is 2.6 - 2.8) and you have 7.50 x 10^11 kg of lava per hour.Lava initial temp = 1000 deg C
Lava final temp = 100 deg C
Change in temp = 900 deg C
Specific heat of lava = 1046.5 J / kg C (would be different for the solid and liquid state but we'll just use the same value for simplicity)
Specific heat * change in temp = 9.42 x 10^5 J / kgLatent heat of fusion for lava = 418,600 J / kgTotal heat per kg = 1.36 x 10^6 J / kgTotal heat per hour = 7.50 x 10^11 kg * 1.36 x 10^6 J / kg = 1.02 x 10^18 JUsing the energy required to raise the temperature of the hydrosphere by 1 deg C of (5.6 x 10^24 J / deg C) ...Total temp increase per hour would be (1.02 x 10^18 J) / (5.6 x 10^24 J / deg C) = 1.82 x 10^(-7) deg C per hourOver 4300 years temperature change would be about 7.0 deg CWhile 7 deg C doesn't sound like a whole lot, it would be a significant, possibly catastrophic, change in ocean temperatures. In the discussions about global warming, scientists are concerned that ocean temperatures are raising 1 or 2 deg C. However, I don't see it boiling off the oceans.I can't guarantee these calculations are correct, and instinctively they seem rather low. Maybe someone can offer some suggestions to make these estimates more accurate????HBD Data Source

Which is much more like the numbers I expected to get when I did some rough calculations. But I came up with much, much less.It seems the main difference in our numbers is that you accounted for cooling of the entire seafloor 100km deep. I assumed that the majority of the seabed would have been cooled prior to the flood, maybe it was created cooled off? So the only new input that needed to be cooled was the lava that filled the gap created when the plates diverged. I only figured that the new lava would cool ~3 m deep since I was calculating the heat generated per day. But you are right we would need to account for much deeper cooling.I am not sure that heat from below maybe 10km would actually be absorbed into the ocean though? Wouldn't it be more likely to go into surrounding rocks? But even if only half of the heat made it to the oceans it would still raise the temperature by 7,000K. I am interested in your thoughts regarding this portion of the problem. In order for the plates to move at the proposed speed, the mantle would have to have convection currents that increased proportionally. Theoretically this heat could come from a rapid acceleration of radiogenic decay rates (a favorite of creationist theories). Would it theoretically be possible to produce such convection currents? What kind of heat differential would be required? Thanks for clearing up mine, though ... My numbers seemed extremely low, but I couldn't see where I erred.HBD

Hi mindspawn I think you may have missed some important points on this topic. Maybe you haven't read the whole thread.Based on the seismic activity of the San Andreas Fault, I did some calculations on what the seismic activity would be if the plates traveled from a single land mass to their present locations in only 6,000 years. see Message 9I estimated that at that rate iit would produce an average of 3 magnitude 6 or greater earthquakes per hour for every 1000 miles of fault plus more than 1000 lesser earthquakes. This amount of seismic activity would not have gone unnoticed during the last 4000+ years of written history. Not to mention it would not be too friendly to life.The other major problem is the heat produced when the sea floor spreads and fills with magma, which would be cooled by the oceans. True Creation calculated the heat generated from this process in Message 25 and estimated that it would be enough to heat the ocean to 14300K - which could boil an ocean 140 times more massive than the earth's.These two points alone make discussion about the heat generated by friction superfluous. However, my calculations of the heat generated by friction are in Message 10 and estimate that friction would only account for an increase in temp of 1K. Friction alone plays very little role in the model, IMO. However , the bottom line is the continental plates would have moved 29,000 times faster than they are thought to have according to the standard model (175,000,000 years according to standard models divided by 6,000 years for a YEC model)But considering the seismic activity and sea floor cooling alone, I say that YEC models are faced with 3 basic choices1) Appeal to magic to disperse the heat2) Abandon plate tectonics all together and explain biogeography and other geologic phenomenon with different models.3) Recognize that the earth is indeed much older than 6,000 years.HBD

I probably am. I was surprised at how low the number was, but the lithosphere is enormous and requires a tremendous amount of heat to raise it 1K ( 5.6 x 10^24 J) I based my calculations on published values for energy release during an earthquake then extrapolated it. One thing I see I did wrong was I only accounted for major earthquakes not all the lesser ones that would be accompanying them. That may double or triple the energy released. Well, after you get some rest, see if you can come up with a better estimate. If you could improve any of the other estimates, that would be great too.Oh, and another thing, the plates move by convection currents in the mantle which is caused by a temperature differential. I also understand that much of the heat generated by the core is from radioactive decay. So I was thinking, this is a YEC favorite - that radioactive decay was more rapid in the past which could be used to explain how there was more convection currents in the mantle and thus faster plate movement. My question is how much temperature differential would there need to be to produce convection currents that could push the plates at the needed rate? Well considering that the plates would have to move at 29,000 times the current rate, all the individual calculations are just decorationHBD