Plate tectonics, mountain building, and the Flood

TB

quote:

---

For that reason the best colleciton of mainstream paelocurrent data has been organized by the creationist Chadwick on a web site.

---

I guess you are referring again to your claims about paleocurrents that were thoroughly refuted herehttp://EvC Forum: Non-marine sediments -->EvC Forum: Non-marine sedimentsand herehttp://EvC Forum: Paleocurrents: the 'diverse' features of the GC were laid via rapid, correlated flow -->EvC Forum: Paleocurrents: the 'diverse' features of the GC were laid via rapid, correlated flow

quote:

---

The best catalogue of global fossil distribution per period geographically illustrated (to a resolution of around 50 miles I think) is also a creationist work (Woodmorappe on this occasion).

---

You mean like those amphibian fossils that got washed out of the mangrove swamps to be deposited seaward?http://EvC Forum: Try out this exercise, sitting in front of fossil distribution data -->EvC Forum: Try out this exercise, sitting in front of fossil distribution data

quote:

---

What you call continuous we call catastrophic at 4000BC (creation day 3) and catstrophic at and around the 2500BC flood.

---

Hmm. By 2500 BC there had been more than 20 kings of Egypt and the great pyramid had been built. Strange that they didn’t notice this worldwide flood. Then again the civilizations in China and the Indus valley didn't notice it either so maybe it's not so strange.Randy

Let’s not forget that heat is a huge problem that completely falsifies all runaway tectonic models before, during or after the flood, independent of the ocean depth problem and the totally unrealistic geophysical parameters that are invoked ad hoc to get the process going.We discussed this in detail on the Baumgardner thread.http://EvC Forum: Creationist Baumgardner: one of the top mainstream mantle/plate tectonics simulators! -->EvC Forum: Creationist Baumgardner: one of the top mainstream mantle/plate tectonics simulators!All the YEC flood models that I have seen rely on absurd scenarios that would have killed ALL life or at least all air breathing life many times over.Randy

The gravitation potential energy is the killer here. No matter how slowly the object initially approaches when it is above the earth at some height h it must have gravitational potential energy E = mgh. The conservation of energy requires that this potential energy be converted to kinetic energy as the object approaches the earth. At the moment of impact this energy will be transfered to the earth in various ways. The object will blast through the crust, and everything that is not blown back out into space will melt from the enormus heat released. What is blown into space will mostly fall back to earth releasing its potential energy when it hits though I suppose some could be blown right out of the earth gravitational field.With any reasonable estimate of the mass of the object it will be straightforward to calculate the potential energy assuming the object was somehow held still at some height above the earth. In reality the object would have kinetic energy of its own that would be also be released onto the earth. The idea that it could somehow spiral in slowly for a relatively soft landing is scientifically impossible unless you postulate retrorockets on the object or some sort of anti-gravity device out of science fiction.I did not think it possible that anyone would seriously postulate a model more absurd than Walt Brown's hydroplate model but this seems to be it.Randy

quote:

---

Firstly its own gravity was able to suck up great volumes of water from the global ocean which had a
‘drag’ effect and impeded it in its flight.

---

To me this makes no physical sense. If you have a planetismal approaching the earth the object has both kinetic and gravitational potential energy which will be converted to kinetic energy before the collision. Either that energy will be dissipated in the collision with the earth or some material must bounce off into space. The conservation of energy requires this. I do not see how the object sucking up great volumes of water will reduce the energy released when the object collides with the earth and I don't see how you can get a "soft landing" from this type of collision.Randy

I figure this object will weigh about 1.8 x 10^22 kg and hit with a kinetic energy of about 6 x 10^29 J (about 10^14 megatons of TNT). I was having trouble figuring out what kind of crater it would make until I found this site.
http://home.att.net/~srschmitt/crater.htmlIf the calculations are correct for this large an object, assuming a grazing angle of 15 degrees I get a crater about 3000 km in diameter and about 800 km deep. Even at an angle of 5 degrees the crater will be 2000 km in diameter and 540 km deep. Hardly a soft landing! The idea that an object of this mass could bounce along and then land softly to settle into a continent seems so silly to me that I don’t think I will waste any more time on it.I have my own flood model that is no more ridiculous than this one, or Walt Brown’s for that matter. You see, originally the earth was flat just as certain passages in the Bible imply and the only continent was in the center. To make the flood God simply lifted up the four corners of the earth. This caused the water of the oceans to rush into the center flooding the continent. The rapid lifting of the corners threw some water into the air making intense rain and the bending of the crust caused water to rush out from the fountains of the deep. To end the flood God pulled the four corners of the earth around to make a sphere. This caused the continents to move to their current positions and of course the water ran off. I think I will change my name to Rappmorewood and write a book about it. What was the name of LRP's publisher again?
Randy

quote:

---

I dont have the necessary expertise to prove that my 'soft landing'
idea is a physical possibility but intuitively I liken this event to something like propelling a powerful magnet over a thick bed of iron filings. I can visualize the magnet getting heavier and losing some of the horizontal component of its velocity. We know that the Moon 'sucking' ability causes tides on the Earth and I just think that the local tide in the vicinity of the travelling planetissimal
would be very high so the last few thousand miles of the planetissimal could have been in a semi submerged state and that would slow it down.

---

It is clear that you don't have any understanding of the physics involved at all or you wouldn't post such absurd nonsense. Semi submerged in what? Water that it sucked up from the earth? How does that work? All the water in all the oceans on earth won't slow it down significantly and I have a little trouble imaging a tide a few thousand miles high. Have you ever taken a physics course?

quote:

---

However as a Bible believer I cannot leave God out of this event.
It is strongly inferred in the scriptures and as God is fully in control over the laws of nature He could have ensured the sort of ideal landing. But I still believe the mechanics of it all can be worked out satisfactorily by anyone who is really prepared to believe that it happened.

---

You can make anything happen with miracles but you need some whoppers for this one to work. Someone who is really prepared to believe in Santa Claus has a better chance of working out the mechanics of how a sled pulled by flying Reindeer can deliver toys to all the children of the world in one night.

quote:

---

Your calculations do not take into account the surface and internal structure of the colliding objects and so are invalid. But see my post above.

---

The "surface and internal structure" of the colliding objects is not relevant to the total energy released. When captured by the earth's graviational field it has tremendous gravitational potential energy which must be coverted to kinetic energy and dissipated in the collision blowing a huge hole in the earth and releasing a fantastic amount of heat. Your model simply makes no physical sense. It is so far from making any kind of sense that it is probably a complete waste of time to even disucss it. Your post above is total nonsense. At a minimum this collision releases enough energy to boil all the water in all the oceans on earth more than 100 times not to mention punching a huge hole in the earth's crust. It will release energy equivalent to about 100,000,000,000,000 1 megaton hydrogen bombs. You can't avoid this energy release without violating some very well established physical laws such as Newton's laws of motion and the first law of thermodynamics. Of course if you start invoking miracles to solve your problem you can no longer even pretend to being scientific.This "model" is so goofy that at first I thought it must be a joke. I still think it might be. Are you really serious about this or just jerking our chains?Randy

quote:

---

I was not proposing a flood model at all so am not sure why you had to propose yours here. But I feel sorry for you because you have just confirmed a biblical scripture (2 Peter 3:3-7)

---

And I feel sorry for you because you have apparently wasted a lot of time and effort on something so absurd. Perhaps you should have learned a bit of physics before you started.If you were not proposing a flood model why did you post it on this thread on the flood forum??? I really thought this quote from your first post had something to do with the flood. Since your "model" will punch through the crust and boil the global ocean away I don't see how it will be around to oscillate.Randy

quote:

---

The most important feature of the planetissimal I speak of is that it was once binary partner of the Earth in the same way as the Earth and Moon are today.
In a binary system both objects rotate about a common center of gravity.

---

The center of mass will be very near the center of the earth for an object with only about 0.3% of the mass of the earth and the velocity will be about 18000 mph to be in orbit.

quote:

---

If for some reason the rotation of one or both of the partners is impeded there is every likelihood of a coalescing of both bodies into one. This does not mean that the two bodies will clash directly as you imply but does mean that the planetissimal will adopt a spiraling motion towards the Earth and start rotating round it with ever decreasing orbits but increasing velocity. As the planetissimal came into an orbit close to the Earth it would raise huge tides of both water and land. On first contact with the earth some of its energy would form a crater but its horizontal momentum would ensure that it continued its journey for some time before being brought to rest by friction. My planetissimal makes first contact in the area now occupied by the Pacific Ocean (huge crater as expected) but continues to travel half way round the world by rolling on the sea floor before coming to rest in a very hot and weak state. Sure there would be tremendous generation of heat and dust as you say. And the oceans were no doubt raised to near boiling point (this is also biblical). But the net result after all this was the creation of a submerged super continent which only became ‘dry land’ as the result of a rapid drop in sea level-but that is another event.

---

So you start in orbit with a kinetic energy of about 6 x 10^29 J. If we start with the object 1000 KM away it will have gravitation potential energy equal to about 2 x 10^29 J which will be converted to additional kinetic energy as it spirals in and speeds up. So you have about 8 x 10^29J. If it starts further out you have more. It will indeed make huge tides but that won’t take up any significant fraction of the energy. Raising all the water in the oceans to a height of 10 kilometers only takes 10^25 J. If you think it can be slowed down by going through this water think again. The only way to slow it is by friction and frictional heating will boil the water. It would take about 4 x 10^27 J to boil all the water in all the oceans and that will slow the object less than 1%. When it hits it, even if it hits at a small angle to the horizontal it will punch right through the crust not make a hole and roll. The collision energy of almost 2 x 10^14 megatons of TNT is probably many times that required to fragment an object of this size and whatever doesn't punch through the crust will probably be blown back out into space along with a lot of the crust.

quote:

---

Anyway that is my biblical/scientific theory for the formation of the supercontinent.

---

There is nothing scientific about your absurd hypothesis which should not be called a theory.

quote:

---

In the end it really is a choice between the word of man and the word of God.and we each choose whatever makes more sense to us.

---

The word of God makes sense to many people. I doubt if your scenario makes sense to anyone but you.Randy

quote:

---

The collapse of a binary does not mean one object punches into the other. It does mean that one object could rotate right round the surface of the other several times and may make a long deep skid mark before coming to rest.

---

This is absurd. This object will hit the earth with a speed of about 10 km/sec. Even if it hits at a grazing angle of 1 degree from horizontal it will make a crater about 300 km deep. I think this is a little deeper than the Pacific Ocean. It will not make a skid mark and come to rest.

quote:

---

If heat generation is your main concern about my theory I have not done too badly. Lets have some real scientific objections. But I see you have already made up your mind so perhaps dont bother.

---

It is not just heat. It is the total energy released which will bust a giant hole in the crust and shatter/melt/vaporize the object and vaporize the oceans. The real science objection is that your "model" violates some well established laws of physics as I pointed out before.Randy

quote:

---

I assume you have calculated the kinetic energy of the planetisimal assuming ‘free fall’
conditions. In this case the impact velocity would be directed vertically and I would accept your calculation for a 300km deep crater and the complete devastation of the planetissimal itself.
But this is not at all the case for a coalescing binary.
Under stable conditions the system would have angular momentum and this will be preserved from the start of the collapse right to and beyond the time of contact.

---

I calculated the impact at an angle of 1 degree from the horizontal. If it comes straight in the crater is much deeper, more than 1000 km deep. BTW an object in orbit is in free fall and the kinetic energy depends on its velocity and mass. At a grazing angle of 0.05 degrees I still get a crater 100 km deep.

quote:

---

This means that as the orbit of the planetissimal becomes smaller the tangential velocity must increase and at the same time the centripetal force must also increase to keep the object from escaping. Hence some of the centripetal force is used up to keep the object in its orbit and some of it is used to bring the object downwards.
For this reason the actual acceleration in the vertical direction will small and it could takes days if not weeks to impact time.

​

It is theoretically possible for the planetissimal to orbit the earth at say only 1000 meters or less above the surface of the earth

---

Sure if you have no atmosphere and the surface is flat. But what happened to all the kinetic and potential energy it had when it was in a much higher orbit? How are you gradually bleeding off energy to get a slowly decaying orbit?

quote:

---

By the time the planetissimal gets to the point of grazing the earth’s surface its vertical velocity will be small but its tangential velocity would be extremely high.
So rather than the object making a 300km hole in the ocean bed as you suggest it would be more likely to bulldoze a fairly shallow (0.5 to 1.0km deep) trough some 200km wide and 18,000km long.

---

How do you cut an 18,000 km long track in a 12,756 km diameter sphere when you hit at a grazing angle with an object 1300 miles in diameter? The geometry of this doesn’t seem to make sense. 18,000 km is almost half way around the earth. Are you saying it maintains itself in a low orbit as it cuts this trench? A 10^22 kg bulldozer moving at 8 km/sec. Does this seem like nonsense to anyone else or is it just me?

quote:

---

As for the planetisssimal ‘bouncing’ on first contact this again follows logically if the vertical velocity is low and the tangential velocity high enough to keep the planetissimal more or less suspended above impact level.

​

Also knowing the internal structure of the Earth it is not unexpected that the planetissimal will have a very similar internal structure. Thus like two giant balls with relatively thin skins of solid basalt and a softer interior the planetissimal can be expected to ‘bounce’ at least once if not twice before finally being brought to rest and broken up.

---

Sooner or later you have to expend all the kinetic and potential energy this object had when it was in a higher orbit. Bouncing in for a soft landing just makes no physical sense.

quote:

---

Finally the conversion of kinetic energy to heat is essential to partially melt and transform the contents of the interior of the planetissimal. Today we live on top of the contents of the planetissimal and all around us the effects of this great heat is plain to see unless one is blinded by traditional theories in Geology.

---

Yes the kinetic energy will be expended as heat after the object blasts through the crust and probably disintegrates and blows some of planet earth out into space as back splash. I really don't think that it is traditional geology that is blinding here.Randy

quote:

---

You need to use two equations; one to find the orbital velocity of your planetisimal as it grazes the atmosphere, and the other to find its kinetic energy as it actually enters the atmosphere. If you understand that the falling body converts kinetic energy into heat energy via friction, then you will finally how your theory results in the melting of the oceans, the entire crust and much of the mantle.

---

I pointed this out before. The kinetic energy as it enters the atmosphere is on the order of 5 x10^29 J depending on the mass of the object. I get that for 1300 mile diameter object with a density of about 3.5. Velocity in low earth orbit is about 8 km/sec.Another problem is that I calculate that the combination of kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy is higher in high orbit than the kinetic energy in low orbit even though it moves faster in low orbit. Somehow the object must slowly shed energy to "spiral in". You can figure this out by calculating the orbital period and thus the speed in each orbit to get 1/2mv^2 and the potential energy from mgh. I don't have the numbers here but can post them later if necessary. The required equations can probably be found in any undergrad physics book. Tidal coupling will apply torque to the object and cause it to move away not sprial in. But what amazes me is that someone who claims to have writen a book on the subject apparently just now thought of the Roche limit. It seems to me that this "model" violates the first law of thermodynamics as well as Newton's laws of motion and probably some other physical laws as well.Randy

quote:

---

I am at a loss to see your point-are you saying that only bodies less than 100kM in diameter will survive in the Roche Limit?

---

If the difference in gravitational acceleration across the satellite becomes larger than the gravitational binding energy that holds the satellite together the satellite will be torn apart as has been pointed out. Small objects are not affected much and a strong enough object can indeed exist inside the Roche limit but I don’t think the object you postulate will be strong enough to stand the stresses in the low orbits you require as it spirals in.Physics | Brown UniversityRoche Limit -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Physicshttp://www.sfu.ca/~boal/390lecs/390lec8.pdf

quote:

---

Also Roches Limit applies to smaller bodies that try and orbit the larger ones-not crash into them fairly quickly.

---

But I thought this object had to orbit quite awhile at quite a low altitude as it spiraled in. You quoted an orbit with an altitude of 1000 meters at one point. I calculate that there will be about 10^23 N of force trying pull the object apart at that height. But I agree that the object will indeed crash into the earth with a very big crash.

quote:

---

The moon has a thick skin of solid basalt and so will be certainly stressed if it comes within the Earth's Roche limit but should stay in tact.

---

Didn’t you previously say that the object has a relatively thin skin of solid basalt and a softer interior? How will it stand up to that kind of stress? It is true that solid objects can exist inside the Roche limit especially if they are strong and not too big.Your object is large and the orbits you require are so far within the Roche limit that it seems to me that this object will almost certainly be torn apart unless it comes slamming straight in, which seems more likely to me anyway.Further I see no mechanism for this object to slowly spiral in for a soft landing as you postulate. The increase in kinetic energy in a low orbit does not account for the sum of the gravitational potential and kinetic energy in high orbit. You must have a slowly decaying orbit that gradually bleeds off energy by a mechanism you have not specified while alowing the satellite to move down but speed up just enough to stay in orbit. In any case when this thing hits the earth it will punch right through the crust unless it is broken to bits by tidal forces first even if it hits at a very shallow angle. If the object breaks up you still have on the order on 10^30 J of total energy to deal with somehow. Probably some of the bits will punch through the crust in various spots around the globe. To me the whole thing just makes no sense at all.Randy