Long build up of Sediments

Stylolites are dissolution surfaces that form sometime between sedimentation and post-lithification. The formation of stylolites is still highly debated as far as I know, but can be considered a form of 'internal erosion,' I think.

Answering your last two replies in this one... The process you are describing is removal and transport of loose sediments, and sometimes undercutting (and collapse) of large rock structures. A flood will not quickly dissolve rock, no matter the amount of water. It will take pressure and time. Nor will rain being global affect whether a local stone structure dissolves faster of not.I do agree there would be much greater mass wasting in such a case, but that is not the same as dissolving. I was one of the first to give you a POTM and have repeatedly applauded the clarity of your writing. And in this case I was trying to explain what Percy would have been suggesting. Please explain this using the map as well as the link I provided to the geo column of the Grand Canyon. The latter explains the OE theory regarding the parallel strata, and it sounds quite reasonable given that we see this today in sediments which have not yet solidified to rock.This would be useful as much to everyone else as it would be to me, since we will all now have the same source material to look at and compare. Explain the appearance of the eroded pluton and the adjacent tilted and eroded sed structures in the right lower portion of the map, according to the Flood scenario, specifically in a "rapid deposition" environment.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

This is a silly thing for you to say, Faith. Unless you have read the pertinent geologic literature that specifically discusses the contacts between each formation in the Grand Canyon, you cannot make these sorts of statements. According to Berthault (a creationist), the Tapeats Sandstone and the Bright Angel Shale (of the Cambrian Tonto Group) have a gradational contact.In addition, the name, Bright Angel SHALE, is a bit of a misnomer as according to this paper (page 642) this formation is "primarily interstratified, subfeldspathic to quartzose sandstone beds and green papery to fissile mudshale." And on page 643 of the same paper is a strat column of the Bright Angel Shale that shows only about 50% of the unit actually IS shale. Again, the devil is in the details.If you read other similar type of detailed geologic papers concerning Grand Canyon units, you will see these two units are not the exceptions.I will again remind you that you are looking at a generalized cross-section of the Grand Canyon strata. It doesn't matter how pretty the picture is or how well it's drawn, it is still just a diagram. The only things depicted on it are large scale items such at the formations, formational contacts (NOT indicating sharp or gradational contacts), structure (faults), and intrusions. That's it.This message has been edited by roxrkool, 03-14-2006 11:42 AM

I think you said something about denuding the continents. It would take very, very active water over a long period of time to do this, because this: Isn't really possible. Solubility (how easily something dissolves in water) doesn't depend upon how much water you have. A pebble is no more likely to dissolve in a swimming pool than a glass of water. Rock has very, very low solubility, and it doesn't dissolve in water. That's the reason that even very fine-grained sediment (in other words, tiny, tiny particles of rock) are *suspended* in the water, not dissolved in the water. And when the water becomes quiet, the suspended particles fall out of suspension.You need a source for all the sediments the flood left behind, and your proposal was that the flood removed material from the continents and redeposited it. Since rock and dirt and clay and so forth do not dissolve in water, you need a way for rock and dirt and clay to be carried by the water. If "great violence" is not needed in your scenario, then how did the continents become denuded, and what force suspended miles of sediments in the flood waters and carried them to their current locations? Were underwater volcanic activity the source of the material in the layers, then they would consist of volcanic rock and not sediments from microscopic organisms or from the sand of coastal regions. You propose one solution, massive release of water from inland seas and lakes, for two very different geological structures, canyons and stepped plains.While the Mississippi has been better behaved in recent years, you might remember the late 1980's and early 1990's when spring floods often swelled the flow of water and caused massive flooding. But the Mississippi floods did not carve great canyons. The greater volume of water simply spread out, as this photo shows: Not only do the Mississippi floods do not carve deep channels, they also do not denude or erode the flooded landscape. Instead, while still in its banks the rapidly flowing water carries a heavy sediment load, but when the river leaves its banks and spreads out and slows down the sediments are deposited on the land, leaving as much as a foot of muck everywhere, including in flooded homes. This is the same phenomenon as seen in Egypt on the lower Nile on an annual basis. The flooding of the Nile leaves behind sedimentary deposits that keep the land fertile. The annual flooding of the Nile does not carve canyons, and it does not erode the surrounding landscape.Sudden releases of large quantities of water can signficantly affect the landscape, but only relatively near the point of release. The water very quickly spreads out and is experienced everywhere else as gradually rising water. Remember the accounts of the flooded neighborhoods in New Orleans where the levees had burst? Houses within a couple hundred feet of a break probably experienced fairly violent water - everywhere else they only experienced very rapidly rising water, and stories similar to this were related in account after account. Water would flow more slowly through an uplifted area, not more quickly. If uplifted sufficiently, the water would flow somewhere else. This isn't true. A number of the layers blend gradually. I believe Roxrkool was very specific about this on several occasions.In another message you suggested that the rock might have been softer when the floods eroded it. Lets look at the diagram again: Notice where the thick maroon layer, beginning on the left, finally disappears as you move to the right? Had the rock been softer so the flood could erode it, why is it today as hard where it is exposed to the surface near the Chocolate Cliffs as it is when reached by cores drilled at points where it is deeply buried? Rock doesn't form by drying, it forms by compression from the pressure of overlying layers.To summarize:

• You need a source for all the sediment. The source of the sediment must be of the same type. For example, volcanic rock can't be cited as the source of limestone, sandstone or shale layers.
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• You need a mechanism to transport the sediment. If it's not violent water that's okay, in fact it can't be violent water given the fine-grained sediment, but rock and sediment doesn't dissolve in water, so you still haven't proposed a method of transport yet.
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• You need a sorting mechanism that randomly sequences limestone, shale and sandstone layers.
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• You need another mechanism that sorts fossils by type and orders them by increasing difference from modern forms.
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• You need yet another mechanims that sorts material by radiometric age.
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• You need yet another methansim that sorts material by magnetic orientation.
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• You need a way for a flood to very quickly erode a mile or so of material to form both canyons and plains.

--Percy

Throughout this thread you have made a number of statments based on misapprehensions because you have no idea about the details. I have listed some of them below.In addition, the thread is probably confusing for you because there are so many posters and not all of what they post is correct.Reading quickly over the posts it is clear that the rapid nature of the posting is causing you to miss many points. In some cases it appears that you are ignoring them. Because you don't get what is being posted you continue with the same misapprehensions.This section are comments of yours that result from not understanding the details Message 8 Message 17 Message 29 Message 49 Message 55 Message 64 Message 65 Message 69 Message 90given wrong information
Message 98 edges kilometers of thickness is wrong. Horizontal extent yes. Corrected in Message 102ignoredThis section has some big points made that you never responded to. Message 39Message 120Message 123Message 41Message 45The overall impression I am left with is exempified by these:I acknowledge that there are problems for the flood model
Message 33 Message 17

Consulting the Dictionary of Geological Terms: Varieties of unconformities include:Angular unconformaty - Strata below has a different orientation than those above. Much erosion has happened.Nonconformaty - Strata is on top of older intrusive igneous rock or metamorphic rock. Much erosion has happened.Disconformity - Unconformaty between parallel strata. May be purely a non-depositional event.I talked about this upthread a bit, but...Unconformities exist in a wide range of degrees. The unconformity may be a multi-billion year gap, or it may be a few seconds gap. Indeed, if you want to look at the situation in extreme detail, the time between one sand grains deposition and the next sand grains deposition could be considered an unconformity.Now, your "sudden layer transitions" seem to be what I would file under "disconformities". It may be difficult to determine how significant of a non-deposition/erosion gap it is. It could be many years; It could be essentially zero time.Moose

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Professor, geology, Whatsamatta U
Evolution - Changes in the environment, caused by the interactions of the components of the environment. "Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." - Bruce Graham

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"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith

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"I know a little about a lot of things, and a lot about a few things, but I'm highly ignorant about everything." - Moose

This is what I was referring to in the statement about thickness of a basin.http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/...allogeny/sedex/purcell/index_e.php

Thanks for all the work you did putting that together, but the thread is so out of control I have no way of recapturing what is going on without putting in more effort than I'm up to at the moment.

Percy's last post is pretty well defined, and mine was pretty to the point as well (summing up some of what Percy said, but in less detail). But let's say it all seems a jumble.Why not recapture the thread and topic, by using Percy's map and the link I provided to the physical descriptions of the strata, to pose your question.It was your statement that you had problems with specifics, and between those two items you can explain what those specific issues are. Tying it up that way can allow people to restart discussion focused on your interest.This message has been edited by holmes, 03-15-2006 02:11 PM

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

I agree with Holmes. I think our posts have been pretty focused. I had trouble following Nosy's post, too. I know what he was trying to do, but it can be difficult to follow references to so many different posts.This thread is about how fine-grained sedimentary layers form. You've proposed that they were laid down by the flood, saying that the sedimentary material was on the continents and became dissolved in the water, then undissolved and formed sediments. There were other issues, and I suppose there's no overarching reason to choose one over another, but this seems the main issue to me.The problem with your scenario is that rocks and clay and sediments do not dissolve in water. The solubility isn't precisely zero, but compared to sugar and salt it's effectively zero. If you put a teaspoon of sugar in a glass of water and stir it up it will dissolve, and if you come back in a few days it'll still be dissolved, as long as you put a top on the glass so the water doesn't evaporate.But if you stir up a teaspoon of garden dirt in a glass of water you'll find that a great deal falls to the bottom as soon as you stop stirring, and the rest, the smallest, tiniest, invisible partcles, remain suspended (not dissolved) in the water and gradually fall out of suspension over the next couple days, leaving you with fairly clear water. This happens all the time in nature, too. If dirt really dissolved in water then you'd never find a stream with clean water.So you need a source for all the sediments in the sedimentary layers. If it was material already on the continents then you need to explain how that material got on the continents, how it was picked up and transported, thereby denuding the continents, by water that was not energetic.Since the heaviest materials fall out of suspension first, you also need to explain how lighter sedimentary layers came to be below heavier sedimentary layers.--Percy

As usual, Percy, I have been trying to avoid getting into the Flood. What I have been "proposing" is that the old earth explanation doesn't hold water, as it were, but others bring it back to the Flood. REMINDER: TITLE OF THREAD: LONG build up of sediments.There are too many people on this thread and too many points of view and too much irritability and I've simply lost interest.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-15-2006 09:14 AM

Bring the thread back on topic, then. Provide a link to your last post explaining the shortcomings of modern geology's view of how fine-grained sedimentary layers form.--Percy

Later I may get a second wind.

I haven't gone back and reread the thread to confirm this, but I think the reason the discussion turned to the flood is that you often said you rejected modern geological views because the flood explanation is more believable and provides a better explanation of the evidence. The only way to rebut this position is to show how the flood scenario does not match the evidence.To avoid turning the thread into a flood discussion I think you should just focus on your key objection, which if I recall correctly is that you just can't believe conditions could remain the same for enough millions of years to deposit hundreds of feet of similar sediments at a rate in the neighborhood of a centimenter per century.This objection is non-specific, of course. We understand you find it hard to believe, but you don't give any reasons for finding it hard to believe (other than that you find the flood a more believable explanation, but we want to avoid that topic). What we can do is point out that the world has changed very little over the past 5000 years (limiting ourselves to the post-flood era). Europe and North America are moving apart at the rate of about 2 or 3 inches per year. That means that 5000 years ago these continents were around 2 miles closer, a tiny .1% closer of the 3500 distance.Also during the past 5000 years we can see that oceanic sedimentation rates have been around a half inch per century. The further you get from the mid-oceanic ridges, the deeper the sediment, and the increase is gradual.If you ignore the global flood and project back beyond 5000 years ago you find that the sedimentation record on the ocean floor is consistent with slow sedimentation over many millions of years. The 3500 mile width of the Atlantic Ocean corresponds to about 90 million years, and the gradually increasing sedimentation depth as you move from ridge to continent is consistent with this, with 0 depth of sediment at the ridge, and a depth of literally miles near the continents.Radiometric dating is also consistent with these findings, as are the magnetic orientations of both sea-floor striping and of the sediments themselves, which though not cooling still manage to pick up a tiny magnetic moment.To summarize, modern geology believes that most of the sedimentary layers in the geological record formed very slowly over millions of years because slow sedimentation is what we see happening today, and the evidence of the layers themselves is precisely consistent with projecting current conditions back in time.--Percy

You assume the rate now has always been the same. A creationist doesn't. In the beginning the rate may have been a few miles a day {ABE: Correction, I meant a year} riding apart on the expanding sea floor plates. Yes, I know all about the supposed heat generated. But can you account for the LAYERS this way, the COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SEDIMENTS involved with their COMPLETELY DIFFERENT fossil contents? Then is it your theory that the sea floor periodically rises to the surface and forms new land? Wouldn't that make an awful LOT of the present land former sea floor? Is that the theory?That does seem to be the way most of the layers are thought to have formed. Mountainbuilding on the land is another but how much is thought to have come from that source, and again, does it exhibit the layering of different sediments and different fossil contents?And how do the depths of the present-forming sediments in either case compare with those {ABE: OF THE LAYERS} in the geo column, including the ideas of course about how {ABE: THE LAYERS} in the geo column may in fact have been originally much much thicker than they now are?This message has been edited by Faith, 03-15-2006 04:48 PM