The Flood- one explanation

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If we take an earth without a tilt and suddenly tilt it 18 degrees

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Define "suddenly". You're proposing that this happen from a near earth pass of some sort, correct? Then the water will be dragged along at the same speed as the earth - water is effected by gravity as well, you know.Now, the reason that we get tides is due to what are literally known as tidal forces, which make the water on earth lopsided due to the difference in distance from the gravitational source. You would consequently get an *intense tide* (lots of water receeding from part of the earth and flooding the coast on the opposite side) (I can calculate a rough maximum of how much it would be if you'll give me the size of your body and how close it passed; it will likely never be a force that "covers mountains" or anything like that, however, and it would be impossible for it to cover the entire earth; furthermore, because of the time it would take for the water to migrate from the far side of the globe, you undoubtedly wouldn't approach the maximum)Also, the atmosphere will similarly be affected by these tidal forces. While atmospheric tides are normally relatively insignificant, the sort of near impact that you're discussing would create a huge flow of air departing the far side of the planet and approaching the near side.Near misses can even be powerful enough to rip planets to pieces. Intense tidal forces are what cause the Roche limit for the orbits of bodies - the point at which they'll be torn apart by tidal forces. Even if this near miss wasn't powerful enough to rip the earth to shreds, the crust and mantle would be highly disturbed, and it would unleash a wave of intense volcanism, earthquakes, and possibly major local collapses. The atmosphere would likely still be lethal to date.For it to rotate the angle of earth's spin as you are proposing, it also could not be remotely in the plane that most bodies of this solar system orbit. Additionally, for it to have long enough for it to affect Earth's spin, it would have to be moving relatively slowly. Consequently, the odds of this ultra-massive body ramming the sun or just dissapearing on us off into the distance are almost nil. Likewise, it would horribly throw earth out of the plane that bodies in our solar system roughly tend to orbit in.There are also probably also some energy balance issues that I'd need to look into here.

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what do you think would happen?

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All multicellular life would be obliterated.Earth's orbit would be thrown way off, and the atmosphere would be toxic and smoke-filled to date. The oceans would be choked black with slow-settling sediment. And yet, the seas would not have covered the planet.

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Also climate changes would be brought on.

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That's an understatement, given that the atmosphere has been drawn to one side of the planet during the flyby, and much of it drawn off into space.

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That is what caused the ice age- not glaciers. Glaciers need gravity to move. What was the cause of the gravity if glaciation did occur?

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You see, there's this little thing called "Earth" underneath our feet.

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What is the evidence? Tiahuanaco- a port city that is now some 12,000 feet above sea level, about the same distance that the equatorial buldge in sea depth would be. It also just happens to be where the equator would be when there isn't any tilt.

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This is so absurd it's not even worth ripping apart Produce a theory, make an absurd estimate for how high waters would be, then pick a port city at that height! And what is your reason for *every other city on the planet* being where they are?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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The only way to tilt the Earth would be a direct collision by something pretty massive.

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I don't think that's true. You could rotate it via tidal forces, although they'd have to be quite intense. It's the only method that I could think of that would fit the initial post's description of how to throw the planet's rotation off, so it's the one I used. In a flyby of two perfect, non-plastic spheres you may be correct (I'd have to look into it - I'm not positive about that case), but that isn't what we're talking about here.Planets deform; Earth alone is already a bit wider at the equator due to its rotation, and the potential flyby body could be even worse. Then, when you have intense gravitational fields tugging on the planets along a given axis proportional to distance, you're going to stretch the planet along that axis. As the bodies fly past each other, the closest points are going to be tugged along more than the furthest points.In an extreme case (as a demonstration), picture throwing a point mass past the end of a line segment in two dimensions. Assuming that the point mass is infinitely larger in mass than the line, it will continue to fly in a roughly straight vector, making it easy to picture.Will the line segment not be imparted a rotation? The segment will of course begin to head toward the point mass. However, the near top of the segment will pull toward the point mass much faster than the far segment due to the quadratic decay of the force of gravity; consequently, you will have an initial rotation toward where the point mass is coming from, and an ending rotation in the direction that the point mass flies off to.There are other possibilities for changing the rotation, such as mass exchange (especially, of gasses) and magnetic fields (probably too small), but I wasn't considering those in my post.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 12-16-2003]

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Rei, I think you might be ignoring the gyroscopic force caused by the earth's spin that would make it so resistant to tilting that only a mass of ridiculously immense proportion could alter it by gravity alone. Even then, gravity's pull would be distributed across the whole planet more or less equally instead of only on one particular half of it.

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Hey, hey, wait a minute now, I'm not trying to defend this ludicrous flood notion! If you'll look at my initial post on the subject, I tore it apart. I was just defending the concept that a close flyby *can* alter a planet's rotation. I'm not saying that it's realistic here.

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I think that if a mass of the required size ever passed through the vicinity of our planet with enough proximity to tilt its axis in any meaningful amount it would also have obviously observable effects on the rest of the planets in our system.

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As I stated - that, and a *lot* more.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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Lake Titicaca, been there, done that. A salt water lake with no source of salt. Perhaps the lake is the remnants of what was once part of the Pacific?

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Lake Titicaca has a salt content of 0.1%, and is designated a freshwater lake. It's about what would be expected from how long it would have taken for the Nasca and Andes plates to push the area up. In fact, it's patently obvious where all the salt went: there's one river that flows out of the lake (the Desaguadero). It takes the water far to the southeast, where you find huge salt flats (which once were also part of the lake itself, in ancient times). Huge salt flats which, might I add, you need to find a way to factor into your flood model (i.e., you need enough time for that much water to evaporate).By the way, it manages such a low salt content even though the lake is steadily drying up.

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The core could shift and the crust lags behind that shift. That is the basic premise.

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What on Earth? First off, I assume you mean "mantle" (not the core), and secondly, how do you propose *that* happen?

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What caused the shift? Well we do see other planets with "weird" rotations (Uranus & Venus)- some have mentioned the mass of the object ignoring the magnetic influences and what those could do.

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Those planets are sterile. You have yet to address the issues of the destruction of all life on Earth.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/...
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Bartleby.com:
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Page not found | Andean SummitsAnything not covered?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 12-17-2003]

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Uplift millions of years ago? Mere assertion.

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The plates are currently uplifting, like it our not. Do you think surveying is pseudoscience as well?

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Plate tectonics- I am sure you are well aware that a Creationist was the first to mention continental drift and that "conventional" geologists didn't catch on until some 80 years later.

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And who might you be referring to? Certainly not Alfred Wegener. Here's a page about the history: http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/historical.html; if you're talking about the first person who suggested it (instead of postulating a theory), note that it was 1596, and thus long predating the ToE itself.

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The lake would have dried up by now if it were millions of years old.

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5 major rivers feed the lake. If you knew anything about Tiahuanaco (instead of just citing from your book, you'd know that the city was initially founded on the Tiahuanaco river (one of the 5)

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Do the docks face the lake?

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Yes. The water is just 100 feet lower than them. This corresponds to how fast the lake is receeding today.

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How do you know the lake predates the city?

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Because it was founded in about 1000 BC.. Its peak time (which we see as today's ruins - including the docks) wasn't until 200 AD.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 12-17-2003]

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Funny that. I know of some scientists that place Tiahunaco back well before 1000bc.

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Cite their evidence, please. That's well before any sizable human civilization was established, and as I'm sure you well know, extraodinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (Ed: PaulK's page pretty much rips that apart)BTW, just so I can have some fun here by doing the calculations: at what rate do you think these mountains were shoved up?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 12-17-2003]

Here's an interesting page on the geology of the region:Page not found | Andean SummitsI've seen similar things to this elsewhere. I see no reason why the lake must have continually existed since it was uplifted; on the otherhand, it seems pretty clear that the area once was a vast inland sea.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

And on PaulK's page, they point out that each person who has attempted to do this has gotten completely different results (a 10,000 year margin of error!). And, how silly it is to try such a thing, since the whole area has been quarried for building materials and otherwise destroyed for ages.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

I think I've done perhaps 4-6 "I was wrong"'s on EvC Forum. And I agree - I'm sure it's harder for them than us, so I have a lot of admiration for a creationist willing to admit when they were wrong.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."