Summations Only

Take a look at the abstract linked to from that article:

quote:

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The timing of formation of the Grand Canyon, USA, is vigorously debated. In one view, most of the canyon was carved by the Colorado River relatively recently, in the past 5—6 million years. Alternatively, the Grand Canyon could have been cut by precursor rivers in the same location and to within about 200 m of its modern depth as early as 70—55 million years ago. Here we investigate the time of formation of four out of five segments of the Grand Canyon, using apatite fission-track dating, track-length measurements and apatite helium dating: if any segment is young, the old canyon hypothesis is falsified. We reconstruct the thermal histories of samples taken from the modern canyon base and the adjacent canyon rim 1,500 m above, to constrain when the rocks cooled as a result of canyon incision. We find that two of the three middle segments, the Hurricane segment and the Eastern Grand Canyon, formed between 70 and 50 million years ago and between 25 and 15 million years ago, respectively. However, the two end segments, the Marble Canyon and the Westernmost Grand Canyon, are both young and were carved in the past 5—6 million years. Thus, although parts of the canyon are old, we conclude that the integration of the Colorado River through older palaeocanyons carved the Grand Canyon, beginning 5—6 million years ago.

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Doesn't look particularly earth-shattering to me.

I never claimed it was earth shattering, just relevant...

We have glimpses of the perehistoric past, we have fossils, we have samples from ice cores, ... We have observations we dont have any observations about your god. But it is it can be tested, observed and it has not yet been proven wrong. Magic man dun it does not share these qualities. Sure we may have some problems with the experimentation part of geology but we still have OBSERVATIONS something that magic man dun it lacks. We have no observations that point to a worldwide flood though if there where one we should be seeing the evidence it left behind EVERYWHERE. Remember how science works one fact proving your theory wrong and your theory is wrong either amend it or abandon it.The flood was what 4000 years ago well the city of Faiyum is 6000 years old and has been continuously inhabited during that time impossible if it was supposed to be wiped out by a flood 2000 years after its foundation.Amend your theory or abandon it.Ice core samples show no evidence there was a world wide flood one would expect a whole layer of sediments in EVERY ice core sample.Amend your theory or aboandon it.The polar ice caps should not be there if there was a world wide flood such an amount of water would brake them apart and they would take a whole lot longer then 4000 years to regrow.Amend your theory or abandon it.No traces of wrold wide flood on the sea floor. You would expect to see n uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, different grain size distributions in the sediment, a shift in oxygen isotope ratios.Amend your theory or abandon it.Coral clocks. Corals can be dated do to their daily growth these clocks go back way before the flood agree with ALL other dating methods.OH And they where not whipped out by a flood nor is any change visible that would correspond with a global flood.Amend your theory or abandon it....I could go on all day you see not only does the flood theory have a problem of having NO evidence to support it. Tonnes of evidence show there was no worldwide flood. Now on the one hand you bash a legitimate science for not being scientific on the other you promote a "theory" that has been debunked 200 years ago.

Yea, I realized what I was missing. It was a face-palm moment When figuring potential energy (PE = m*g*h) the mass is the ENTIRE mass of water standing above the obstruction. The increase in level would also be distributed to this entire mass, which would be all but unnoticeable in a stream like I illustrated.I recanted of the idea that the increase in level would be only theoretical some messages back. When it gets to the point you need calculus to figure it out it gets beyond my capacity or willingness I was trying to keep the explanation as simple as possible. I didn't want to get into all the factors involved in stream flow.HBD

Remember math class in middle school / high school (secondary education) when your teacher made you show your work and you objected, saying "I know the right answer, why should I have to show my work?" Well that's how creation science works, no need to show your work or change your methods when you already know you have the right answer.HBD

True, but as Heathen noted, very relevant. For my own part I'm fascinated by attempts to find the actual age of the canyon at various points. Finding the age of the layers is easy compared to figuring out when the river and erosion removed yawning chasms of those layers. Here's a neat diagram (note from the key that the shading doesn't represent elevation): In general, the longer a canyon has been around the longer its slopes have been retreating and the wider the canyon should be. If the Grand Canyon is oldest (50-70 million years) near the Hurricane fault (curvey vertical line near the center) then the canyon should be widest at that point, but it's about the same width as the younger (15-25 million years) Eastern Grand Canyon.What we can't forget is the miles of layers that once lay above the Grand Canyon region. The current prairie floor was once much higher. At the same time that the Grand Canyon walls are experiencing slope retreat and making the canyon wider the surrounding prairie is eroding ever lower and making the canyon narrower (because it has sloping walls). My bet is that the prairie is eroding downward much faster than the canyon walls are eroding back, and that would mean that the Grand Canyon today is much narrower today than it was, say, a couple million years ago.But whether I'm right or wrong about how the canyon width has changed over time, it is worth keeping in mind that the canyon was there even before the now missing layers eroded away, and that there is a great deal of canyon wall that simply no longer exists. A quarter mile of vertical wall? A half mile? A full mile? I don't know.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Improve description of location of Hurricane Fault in the image.Edited by Percy, : Minor clarity improvement in first paragraph.

Yeah, but we'll see YECs, maybe even here, crowing "changed 70 million to 7 million, huh? Can't make up your minds? Next step is 4 thousand."

Yea, I too am fascinated by how the canyon actually formed. I have thought about starting a thread to discuss some ideas about what actually did happen (rather than what did not happen). I just haven't had the time to put it together.In your image, does the white shading of the canyon itself simply mean there is no Kaibab plateau there?What do you make of the area between Aubrey, Diamond Creek, Spencer Canyon and Mauv Cave? It looks like a significant outwash and the canyon at one time exited at RM220.I also notice that all the faults run north and south with a couple running at most at 45 deg. There are no faults running east to west. If the canyon followed a fault, as Faith suggests, we should find faults that run east to west. Is there any reason to think there even COULD have been a fault that ran east to west?HBD

That's right, or at least that's the way I interpret it. It's not topological. In the Eastern Grand Canyon the Kaibab Plateau runs right up to the canyon rim, so in that part of the diagram the Kaibab Plateau outlines the canyon. In the Western Grand Canyon it must be some other layer that runs up to the canyon rim, so the Kaibab Plateau layer no longer provides an outline of the canyon. The canyon is still roughly the same width in that area. I've been looking at photos people have taken of the area using Google Maps. RAZD was pursuing the same point for post after post, Faith just ignored it all. Given that fault lines are caused by stresses in the upper crust you would expect them to run roughly parallel. The fault lines we already know about run roughly north/south, so an orthogonal east/west fault line of any significant length (like the entire canyon) would be very unexpected and unusual, plus there's no evidence of one anyway, like almost all Faith's ideas.--Percy

Yep, and we can look at how Hurricane fault at mile 220 is pretty concurrent with the river at that point but then the river turns away from a course down the fault line, while at the other end we have the Bright Angel and the Eminence Fault lines cutting across the river as it ignores those faults and proceeds to meander across the lines twice.She says the uplift should cause cracks but ignores the actual cracks that are caused by the uplift.

Oh brother, there's no point in trying to answer all the nonsense you've written misrepresenting what I've said. You've never understood what I meant about the cracks in the upper strata and you've continued to say the craziest things about what you think I mean, like now you think I have in mind cracks that run the entire length of the current canyon. Earlier you described them as "meandering cracks." You don't have a clue that all I meant was enough of an opening in the upper strata to start the process of water's carving out the canyon whose rim would end up A MILE LOWER. I never said it had to do with a fault or had it in mind. ABE: That COULD have happened but this is a mile above the present canyon, it most likely had nothing to do with anything except letting the water have a path through the strata, a mile depth of which eroded away anyway above the current canyon. The cracks in the Grand Staircase that became canyons and cliffs were not fault lines. /ABE. YOU may have had a fault line in mind but now you are actually saying that's what I said when I didn't. All I've ever described is cracks that would have allowed the water in so that it could work down to cut the canyon. I also got driven to describe it as a huge trench because you kept describing it as too small to do what I had in mind, but a trench the length of the canyon? That is NOT what I had in mind. You just make up your own stuff and pretend it's what I said. It's the worst case of strawmanning I've ever seen even here.I was going to go read your earlier posts but I don't need the ulcer. What small amount I did read earlier was enough to make me scream and tear my hair out.You have the most utterly ridiculous idea of how oil and coal would have resulted from the Flood and you attribute that idea to ME although on this entire thread I hadn't even described what I think about that. I answered you this morning but I'm sure you've managed to garble that too: Plants and animals carried along with everything else and deposited in strata where the weight crushed them eventually into oil and coal. Tectonically buckled formations where oil could collect and so on. It's perfectly reasonable, it makes sense.But the most amazing piece of absurdity was what you imputed to me about the lowest strata being recycled or some such idiocy? Best I could do is figure you mixed up my description of the Old Earth view of the formation of the Great Unconformity before the rest of the strata were laid down, but where you got any idea of those strata being recycled I don't know.I don't know if you're just being stupid beyond belief or malicious. Do you need to sit in the corner with a dunce cap on or should it say liar instead of dunce?I'm sure you've written more insanity about what I've said here, but I'm not up to finding out right now.Too bad there isn't such a thing as a neutral party on this forum, better a neutral committee, who could correct such hideous misrepresentations, but the lone creationist on a thread full of anticreationists isn't going to get anywhere trying to correct you, am I? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I NEVER SAID IT WAS A FAULT LINE. IF FAULT LINES DON'T RUN EAST-WEST THEN IT WASN'T A FAULT LINE AND I NEVER SAID IT WAS ANYWAY. THE IDEA IS THAT IT WAS CRACKS THAT FORMED EAST-WEST BECAUSE THAT PARALLELS THE MOUNDED PART OF THE UPLIFT,. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I probably should have the dunce hat too, because I pretty much thought it was your argument that the canyon formed in cracks (which I now know is different than faults). Except that the "mounded part of the uplift" runs north-south. Compare that to the map of fault lines that Percy posted. How are these "cracks" different from faults? And were these cracks formed by different forces than the forces that caused the faulting from north to south, which seem more consistent with the uplift.Doesn't seem to be any reason to think there were cracks running east to west, does there?HBDEdited by herebedragons, : No reason given.Edited by Admin, : Reduce image width.

And this is where Noah got the pitch for the ark? Oops. Is it a crack like a butt crack? That would explain all the shite.