What about continental drift? 4 WAS GEOLOGICAL UNIFORMITARIANISM THE RESULT OF DISPASSIONATE SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY Mineral evolution 6 CAN GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURES THAT WE SEE TODAY BE EXPLAINED BY A GLOBAL FLOOD Can Flood Geology Explain Thick Chalk Beds? ………………………………………………………………………7 Devils Tower can be explained by floodwater runoff ………………………………………………………………….10 The Yellowstone petrified forests ……………………………………………………………………………………….12 Uluru and Kata Tjuta: Testimony to the Flood …………………………………………………………………………14 Many arches and natural bridges likely from the Flood ……………………………………………………………….16 Three Sisters: evidence for Global Flood ………………………………………………………………………………18 Peperite: more evidence of large-scale watery catastrophe ………………………………………………………….20 Paleosols: digging deeper buries ‘challenge’ to Flood geology ………………………………………………………22 Fluidization pipes: evidence of large-scale watery catastrophe ………………………………………………………27 Seeing the Global Flood in geological maps …………………………………………………………………………. 27 A classic tillite reclassified as a submarine debris flow ……………………………………………………………….29 CAN CANYONS BE FORMED QUICKLY Canyon creation ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………29 How old is Grand Canyon? ……………………………………………………………………………………………….30 Grand Canyon strata show geologic time is imaginary ………………………………………………………………..34 A canyon in six days! ………………………………………………………………………………………………………34 Startling evidence for global flood ………………………………………………………………………………………..35 HOW WERE LIMESTONE CAVES FORMED The age of the Jenolan Caves, Australia ……………………………………………………………………………….. 38 Caves for all seasons ………………………………………………………………………………………………………41 Limestone caves ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………45 Rapid cave formation by sulfuric acid dissolution ……………………………………………………………………….46 HOW DOES THE FLOOD EXPLAIN STALAGMITES, STALACTITES AND OTHER SPELEOTHEMS Rapid stalactites ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….47 ‘Instant’ stalagmites! …………………………………………………………………………………………………….….47 The shrinking ’age’ of stalactites and stalagmites. ……………………………………………………………………… 48 IS THERE EVIDENCE THAT ROCKS AND GEMS FORMED IN THE YOUNG AGE TIMEFRAME Granite grain size: not a problem for rapid cooling of plutons ………………………………………………….…….…48 The rapid formation of granitic rocks: more evidence …………………………………………………………….……....52 Granite formation: catastrophic in its suddenness ………………………………………………………………….….…54 Rapid rock ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……55 Mud experiments overturn long-held geological beliefs …………………………………………………………………56 Creating opals . ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……57 Microscopic diamonds confound geologists ………………………………………………………………………………58 Warped earth …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………59 HOW DID MANY FINE LAYERS OF ROCK FORM Sedimentation Experiments: Nature finally catches up! ………………………………………………………………….62 Experiments on lamination of sediments …………………………………………………………………………………..62 Experiments on stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures ………………………………………………………….65 Green River Blues ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………73 Surtsey still suprises .. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..74 Surtsey, the young island that ‘looks old’ ………………………………………………………………………………….75 Rivers, rocks and … Shakespeare …………………………………………………………………………………………75 The story that won’t be told ………………………………………………………………………………………………….76 Niagara Falls ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….78 HOW TO PETRIFIED MAN-MADE OBJECTS SUPPORT THE YOUNG AGE TIMESCALE Fascinating fossil fence-wire ………………………………………………………………………………………………..79 WHAT IS CATASTROPHIC PLATE TECTONICS Probing the earth’s deep places ……………………………………………………………………………………………80 The Wilson cycle: a serious problem for Catastrophic Plate Tectonics …………………………………………………82 Forum on catastrophic plate tectonics ……………………………………………………………………………………. 83 DAILY ARTICLES ‘Flat gaps’ in sedimentary rock layers challenge long geologic ages …………………………………………………..84 Fast-forming ‘Fly geyser’ ……………………………………………………………………………………………………..89 Volcanoes shaped our planet ……………………………………………………………………………………………….90 Oceans of water deep inside the earth …………………………………………………………………………………….92 Parícutin ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………93 Three early arguments for deep time—part I: time needed to erode valleys ………………………………..………. 94 Three early arguments for deep time—part II: volcanism ………………………………………………………………100 Three early arguments for deep time—part 3: the ‘geognostic pile’ ………………………………………………….. 106 Is plate tectonics occurring today? ………………………………………………………………………………………..113 Caves and Age ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………...117 Geological excursion at Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland ………………………………………………………. 118 Thermal isostasy—a new look at its potential to advance diluvial geology …………………………………………..121 Galápagos with David Attenborough: Origin …………………………………………………………………………….123 Soil microbiologist: Evolution no help in research ………………………………………………………………………124 Indonesian mud volcano keeps erupting …………………………………………………………………………………127 The basement rocks of the Brisbane area, Australia: Where do they fit in the creation model? ………………….. 127 Manganese nodules and the age of the ocean floor …………………………………………………………………...140 Speedy stone ……………………………………..………………………………………………………………………… 143 The mud is missing …………………………………………………………………………………………………………143 The Carboniferous floating forest—an extinct pre-Flood ecosystem ………………………………………………….143 Reading between the Giant’s Causeway basalts ……………………………………………………………………….151 Eolian erosion exposé …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 152 The Canadian Oil Sands: a different story ……………………………………………………………………………….154 Liquid Gold …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 155 The wonders of water ……………………………………………………………………………………………………...156 The age of the Jenolan Caves, Australia ………………………………………………………………………………...158 Diamonds in days (actually, minutes!) ……………………………………………………………………………………161 Vanishing coastlines ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..162 Water inside fire ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………164 Paleokarst—a riddle inside confusion …………………………………………………………………………………… 165 What about continental drift? Have the continents really moved apart? How could this relate to the creation account of history? Could it have had something to do with the Flood? BEFORE the 1960s, most geologists were adamant that the continents were stationary. A handful promoted the notion that the continents had moved (continental drift), but they were accused by the majority of indulging in pseudo-scientific fantasy. Today, thatopinion has reversed—plate tectonics, incorporating continental drift, is the ruling theory. (Interestingly, it was a creationist, Antonio Snider, who in 1859 first proposed horizontal movement of continents catastrophically during the Flood. 1 Geologists put forward several lines of evidence that the continents were once joined together and have moved apart, including: - the fit of the continents (taking into account the continental shelves) -correlation of fossil types across ocean basins -a zebra-striped pattern of magnetic reversals parallel to mid-ocean floor rifts, in the volcanic rock formed along the rifts, implying sea-floor spreading along the rifts -seismic observations interpreted as slabs of former ocean floor now located inside the earth. -The current theory that incorporates sea-floor spreading and continental drift is known as ‘plate tectonics’.2 Plate tectonics The general principles of plate tectonic theory may be stated as follows. 3 Earth’s surface consists of a mosaic of rigid plates, each moving relative to adjacent plates. Deformation occurs at the edges of the plates by three types of horizontal motion: extension (or rifting, moving apart), transform faulting (horizontal slipping along a fault line), and compression, mostly by subduction (one plate plunging beneath another).Extension occurs as the sea floor pulls apart at rifts, or splits. Transform faulting occurs where one plate slips horizontally past another (e.g. the San Andreas Fault of California). Compressional deformation occurs when one plate subducts beneath another; e.g. the Pacific Plate beneath Japan and the Cocos Plate beneath Central America. Or it occurs when two continental plates collide to produce a mountain range, e.g. the Indian– Australian Plate colliding with the Eurasian Plate to form the Himalayan Mountains. Volcanoes often occur in regions of subduction. Sea-floor spreading One argument advanced for plate tectonics is sea-floor spreading. In the ocean basins, along mid -ocean ridges (e.g. the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and East Pacific Rise), observations are interpreted to indicate that plates are diverging, with molten material from the mantle4 rising up in the gap between the plates and cooling to form new crust under the ocean. The youngest crust is at the ridge axis, with progressively older rocks away from the axis. Worldwide, it is estimated that currently about 20 cubickilometres of molten magma rises each year to create new oceanic crust. 5At the time of cooling, some of the rocks’ minerals acquire magnet ism from Earth’s magnetic field, recording the field’s direction at the time. Evidence indicates that Earth’s magnetic field has reversed many times in the past. So, during the cooling, some of the oceanic crust was magnetized in a reverse direction. If sea-floor spreading is continuous, the ocean floor should possess a smooth magnetic ‘tape-recording’ of reversals.Indeed, the zebra stripe pattern of linear ‘magnetic anomalies’ parallel to the mid-ocean ridge crest has been recorded in many areas.6 Problems for ‘slow-and-gradual’ plate tectonics While the zebra-stripe pattern has been confirmed, drilling through the basalt adjacent to the ridges has shown that the neat pattern recorded by dragging a magnetometer above the ridge is not present when the rock is actually sampled. The magnetic polarity changes in patches down the holes, with no consistent pattern with depth.7 This would be expected with rapid formation of the basalt, combined with rapid field reversals, not the slow-and-gradual formation with slow reversals assumed by uniformitarians.Physicist Dr Russell Humphreys predicted that evidence for rapid field reversals would be found in lava flows thin enough to cool in a few weeks.8He suggested that such rapid reversals could have happened during the Flood. Such evidence for rapid reversals was later found by the respected researchers, Coe and Prévot. 9,10 Their later work11 confirmed these findings and showed that the magnetic reversals were ‘astonishingly rapid’. A young age view Evidence indicates that the continents have moved apart in the past, but can today’s supposed drift rates of 2–15 cm per year be extrapolatedThe magnetic pattern in the volcanic rock formed on the sea floor at the mid-ocean ridges suggests very rapid processes, not millions of years. The patchwork patterns of polarity are evidence for rapid formation of the rock.far back into the past? Is the present really the key to the past, as uniformitarians claim? Such extrapolation would mean that an ocean basin or mountain range would take about 100 million years to form.The creation model does not speak directly about continental drift and plate tectonics, but if the continents were once together, and are now apart, how does that fit into a creation view of geology with a time line of only thousands of years? 12Dr John Baumgardner, working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA), used supercomputers to model processes in Earth’s mantle to show that tectonic plate movement could have occurred very rapidly, and ‘spontaneously’. 13,14,15,16,17 This concept is known as catastrophic plate tectonics (CTP). Baumgardner, a creationist scientist, was acknowledged as having developed the world’s best 3-D supercomputer model of plate tectonics.18 Catastrophic plate tectonics The model proposed by Baumgardner begins with a pre-Flood super-continent and dense ocean floor rocks. The process starts with the cold and dense ocean floor beginning to sink into the softer, less dense mantle beneath. The friction from this movement generates heat, especially around the edges, which softens the adjacent mantle material, making it less resistant to the sinking of the ocean floor.19 The edges sink faster, dragging the rest of the ocean floor along, in conveyor-belt fashion. Faster movement creates more friction and heat in the surrounding mantle, reducing its resistance further and so the ocean floor moves even faster, and so on. At its peak, this thermal runaway instability would have allowed for subduction at rates of metres-per-second. This key concept is called runaway subduction.The sinking ocean floor would displace mantle material, starting large-scale movement throughout the entire mantle. However, as the ocean-floor sank and rapidly subducted adjacent to the pre-Flood super-continent’s margins, elsewhere Earth’s crust would be under such tensional stress that it would be torn apart (rifted), breaking up both the preFlood super-continent and the ocean floor.Thus, crustal spreading zones would rapidly extend along cracks in the ocean floor for some 10,000 km where the splitting was occurring.Hot mantle material displaced by the subducting slabs would well up, rising to the surface along these spreading zones. On the ocean floor, this hot mantle material would vapourize copious amounts of ocean water, producing a linear geyser of superheated steam along the whole length of the spreading centres (perhaps the “fountains of the great deep”? Gen. 7:11; 8:2). This steam would disperse, condensing in the atmosphere to fall as intense global rain (“and the flood-gates of heaven were opened”?Baumgardner’s catastrophic plate tectonics global Flood model for Earth history20 can explain more geological data than the conventional plate tectonics model with its many millions of years. For example, rapid subduction of the pre-Flood ocean floor into the mantle results in new ocean floor that is dramatically hotter, especially in its upper 100 km, not just at spreading ridges, but everywhere. Earth’s current structure (not to scale). Being hotter, the new ocean floor is of lower density and therefore rises 1,000 to 2,000 metres higher than before and implies a dramatic rise in global sea level.This higher sea level floods the continental surfaces and makes possible the deposition of large areas of sedimentary deposits on top of the normally high-standing continents. The Grand Canyon provides a spectacular window into the amazing layer-cake character of these sediment deposits that in many cases continue uninterrupted for more than 1,000 km.21 Uniformitarian (‘slow and gradual’) plate tectonics simply cannot account for such thick continental sediment sequences of such vast horizontal extent.Moreover, the rapid subduction of the cooler pre-Flood ocean floor into the mantle would have resulted in increased circulation of viscous fluid (note: plastic, not molten) rock within the mantle. This mantleflow (i.e. ‘stirring’ within the mantle) would have suddenly altered the temperatures at the core-mantle boundary, as the mantle near the core would now be significantly cooler than the adjacent core, and thus convection and heat loss from the core would be greatly accelerated. The model suggests that under these conditions of accelerated convection in the core, rapid geomagnetic reversals would have occurred. These in turn would be expressed on the earth’s surface and recorded in the so-called magnetic stripes.22 However, these would be erratic and locally patchy, laterally and at depth, just as the data indicate,23 even according to the uniformitarian scientists cited earlier.This model provides a mechanism that explains how the plates could move relatively quickly (in a matter of months) over the mantle and subduct. And it predicts that little or no movement would be measurable between plates today, because the movement would have come almost to a standstill when the entire pre-Flood ocean floor was subducted. From this we would also expect the trenches adjacent to subduction zones today to be filled with undisturbed late-Flood and postFlood sediments, just as we observe.Aspects of Baumgardner’s mantle modelling have been independently duplicated and thus verified by others.24,25,26 Furthermore, Baumgardner’s modelling predicts that because this thermal runaway subduction of cold ocean floor crustal slabs occurred relatively recently, during theFlood (about 4,500 or so years ago), then those slabs would not have had sufficient time since to be fully assimilated into the surrounding mantle.So evidence of the slabs above the mantle-core boundary (to which they sank) should still be found today. Indeed, evidence for such unassimilated relatively cold slabs has been found in seismic studies.27,28,29 The model also provides a mechanism for retreat of the floodwaters. Plate collisions would have pushed up mountains, while cooling of the new ocean floor would have increased its density, causing it to sink and thus deepen the new ocean basins to receive the retreating floodwaters. If a centimetre or two per year of inferred movement today is extrap olated back into the past as uniformitarians do, then their conventional plate tectonics model has limited explanatory power. For example, even at a rate of 10 cm/yr, it is questionable whether the forces of the collision between the Indian–Australian and Eurasian Plates could have been sufficient to push up the Himalayas. On the other hand, catastrophic plate tectonics in the context of the Flood can explain how the plates overcame the viscous drag of the earth’s mantle for a short time due to the enormous catastrophic forces at work, followed by a rapid slowing down to present rates.Continental separation solves apparent geological enigmas. For instance, it explains the amazing similarities of sedimentary layers in the north-eastern United States to those in Britain. It also explains the absence of those same layers in the intervening North Atlantic ocean basin, as well as the similarities in the geology of parts of Australia with South Africa, India, and Antarctica. Conclusion Early skepticism about plate tectonics has largely evaporated because the framework has such great explanatory power. The catastrophic plate tectonics model for the Flood not only includes these explanatory elements, but also accounts for widespread evidences of massive flooding and catastrophic geological processes on the continents.Future refinement of the model may also help to explain the order and distribution of fossils observed in the fossil record in the context of the Flood (see Chapter 15). Many creationists believe the concept is helpful in explaining Earth’s history. Some are still cautious. The idea is relatively new, and radical, and much work has yet to be done to flesh out the details. There may even be major modifications to the theory that increase its explanatory power, or future discoveries could cause the model to be abandoned. Such is the nature of scientific progress. WAS GEOLOGICAL UNIFORMITARIANISM THE RESULT OF DISPASSIONATE SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY Mineral evolution What’s next? Geobiology or biogeology? by Emil Silvestru Although Charles Darwin considered himself a geologist, he is revered today as the pillar of modern biology. But that soon may change if his evolutionary ideas will be applied to minerals too. There is now a trend towards the blurring of the frontiers of the earth and life sciences, a push for integration. Within the evolutionary paradigm, geology represents the supreme argument, an archive of life’s changes (from goo-to-you) over billions of years. But recent research is pushing the idea that minerals also evolved, 1 actually co-evolved with life as Robert Hazen says in an interview. 2,3 Thus the grand rug of Darwinian evolution is extended to cover mineralogy and implicitly geology. A closer analysis of this new idea and the way it is being pushed, portrays all the ingredients of a political agenda that seeks the ever increasing integration that the secular academic establishment forces upon scientists, a form of academic communism. What is being said? The contention is that throughout the history of the earth, minerals have changed. This change is equated to ‘evolution’ (which in fact means ‘change over time’), although not a Darwinian concept of evolution because ‘minerals do not mutate’. 2 Mineral species are always the same; they do not change over time.2 Yet, as the dynamic earth changed in time, new minerals were formed and, because at some point life significantly changed the conditions on Earth, life has also influenced the mineral kingdom. The main example provided by Hazen2 is that of life producing a ‘toxic gas’—oxygen—which allowed the formation of oxidic minerals that did not exist before, such as azurite—Cu3(CO3)2(OH)2. Of the approximately 4,300 known mineral species, Hazen claims that two thirds are ‘life-mediated’.2This seems to close the circle because some speculations, 4 presented as facts by philosopher Michael Ruse in Ben Stein’s film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, were made that life may have evolved on crystal surfaces where certain chemicals tend to accumulate and maybe the regular structure of crystals caused the first polymers to form. 5,6So, to conclude: life was born on crystal surfaces and after it reached a certain bio-mass, life influenced crystals and minerals in their evolution. Can it get better for evolutionists? Yes, since they now see this new approach as a valuable addition to exobiology, the search for extraterrestrial life. All that is required is to look into the rocks on other planets to find life! How is it being said? The language used in the articles covering this new topic sounds like an evolutionary Esperanto: mineral evolution, coevolution, niches and such like. Hazen clearly states in his interview 2 : ‘You cannot be a geologist without thinking of biology and you cannot be a biologist without thinking of geology.’ The motivation here seems obvious: we need to reinforce both biology and geology by integrating them into one, larger and more defendable body. Such a motivation undoubtedly reveals that both evolutionary biology and evolutionary geology feel threatened!Above all, this is yet another media trick as Hazen indirectly admits when he states that, this is a story and ‘people like stories’. 2 In other words, the dry language of crystallography and mineralogy has no appeal to the great public, but by turning it into yet another, familiar-sounding, evolution story, minerals become alive! One cannot help but wonder whether mineralogists are seeking to increase their research funds through this type of hype. What is not being said Figure 1. Phase diagram for the Al2SiO5 polymorphs. Kyanite will react to form sillimanite with increasing temperature or with decreasing pressure (as the arrows show). The light triangular field at the bottom is the stability field for andalusite. Technically, there is hardly anything new in all this hype. That minerals have changed over time is something well-understood because petrology, the study of the rocks, is built on the idea of chemical changes over time. Although riddled with contradictions, the Great Oxidation Event (GOE)7 was always seen as the source of the first oxidic minerals, even if carbonate rocks, which contain oxygen, exist that are claimed to be older than the GOE. 7 However, no-one thought to link it to life within an evolutionary scenario.Hazen and his team avoid taking the evolutionary analogy further, although the ingredients are there! When claiming mineral species do not change over time, he is only telling half of the story. There are minerals known as structural polymorphs, an example of which is the andalusite-silimanite series.8 Although there are several different minerals in this series, they are all formed from the same three chemical elements: Al, Si and O in the empirical formula Al 2SiO5. Temperature and pressure control the structural layout of these chemical elements thus determining the mineral species: distene or kyanite (Al2[SiO4]O), andalusite (Al2[SiO4]O) and sillimanite (Al[AlSiO5] (figure 1). This should have been proudly added by Hazen to his evolutionary analogies as a case of homology.Hazen is actually wrong when affirming that mineral species don’t change: minerals actually do change over time if they are exposed to different physical and chemical conditions. Muscovite—a mica —(K2Al4[Al2Si6](OH, F)4) in the presence of CO2-rich water loses K and F and transforms into kaolinite (Al 4[SiO10](OH)8). Darwin initially called this idea ‘transformism’. But by adding oxygen to an existing mineral and forming a new mineral, what actually changes? One mineral into another! In a process known as ‘dolomitization’, the addition of magnesium to calcite (CaCO3) changes it into dolomite (CaMg(CO 3)2). According to Hazen’s evolutionary analogy, this should be defined as mineral evolution by mutation; it also exhibits natural selection since the minerals have ‘adapted’ to new chemical conditions!How could Hazen miss this? Maybe he didn’t and just skillfully avoided taking the analogy too far for it should be obvious that this is not what Darwin meant by ‘evolution’! Darwinian evolution proceeds by mutations from within and not by adding pre-existing information from outside! Darwin’s diversification of taxa is explained by the repeated splitting of one taxon into two or more taxa, not by merging two or more taxa into one. By leaving things at the shallowest level possible, Hazen & Co. hope to blaze the trail toward integration into either ‘geobiology’ or ‘biogeology’! Is this a new challenge to young-earth creation models? Not really. If there is a challenge, it’s mostly a methodological one. ‘Integration’ seems to be the battle cry of the evolutionary establishment but the shallowness of this new idea provides excellent grounds for creationists to dismantle it and by consequence further expose the fallacies of Darwinian evolution. CAN GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURES THAT WE SEE TODAY BE EXPLAINED BY A GLOBAL FLOOD Can Flood Geology Explain Thick Chalk Beds? by Dr. Andrew A. Snelling on April 1, 1994 Originally published in Journal of Creation 8, no 1 (April 1994): 11-15. Abstract By working from what is known to occur today, even if rare and catastrophic by today’s standards, we can realistically calculate production of thick chalk beds within the conditions of the Flood. Most people would have heard of, or seen (whether in person or in photographs), the famous White Cliffs of Dover in southern England. The same beds of chalk are also found along the coast of France on the other side of the English Channel. The chalk beds extend inland across England and northern France, being found as far north and west as the Antrim Coast and adjoining areas of Northern Ireland. Extensive chalk beds are also found in North America, through Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee (the Selma Chalk), in Nebraska and adjoining states (the Niobrara Chalk), and in Kansas (the Fort Hayes Chalk).1The Latin word for chalk is creta. Those familiar with the geological column and its evolutionary time-scale will recognize this as the name for one of its periods—the Cretaceous. Because most geologists believe in the geological evolution of the earth’s strata and features over millions of years, they have linked all these scattered chalk beds across the world into this so-called ‘chalk age’, that is, a supposedly great period of millions of years of chalk bed formation. So What Is Chalk? Porous, relatively soft, fine-textured and somewhat friable, chalk normally is white and consists almost wholly of calcium carbonate as the common mineral calcite. It is thus a type of limestone, and a very pure one at that. The calcium carbonate content of French chalk varies between 90 and 98%, and the Kansas chalk is 88–98% calcium carbonate (average 94%).2 Under the microscope, chalk consists of the tiny shells (called tests) of countless billions of microorganisms composed of clear calcite set in a structureless matrix of fine-grained calcium carbonate (microcrystalline calcite). The two major microorganisms whose remains are thus fossilised in chalk are foraminifera and the spikes and cells of calcareous algæ known as coccoliths and rhabdoliths.How then does chalk form? Most geologists believe that ‘the present is the key to the past’ and so look to see where such microorganisms live today, and how and where their remains accumulate. The foraminifera found fossilised in chalk are of a type called the planktonic foraminifera, because they live floating in the upper 100–200 metres of the open seas. The brown algæ that produce tiny washer-shaped coccoliths are known as coccolithophores, and these also float in the upper section of the open seas.The oceans today cover almost 71% of the earth’s surface. About 20% of the oceans lie over the shallower continental margins, while the rest covers the deeper ocean floor, which is blanketed by a variety of sediments. Amongst these are what are known as oozes, so-called because more than 30% of the sediment consists of the shells of microorganisms such as foraminifera and coccolithophores.3 Indeed, about half of the deep ocean floor is covered by light-coloured calcareous (calcium carbonate-rich) ooze generally down to depths of 4,500–5,000 metres. Below these depths the calcium carbonate shells are dissolved. Even so, this still means that about one quarter of the surface of the earth is covered by these shell — rich deposits produced by these microscopic plants and animals living near the surface of the ocean.Geologists believe that these oozes form as a result of these microorganisms dying, with the calcium carbonate shells and coccoliths falling slowly down to accumulate on the ocean floor. It has been estimated that a large 150 micron (0.15mm or 0.006 inch) wide shell of a foraminifer may take as long as 10 days to sink to the bottom of the ocean, whereas smaller ones would probably take much longer. At the same time, many such shells may dissolve before they even reach the ocean floor. Nevertheless, it is via this slow accumulation of calcareous ooze on the deep ocean floor that geologists believe chalk beds originally formed. Microfossils and microcrystalline calcite—Cretaceous chalk, Ballintoy Harbour, Antrim Coast, Northern Ireland under the microscope (60x) (photo: Dr. Andrew Snelling) The ‘Problems’ For Flood Geology This is the point where critics, and not only those in the evolutionist camp, have said that it is just not possible to explain the formation of the chalk beds in the White Cliffs of Dover via the geological action of the Flood (Flood geology). The deep-sea sediments on the ocean floor today average a thickness of about 450 metres (almost 1,500 feet), but this can vary from ocean to ocean and also depends on proximity to land. 4 The sediment covering the Pacific Ocean Basin ranges from 300 to 600 metres thick, and that in the Atlantic is about 1,000 metres thick. In the mid-Pacific the sediment cover may be less than 100 metres thick. These differences in thicknesses of course reflect differences in accumulation rates, owing to variations in the sediments brought in by rivers and airborne dust, and the production of organic debris within the ocean surface waters. The latter is in turn affected by factors such as productivity rates for the microorganisms in question, the nutrient supply and the ocean water concentrations of calcium carbonate. Nevertheless, it is on the deep ocean floor, well away from land, that the purest calcareous ooze has accumulated which would be regarded as the present-day forerunner to a chalk bed, and reported accumulation rates there range from 1–8cm per 1,000 years for calcareous ooze dominated by foraminifera and 2– 10 cm per 1,000 years for oozes dominated by coccoliths. 5Now the chalk beds of southern England are estimated to be around 405 metres (about 1,329 feet) thick and are said to span the complete duration of the so-called Late Cretaceous geological period,6 estimated by evolutionists to account for between 30 and 35 million years of evolutionary time. A simple calculation reveals that the average rate of chalk accumulation therefore over this time period is between 1.16 and 1.35cm per l,000 years, right at the lower end of today’s accumulation rates quoted above. Thus the evolutionary geologists feel vindicated, and the critics insist that there is too much chalk to have been originally deposited as calcareous ooze by the Flood.But that is not the only challenge creationists face concerning deposition of chalk beds during the Flood. Schadewald has insisted that if all of the fossilised animals, including the foraminifera and coccolithophores whose remains are found in chalk, could be resurrected, then they would cover the entire planet to a depth of at least 45cm (18 inches), and what could they all possibly have eaten?7 He states that the laws of thermodynamics prohibit the earth from supporting that much animal biomass, and with so many animals trying to get their energy from the sun the available solar energy would not nearly be sufficient. Long-age creationist Hayward agrees with all these problems.8Even creationist Glenn Morton has posed similar problems, suggesting that even though the Austin Chalk upon which the city of Dallas (Texas) is built is little more than several hundred feet (upwards of 100 metres) of dead microscopic animals, when all the other chalk beds around the world are also taken into account, the number of microorganisms involved could not possibly have all lived on the earth at the same time to thus be buried during the Flood.9Furthermore, he insists that even apart from the organic problem, there is the quantity of carbon dioxide (CO2) necessary to have enabled the production of all the calcium carbonate by the microorganisms whose calcareous remains are now entombed in the chalk beds. Considering all the other limestones too, he says, there just couldn’t have been enough CO 2 in the atmosphere at the time of the Flood to account for all these calcium carbonate deposits. Creationist Responses Two creationists have done much to provide a satisfactory response to these objections against Flood geology—geologists Dr Ariel Roth of the Geoscience Research Institute (Loma Linda, California) and John Woodmorappe. Both agree that biological productivity does not appear to be the limiting factor. Roth10 suggests that in the surface layers of the ocean these carbonate-secreting organisms at optimum production rates could produce all the calcareous ooze on the ocean floor today in probably less than 1,000 or 2,000 years. He argues that, if a high concentration of foraminifera of 100 per litre of ocean water were assumed,11 a doubling time of 3.65 days, and an average of 10,000 foraminifera per gram of carbonate,12 the top 200 metres of the ocean would produce 20 grams of calcium carbonate per square centimetre per year, or at an average sediment density of 2 grams per cubic centimetre, 100 metres in 1,000 years. Some of this calcium carbonate would be dissolved at depth so the time factor would probably need to be increased to compensate for this, but if there was increased carbonate input to the ocean waters from other sources then this would cancel out. Also, reproduction of foraminifera below the top 200 metres of ocean water would likewise tend to shorten the time required.Coccolithophores on the other hand reproduce faster than foraminifera and are amongst the fastest growing planktonic algæ, 13 sometimes multiplying at the rate of 2.25 divisions per day. Roth suggests that if we assume an average coccolith has a volume of 22 x 10–12 cubic centimetres, an average weight of 60 x 10 -12 grams per coccolith,1420 coccoliths produced per coccolithophore, 13 x 106 coccolithophores per litre of ocean water,15 a dividing rate of two times per day and a density of 2 grams per cubic centimetre for the sediments produced, one gets a potential production rate of 54cm (over 21 inches) of calcium carbonate per year from the top 100 metres (305 feet) of the ocean. At this rate it is possible to produce an average 100 metre (305 feet) thickness of coccoliths as calcareous ooze on the ocean floor in less than 200 years. Again, other factors could be brought into the calculations to either lengthen or shorten the time, including dissolving of the carbonate, light reduction due to the heavy concentration of these microorganisms, and reproducing coccoliths below the top 100 metres of ocean surface, but the net result again is to essentially affirm the rate just calculated.Woodmorappe16 approached the matter in a different way. Assuming that all limestones in the Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary divisions of the geological column are all chalks, he found that these accounted for 17.5 million cubic kilometres of rock. (Of course, not all these limestones are chalks, but he used this figure to make the ‘problem’ more difficult, so as to get the most conservative calculation results.) Then using Roth’s calculation of a 100 metre thickness of coccoliths produced every 200 years, Woodmorappe found that one would only need 21.1 million square kilometres or 4.1% of the earth ’s surface to be coccolith-producing seas to supply the 17.5 million cubic kilometres of coccoliths in 1,600-1,700 years, that is, in the pre-Flood era. He also made further calculations by starting again from the basic parameters required, and found that he could reduce that figure to only 12.5 million square kilometres of ocean area or 2.5% of the earth’s surface to produce the necessary exaggerated estimate of 17.5 million cubic kilometres of coccoliths. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of coccoliths in the Cretaceous chalk, Brighton, England (photo: Dr Joachim Scheven) ‘Blooms’ During The Flood As helpful as they are, these calculations overlook one major relevant issue — these chalk beds were deposited during the Flood. Creationist geologists may have different views as to where the pre-Flood/Flood boundary is in the geological record, but the majority would regard these Upper Cretaceous chalks as having been deposited very late in the Flood. That being the case, the coccoliths and foraminiferal shells that are now in the chalk beds would have to have been produced during the Flood itself, not in the 1,600–1,700 years of the pre-Flood era as calculated by Woodmorappe, for surely if there were that many around at the outset of the Flood these chalk beds should have been deposited sooner rather than later during the Flood event. Similarly, Roth’s calculations of the required quantities potentially being produced in up to 1,000 years may well show that the quantities of calcareous oozes on today’s ocean floors are easily producible in the time-span since the Flood, but these calculations are insufficient to show how these chalk beds could be produced during the Flood itself.Nevertheless, both Woodmorappe and Roth recognize that even today coccolith accumulation is not steady-state but highly episodic, for under the right conditions significant increases in the concentrations of these marine microorganisms can occur, as in plankton ‘blooms’ and red tides. For example, there are intense blooms of coccoliths that cause ‘white water’ situations because of the coccolith concentrations, 11 and during bloom periods in the waters near Jamaica microorganism numbers have been reported as increasing from 100,000 per litre to 10 million per litre of ocean water. 18 The reasons for these blooms are poorly understood, but suggestions include turbulence of the sea, wind, 19 decaying fish,20 nutrients from freshwater inflow and upwelling, and temperature.21Without a doubt, all of these stated conditions would have been generated during the catastrophic global upheaval of the Flood, and thus rapid production of carbonate skeletons by foraminifera and coccolithophores would be possible. Thermodynamic considerations would definitely not prevent a much larger biomass such as this being produced, since Schadewald who raised this as a ‘problem’ is clearly wrong. It has been reported that oceanic productivity 5–10 times greater than the present could be supported by the available sunlight, and it is nutrient availability (especially nitrogen) that is the limiting factor.22 Furthermore, present levels of solar ultraviolet radiation inhibit marine planktonic productivity.23Quite clearly, under cataclysmic Flood conditions, including torrential rain, sea turbulence, decaying fish and other organic matter, and the violent volcanic eruptions associated with the ‘fountains of the deep’, explosive blooms on a large and repetitive scale in the oceans are realistically conceivable, so that the production of the necessary quantities of calcareous ooze to produce the chalk beds in the geological record in a short space of time at the close of the Flood is also realistically conceivable. Violent volcanic eruptions would have produced copious quantities of dust and steam, and the possible different mix of gases than in the present atmosphere could have reduced ultraviolet radiation levels. However, in the closing stages of the Flood the clearing and settling of this debris would have allowed increasing levels of sunlight to penetrate to the oceans.Ocean water temperatures would have been higher at the close of the Flood because of the heat released during the cataclysm, for example, from volcanic and magmatic activity, and the latent heat from condensation of water. Such higher temperatures have been verified by evolutionists from their own studies of these rocks and deep-sea sediments,24 and would have also been conducive to these explosive blooms of foraminifera and coccolithophores. Furthermore, the same volcanic activity would have potentially released copious quantities of nutrients into the ocean waters, as well as prodigious amounts of the CO 2 that is so necessary for the production of the calcium carbonate by these microorganisms. Even today the volcanic output of CO 2 has been estimated at about 6.6 million tonnes per year, while calculations based on past eruptions and the most recent volcanic deposits in the rock record suggest as much as a staggering 44 billion tonnes of CO2 have been added to the atmosphere and oceans in the recent past (that is, in the most recent part of the post-Flood era).25 The Final Answer The situation has been known where pollution in coastal areas has contributed to the explosive multiplication of microorganisms in the ocean waters to peak concentrations of more than 10 billion per litre. 26 Woodmorappe has calculated that in chalk there could be as many as 3 x 1013 coccoliths per cubic metre if densely packed (which usually isn’t the case), yet in the known bloom just mentioned, 10 billion microorganisms per litre of ocean water equates to 10 13 microorganisms per cubic metre.Adapting some of Woodmorappe’s calculations, if the 10% of the earth’s surface that now contains chalk beds was covered in water, as it still was near the end of the Flood, and if that water explosively bloomed with coccolithophores and foraminifera with up to 10 13 microorganisms per cubic metre of water down to a depth of less than 500 metres from the surface, then it would have only taken two or three such blooms to produce the required quantity of microorganisms to be fossilised in the chalk beds. Lest it be argued that a concentration of 10 13 microorganisms per cubic metre would extinguish all light within a few metres of the surface, it should be noted that phytoflagellates such as these are able to feed on bacteria, that is, planktonic species are capable of heterotrophism (they are ‘mixotrophic’). 27 Such bacteria would have been in abundance, breaking down the masses of floating and submerged organic debris (dead fish, plants, animals, etc.) generated by the flood. Thus production of coccolithophores and foraminifera is not dependent on sunlight, the supply of organic material potentially supporting a dense concentration.Since, for example, in southern England there are three main chalk beds stacked on top of one another, then this scenario of three successive, explosive, massive blooms coincides with the rock record. Given that the turnover rate for coccoliths is up to two days, 28 then these chalk beds could thus have been produced in as little as six days, totally conceivable within the time framework of the flood. What is certain, is that the right set of conditions necessary for such blooms to occur had to have coincided in full measure to have explosively generated such enormous blooms, but the evidence that it did happen is there for all to plainly see in these chalk beds in the geological record. Indeed, the purity of these thick chalk beds worldwide also testifies to their catastrophic deposition from enormous explosively generated blooms, since during protracted deposition over supposed millions of years it is straining credulity to expect that such purity would be maintained without contaminating events depositing other types of sediments. There are variations in consistency (see Appendix) but not purity. The only additional material in the chalk is fossils of macroscopic organisms such as ammonites and other molluscs, whose fossilisation also requires rapid burial because of their size (see Appendix).No doubt there are factors that need to be better quantified in such a series of calculations, but we are dealing with a cataclysmic Flood, the like of which has not been experienced since for us to study its processes. However, we do have the results of its passing in the rock record to study, and it is clear that by working from what is known to occur today, even if rare and catastrophic by today’s standards, we can realistically calculate production of these chalk beds within the time framework and cataclysmic activity of the Flood, and in so doing respond adequately to the objections and ‘problems’ raised by the critics. Devils Tower can be explained by floodwater runoff by Michael J. Oard Devils Tower, Wyoming, is likely the conduit of an eroded volcano, but there are three other hypotheses for its origin. Regardless, more than 300 m of High Plains sedimentary rock was eroded with the Tower hardly touched. The uniformitarian story, as formerly stated on a road sign north of the Tower, is that erosion of the High Plains sedimentary rocks took more than 40 Ma. That sign has been replaced, and it now says it took only 1 to 2 Ma. However, the erosion of such a vertical tower should be rapid and complete well within 100,000 years. Although the Tower is actively eroding today, it has not decreased much in size, implying a very recent exposure. Such a deduction is consistent with the sheet flow erosion during the runoff of the floodwater: a contention contrary to the uniformitarian paradigm. Figure 1. Devils Tower in northeast Wyoming, United States. Note the vertical fractures, called joints, that should result in rapid erosion from the freeze-thaw mechanism. Devils Tower in the Powder River basin of northeast Wyoming, United States, is one of the most impressive erosional remnants on Earth (figure 1). It stands 390 m high above the Belle Fouche River, reaching an altitude of 1,560 m above sea level. It is about 275 m above the general altitude of the plains. Because of its scenic beauty and scientific interest, President Theodore Roosevelt established Devils Tower and a small area surrounding it as the first national monument in 1906.The vertical, round tower is 300 m in diameter at its base and is composed of phonolite porphyry, a hard igneous intrusive rock. The same rock also intrudes elsewhere through sedimentary rocks in the region.1 For instance, just west of Devils Tower are the Missouri Buttes with the same kind of rock. Figure 2. The ‘feathers’ of eastern Washington, United States, composed of a single row of large columns from the Columbia River Basalt. The features were exposed by erosion on either side by the Lake Missoula flood. When the igneous rock of Devils Tower cooled and contracted, vertical columns with regular cracks were formed similar to those in the large basalt flows cooled in the extensive Columbia River Basalt flows in Washington, northern Oregon, and adjacent Idaho (figure 2). A Kiowa Native American legend suggests the vertical columns were caused by a great bear raking the sides in trying to get to some children at the top of the Tower. The phonolite porphyry is believed to be 33 to 55 Ma (million years) old and therefore erupted in the early to middle Cenozoic of the uniformitarian timescale.1 The origin of Devils Tower The circular shape of the Tower and the vertical columns has led most geologists to believe that Devils Tower is the conduit or “throat” that was once below a volcano.2,3 If so, it had to erupt through sedimentary rocks that were near or above the top of the tower. Thus, over 300 m of sedimentary rocks have been eroded from around the Tower, and by inference, from this entire region of northeast Wyoming. This much erosion is reinforced by reference to the Pumpkin Buttes, a sedimentary erosional remnant, farther south in the middle of the Powder River basin.4 Figure 3. A road sign that used to be at Devils Tower National Monument showing the uniformitarian interpretation of slow erosion over millions of years. According to uniformitarianism, just the top 25% of the Tower was exposed 40 Ma ago. Erosion since then has lowered the hard sandstone and soft shales of the High Plains about 185 m, while the Tower remained almost untouched.However, there are two other hypotheses for the origin of Devils Tower. A second hypothesis is that the Tower represents an igneous intrusion, called a stock, that solidified deep underground. A third hypothesispostulates that Devils Tower is an eroded laccolith, which is a mushroom-shaped, igneous intrusion. A fourth idea, shown on the new road sign (see figure 4) states that Devils Tower is a remnant of a sill, which is lava squirted and solidified between two layers of sedimentary rocks.However, the erosion of a stock or laccolith is unlikely to produce such a circular feature as Devils Tower, and the suggestion that erosion of a sill would result in such a circular tower is forced. The first hypothesis, that of a volcanic neck, is the most reasonable explanation. Figure 4. A new road sign which says that Devils Tower became exposed in only 1 to 2 Ma. Regardless of which hypothesis is correct, the important point is that Devils Tower was once completelycovered by sedimentary rocks, and this rock was eroded to expose Devils Tower. A sign in the visitor’s center even states that the sedimentary rock was once 2.4 km thick and eroded over 50 Ma, which means that the sedimentary rock is believed to have been six times the height of Devils Tower. I do not think there is any evidence for this uniformitarian belief, but we do know that the sedimentary rocks had to be thicker by 300 m to cover the Tower. The changing story of high plains erosion A previous road sign north of Devils Tower National Monument described the length of time for the exposure of Devils Tower (figure 3). Geologists believed that the top 25% was exposed 40 Ma ago. So, the remainder of the sedimentary rock took 40 Ma to erode to the present landscape. But, this requires Devil Tower to remain with little change in its diameter or height for 40 Ma! How could both hard sandstone and soft shale from the High Plains be eroded without any significant erosion of the Tower itself? Furthermore, the plains sediments are not found in some huge flood plain to the east or southeast (downslope). The sediments have been swept clean from the continent. Figure 5. Steamboat Rock, a 275 m high erosional remnant of basalt lava in the Upper Grand Coulee, Washington. The lava around Steamboat Rock was eroded in a few days by the lake Missoula flood. Figure 6. Schematic of Devils Tower erosion with realistic erosion rates over millions of years. However, this story of slow erosion with the Tower hardly eroded in 40 Ma must have seemed outrageous even to uniformitarian scientists. In fact, the sign has been replaced (figure 4). Admitting that the origin of the prominent rock obelisk remains “somewhat obscure”, the sign goes on to state how the Tower has become exposed in only the past 1 to 2 Ma! So, instead of the extremely slow erosion of the Plains sandstone and shale, 300 m of erosion has occurred within 2 Ma. This is a rather radical change of ideas on the High Plains erosion rate. Whereas the previous estimate was much too slow, compared to today’s erosion rate, the new estimate now seems too fast, especially in view of the fact that the Tower has changed its diameter little in all that time. Why should Devils Tower remain standing for millions of years? The measurement of river sediment output into the oceans5 indicates that all of North America would have been eroded flat to sea level in just 10 Ma. However, this does ignore a range of geotectonic factors. Regardless, a maximum erosion time to level North America is probably no more than 40 to 50 Ma.The survival of Devils Tower is especially puzzling because vertical rock faces are more erosive, being affected by gravity with rock slides and falls. Furthermore, the extensive vertical cracks of the tower would be prone to destruction by freezethaw weathering. Cracks fill with water during storms, and as the water freezes during the cold months, the cracks enlarge. One would expect blocks of rock to frequently break free and fall to the base of the tower each winter. And indeed that is what is observed: Figure 7. Schematic of Flood runoff erosion of the sedimentary rocks around Devils Tower, leaving the Tower as an erosional remnant after the Flood. “While living near the base of the Tower in November 1954, during periods of frost action at nights one could hear blocks crash onto the talus. This would happen typically after a snowfall … On a warm sunny day the snow would melt and the moisture would enter the joints [vertical cracks] in the Tower. After dark, the water would freeze and expand, which over time continues to force blocks from the Tower and build more talus.” 6Devils Tower should have been destroyed quickly, surely in less than 100,000 years.But, most perplexing (to uniformitarian geologists) is that the Tower appears to be close to the same size today as when it was first exposed:“There is no evidence to support the idea that these masses of igneous rock were appreciably larger than they are at present, or at least larger than the present area covered by their talus aprons.”7Furthermore, the amount of talus around Devils Tower is modest, 8 reinforcing the deduction that erosion was both fast and recent. Flood explanation It seems that the only way to explain Devils Tower is to allow for the rapid erosion of the High Plains sedimentary rocks by a wide sheet of flowing water, leaving behind an erosional remnant of the lava conduit. This is consistent with sheet flow erosion as the floodwater was draining off the continent. 9,10 The Tower remained tall after the Flood probably because the rock from the Tower was more resistant and/or the current erosion rates were reduced in the area.Floods typically leave behind erosional remnants. For instance, the Lake Missoula flood in the upper Grand Coulee eroded through 275 m of basalt lava in a matter of days. In the middle of the Upper Grand Coulee lies a 275 m erosional remnant left after the flood,11 called Steamboat Rock (figure 5).Figure 6 is a schematic of what should happen to Devils Tower if High Plains erosion occurred over millions of years in the uniformitarian paradigm, based on what we know of present erosion rates. In contrast, figure 7 is a schematic of erosion expected during Flood runoff, leaving behind a tall, little eroded, vertical tower that has not decreased in size much since it was exposed. Clearly, the Flood paradigm better fits the evidence. The Yellowstone petrified forests Evidence of catastrophe by Jonathan Sarfati Diagram used with permission from The Young Earth by John D. Morris. Schematic diagram of the layers of petrified trees at Yellowstone. Yellowstone National Park, the oldest national park in the United States, spans parts of three states: Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It is famous for its geothermal activity, including 10,000 hot springs and 200 geysers, including ‘Old Faithful.’ There are also mountains, including one of black obsidian (volcanic glass), cooled and hardened basalt lava flows, deep valleys and canyons, rivers, lakes, forests, petrified wood (wood turned into rock), and wildlife. Petrified forests? In some places in Yellowstone Park, erosion of a hillside reveals layers of upright petrified trees. At Specimen Ridge, there are said to be 27 layers, while Specimen Creek contains about 50. This means that the Specimen Creek formation is especially huge—its total vertical height is 1,000 meters (3,400 feet). This raises the question: how did the petrified tree layers form? The evolutionist explanation Evolutionists and other long-agers usually teach the following scenario: Each layer is the remains of a forest. Each forest was buried where it grew by volcanic ash and other debris. Dissolved minerals were soaked up by the trees, petrifying them. After about 200 years, the ash weathered into clay, then into soil. A new forest grew on top of where the previous one had stood. From the well-preserved tree rings, the oldest tree in each layer was about 500 years old on average. The new forest was buried by volcanic ash, and the process repeated. The entire stack of layers was eroded, such that their edges are now exposed in a cliff (see diagram on p. 21 of the magazine).If this scenario were true, it would have taken nearly 40,000 years to form the entire series at Specimen Creek. However, since this scenario is based on the unobservable past, it is not part of normal (operational) science, as this deals with repeatable observations in the present. But as we will see, there are certain features of Specimen Ridge that make no sense under this explanation.1 Some of the views of the upright tree trunks in the Yellowstone petrified ‘forest’. Problems with the long-age scenario The arrows indicate some of the visible stumps on this hillside at Specimen Creek. Although they look as if they grew in these positions, the evidence indicates otherwise.Growing trees have extensive root systems, usually 20–30% of the total dry mass of the tree. But the Yellowstone petrified trees have their large roots broken off, leaving ‘root balls.’ This happens when trees are forcefully pushed out of the ground, e.g. by a bulldozer.A forest buried in place would be expected to have many petrified branches and much petrified bark. But the Yellowstone petrified tree trunks, mostly 3–4 meters (10–12 feet) tall, have very little bark and very few branches. Something has stripped most of the bark and broken off most limbs, leaving only knots in the trunks.Some of the trees extend into the ‘forest’ layer above. But if the next layer had to wait hundreds of years for the ash covering to weather into soil (so the ‘next’ forest could grow), then the exposed tree top would have completely decayed. But if the trees were all laid down quickly, this observation should not be surprising.When trees fall in forests, especially with a flat floor, they have an equal chance of lying in any direction. But in the petrified ‘forests,’ the prostrate (lying down) trees tend to align in the same direction. Also, even the upright trunks are turned so their long axis is aligned the same way. This is consistent with a common force, e.g. moving water or mud, having acted on both after they were uprooted. If the layers had been buried by volcanic eruptions thousands of years apart, the mineral content of each would probably have been quite different. But the mineral content remains the same throughout over a kilometer of vertical height. This suggests one or few volcanic episodes, with many pulses within each episode, all within a fairly short time frame.Growing forests have definite soil and humus layers, with lots of rootlets as well as a thriving animal population. However, the petrified ‘forests’ lack all these.Studies of the Yellowstone plants, including pollen analysis, show that there are many more plant species than would be expected in a forest. And often the pollen doesn’t match the nearby trees. However, this would be explainable if the trees had been uprooted and transported from several places.In a real forest, plant debris forms an organic layer on the forest floor. The deeper the material, the older it is, so the more time it has had to decay. But the petrified forests lack this pattern of greater decay with depth. There are also finely preserved leaves—since leaves do not retain their shape for very long after they fall off the tree, these leaves were probably buried very quickly.Volcanic minerals such as feldspars quickly weather into clay when exposed to water and air. But the petrified ‘forest’ layers lack clay. This suggests that none of the layers were exposed for very long.The patterns of particle sizes in rock layers often indicate how they formed. Consider a bag of mixed nuts—often they will be randomly mixed. Or, if they are shaken, the large brazil nuts end up on top as the smaller nuts fall down through the gaps. But many rock layers which have been laid under water show patterns different to these. The large grains have sunk to the bottom, and been covered by smaller grains—a pattern called graded bedding. Also, if the water is moving horizontally, alternating layers of coarse and fine grains form.2,3,4,5 The Yellowstone ‘forests’ are associated with rocks which contain these laminations, consistent with being formed under water. Some beds of coarse material have tongues of ash penetrating them. Also, such flat beds would seem to require a lot of water so the material can flow over such large distances. Some volcanic rocks in New Zealand that are generally accepted to have been deposited under water look very similar to the Yellowstone rocks.1Under normal circumstances, a tree adds a growth ring every year. The thicker the ring, the faster the tree grew in that time, and this depends on the weather, among other factors. So trees growing at the same time and roughly in the same area should show matching patterns of thick and thin rings. On the other hand, trees growing hundreds of years apart would show different patterns. Because he believed the young age framework, geologist Dr John Morris predicted in 1975 that trees in different layers of the Yellowstone formations would have matching patterns, rather than completely different ones.6Years later, Dr Michael Arct analyzed cross-sections of 14 trees in different levels spanning seven meters (23 feet). He found that they all shared the same distinctive signature, and that four of them had died only seven, four, three and two years before the other ten. These ten had apparently perished together, and the evidence was consistent with them all having been uprooted and transported by successive mud flows.7 New explanation needed As shown above, the slow ‘one after the other’ explanation for the Yellowstone petrified trees is incompatible with the evidence. Starting from a creation framework, we should expect that the ‘forests’ were buried recently, and probably by a catastrophe. One of Yellostone’s premiere tourist attractions, a geyser nicknamed ‘Old Faithful’. A recent catastrophe has given us some insight into what might have produced the Yellowstone petrified ‘forests.’ On 18 May, 1980, Mt St Helens in Washington State erupted with the energy of 20,000 Hiroshima bombs. Although tiny by the standards of most eruptions, this eruption flattened millions of trees in 625 square kilometers (240 square miles) of forest. The eruption also melted snowfields and glaciers, and caused heavy rainfall. This resulted in a mudflow that picked up the fallen logs (some of which traveled upright), so that both forks of the Toutle River were log-jammed. An earthquake, Richter magnitude 5.1, caused a landslide that dumped half a cubic kilometer (one-eighth of a cubic mile) of debris into the nearby Spirit Lake. This caused waves up to 260 meters (860 feet) high, which gathered a million logs into the lake, forming a floating log mat (see photo on p. 21 of the magazine). Most of them lacked branches, bark and an extensive root system.Since roots are designed to absorb water, the remains of the roots on the floating logs soaked up water from the lake. This caused the root end to sink, and the log tipped up to float in an upright position (see photo on p. 21 of the magazine). When a log soaked up even more water, it sank and landed on the lake bottom. Debris from the floating log mat and a continuing influx of sediment from the land (in the aftermath of the catastrophe) buried the logs, still in an upright position. Trees that sank later would be buried higher up, that is on a higher level, although they grew at the same time. This was confirmed by sonar and scuba research by a team led by Drs Steve Austin and Harold Coffin. 8,9 By 1985, there were about 15,000 upright logs on the bottom. Later, the lake was partly drained, exposing some of the bottom, revealing upright logs stuck in the mud (see photo on p. 21 of the magazine). There is ample evidence that petrifaction need not take very long. Hot water rich in dissolved minerals like silica, as found in some springs at Yellowstone, has petrified a block of wood in only a year.10Imagine if the logs on the bottom of Spirit Lake were found thousands of years later. Evolutionists would probably interpret them as multiple forests buried in place, rather than trees living at the same time that were uprooted, transported, and then sunk at different times. Why does it matter? One historian of science, Ronald Numbers, placed his faith in fallible human theories about the past, and used this as an excuse to apostatize (fall away from his professed faith). As he said in his book on the history of creationism, 11 a supposedly objective study:12‘I vividly remember the evening I attended an illustrated lecture on the famous sequence of fossil forests in Yellowstone National Park and then stayed up most of the night … agonizing over, then accepting, the disturbing likelihood that the earth was at least thirty thousand years old. Having thus decided to follow science rather than the subject of origins, I quickly, though not painlessly, slid down the proverbial slippery slope toward unbelief.’ 13Of course, he was not following ‘science,’ in the sense of repeatable observations in the present; that is, the type of science that sent men to the moon. More importantly, he presumed that he knew all the facts, which he obviously did not. We should remember the lesson of ‘Piltdown man.’ Before the hoax was discovered in 1953, this convinced many that evolution was true. Those convinced included the eminent English Christian surgeon Arthur Rendle Short, who unlike Ronald Numbers never apostatized. Uluru and Kata Tjuta: Testimony to the Flood by Andrew Snelling No visit to Central Australia is complete without seeing two of Australia’s most famous landmarks—Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas). These geological formations are stunning in their beauty, and awesome in their abrupt contrast to the surrounding flat, barren plains. Uluru Uluru rises steeply on all sides to a height of about 340 metres (1,114 feet) above the desert plain, its summit 867 metres (2,845 feet) above sea level. An isolated rock-mass, it measures nine kilometres (5.6 miles) around its base. Uluru may look like a giant boulder sitting in the desert sand, but it is not (Figure 2, below). Instead, it is like the ‘tip of the iceberg’, an enormous outcrop with even more of the same rock under the ground and beneath the surrounding desert sand.Uluru consists of many layers or beds of the same rock tilted and standing almost up on end (dipping at 80–85°). The cumulative thickness of these exposed beds is at least 2.5 kilometres (1.6 miles), but the additional layers under the surrounding desert sand bring the overall thickness to almost six kilometres (3.75 miles).Uluru consists of a type of coarse sandstone known technically as arkose, because a major component is grains and crystal fragments of the mineral feldspar. This pink mineral, along with the rusty coatings on the sand grains in the rock surface generally, gives Uluru its overall reddish colour. Closer inspection of this arkose reveals that the mineral grains are fresh in appearance, particularly the shiny faces of feldspar crystals, some quite large. The rock fabric consists of large, medium, small, and very small grains randomly mixed together, a condition geologists describe as ‘poorly sorted’ (see photomicrograph). Furthermore, the grains themselves are often jagged around their edges, not smooth or rounded. Kata Tjuta Kata Tjuta, about 30 kilometres (18 miles) west of Uluru, consists of a series of huge, rounded rocky domes (Figure 3, below). The highest, Mt Olga, reaches 1069 metres (3,507 feet) above sea level and about 600 metres (1,970 feet) above the desert floor. Separated by narrow gorges, these spectacular domed rock-masses cover an area of about eight kilometres (five miles) by five kilometres (three miles). The rock layers here only dip at angles of 10–18° to the southwest, but are enormous. Their total thickness is six kilometres (3.75 miles), and they extend under the desert sands to other outcrops for over 15 kilometres (9.5 miles) to the north-east and for more than 40 kilometres (25 miles) to the north-west. These rock layers making up Kata Tjuta are collectively called the Mount Currie Conglomerate, named after the outcrop at Mount Currie, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) north-west of Kata Tjuta. A conglomerate is a poorly sorted sedimentary rock containing pebbles, cobbles, and boulders of other rocks held together by a matrix of finer fragments and cemented sand, silt, and/or mud. In this one, the boulders (up to 1.5 metres or five feet across), cobbles, and pebbles are generally rounded and consist mainly of granite and basalt, but some sandstone, rhyolite (a volcanic rock), and several kinds of metamorphic rocks are also present. The matrix is mostly dark greyish-green material that was once fine silt and mud, though lenses and beds of lighter coloured sandstone also occur.The Uluru Arkose and the Mount Currie Conglomerate appear to be related by a common history. Though their outcrops are isolated from one another, the evidence clearly suggests that both rock units Figure 2. Cross-section through Uluru showing the tilted layers of arkose continuing under the surrounding desert sand. Figure 3. Cross-section through Kata Tjuta showing the slightly tilted layers of Mount Currie Conglomerate. were formed at the same time and in the same way. The evolutionary ‘history’ Most geologists believe that between about 900 and 600 million years ago, much of Central Australia lay at or below sealevel, forming a depression, an arm of the sea, known as the Amadeus Basin. Rivers carried mud, sand, and gravel into the depression, building up layers of sediment. Other types of sedimentary rocks also formed. Then, they say, about 550 million years ago, in the so-called Cambrian Period, the south-western margin of the Amadeus Basin was raised above sea-level, the rocks were squeezed, crumpled and buckled into folds, and fractured along faults in a mountain-building episode.During the later stages of this episode, ‘rapid’ erosion carved out the Petermann and Musgrave Ranges. The Uluru Arkose and Mount Currie Conglomerate are the products of this erosion, being deposited in separate so-called alluvial fans (Figure 4A). Though uniformitarian (slow-and-gradual) geologists believe the arkose and conglomerate were deposited ‘relatively rapidly’, they still allow up to 50 million years for the occasional flash floods to have scoured the mountain ranges south and west of the Uluru area and carried the rubble many tens of kilometres out on to the adjoining alluvial flats. Thus in two separate deposits, layer upon layer of arkose and conglomerate accumulated respectively.By about 500 million years ago, it is claimed, the region was again covered by a shallow sea and the alluvial fans of Uluru Arkose and Mount Currie Conglomerate were gradually buried beneath layers of sand, silt, mud and limestone (Figure 4B). Then about 400 million years ago a new period of folding, faulting and uplift began and supposedly continued for around 100 million years. The layers of Uluru Arkose and Mount Currie Conglomerate, which had been buried by hundreds or even thousands of metres of younger Amadeus Basin sediments, were strongly folded and faulted (Figure 4C). The originally horizontal Uluru Arkose layers were rotated into a nearly vertical position, while the Mount Currie Conglomerate at Kata Tjuta was only tilted 10–18°. It is thus believed that the Uluru-Kata Tjuta area has probably remained above sea-level since that time—for some 300 million years. Initially the land surface would have been much higher than the top of Uluru and Kata Tjuta, but as erosion continued, today’s shapes of Uluru and Kata Tjuta were gradually carved out (Figure 4D). By 70 million years ago the area was covered in forests indicating a very wet, tropical environment. Today’s arid climate and desert sands have only developed since the very recent ‘ice age’, a few thousand years ago. No!—A recent catastrophic flood origin Figure 4. The likely geological history or sequence of events leading to the formation of Kata Tjuta and Uluru (irrespective of any evolutionary assumptions). A. The 'alluvial fans' of Mount Currie Conglomerate (left —red) and Uluru Arkose (right—yellow) deposited on a basement of folded and eroded earlier sediments (orange) and granites (grey-green). B. The Mount Currie Conglomerate and Uluru Arkose are buried by other sediments (blue). C. The sediment layers are folded, faulted, tilted and then eroded. D. Further erosion lowers the ground surface still more and carves out Kata Tjuta and Uluru as they are today.Now that all sounds like an interesting story, but in fact, the evidence in these rock layers doesn’t agree with it! At Uluru particularly, the ubiquitous fresh feldspar crystals in the arkose would never have survived the claimed millions of years. Feldspar breaks down when exposed to the sun’s heat, water, and air (e.g., in a humid tropical climate), and relatively quickly forms clays. If the arkose was deposited as sheets of sand only centimetres (an inch or two) thick spread over many tens of square kilometres to dry in the sun’s heat over countless thousands of years, then the feldspar crystals would have decomposed to clays. Likewise, if the arkose had been exposed to the destructive forces of erosion and tropical deep chemical weathering even for just a few million years, as is claimed, then the feldspar crystals would have long ago decomposed to clays. Either way, the sandstone fabric would have become weakened and then collapsed, as the clays and remaining unbound mineral grains would have easily disintegrated and been entirely washed away, leaving no Uluru at all!Furthermore, sand grains which are moved over long distances and periodically swept further and further over vast eons of time would lose their jagged edges, becoming smooth and rounded. At the same time, the same sand grains being acted upon by the moving water over those claimed long periods of time should also be sorted; the smaller grains are carried more easily by water, so would be separated from the larger grains. Thus if the Uluru Arkose had taken millions of years to accumulate as evolutionary geologists claim, then the rock today should have layers of either small or large grains. So fresh, shiny feldspar crystals and jagged, unsorted grains today all indicate that the Uluru Arkose accumulated so rapidly the feldspar did not have enough time to decompose, nor the grains to be rounded and sorted.What of the Mount Currie Conglomerate? Even geologists who believe in slow-and-gradual sedimentation over millions of years have to admit that the waters which carried such large boulders (some over 1.5 metres or five feet across) had to be a swiftly-flowing, raging torrent.Such catastrophic conditions would also need to be widespread in order to erode such a variety of rock types from the large mountainous source region, and to produce the resultant mixture of particle sizes—from mud (pulverized rock) and silt to pebbles, cobbles, and boulders which, because of their size, were also rounded and smoothed by the violence of their rapid transport over tens of kilometres.All this evidence is far more consistent with recent catastrophic deposition of the arkose and conglomerate under raging flood conditions. In the exposures at Uluru and Kata Tjuta respectively, the rock compositions and fabrics are uniformly similar throughout (2.5 kilometres or 1.6 miles thick in the case of Uluru) and the layering extremely regular and parallel. If deposition had been episodic over millions of years, there ought to be evidence of erosion (e.g., channels) and weathering surfaces between layers, while some compositional and fabric variations would be expected. Staggering The implications are absolutely staggering. One only has to consider the amount and force of water needed to dump some 6,000 metres (almost 20,000 feet) thickness of sand, and a similar thickness of pebbles, cobbles, boulders, etc., probably in a matter of hours, after having transported these sediments many tens of kilometres, to realise that such an event had to be a catastrophic flood. And this traumatic event had to be recent, otherwise the feldspar crystals in the arkose would not be as fresh (unweathered) as they are today.The Uluru Arkose as seen under a geological microscope. Note the mixtures of grain sizes and the jagged edges of the grains.Since the layers of arkose and conglomerate are now tilted, the arkose almost vertically, it is also obvious that after being deposited these sediment layers were compressed and began to be cemented (hardened) while still water-saturated, and then pushed up by earth movements. Those experts in landscape-forming processes, who have intensively studied Uluru, Kata Tjuta, and other Central Australian landforms, are convinced that these shapes were carved out by water erosion in a hot, humid tropical climate, and not by wind erosion as in today’s dry desert climate.This is easily explained if the modern landforms of Uluru and Kata Tjuta developed as the same catastrophic flood waters, which dumped the arkose and conglomerate in the vast depression they occupied, began to retreat away from the emerging land surface of rising, tilted layers, eroding the still relatively soft sediments to leave behind the shapes of Uluru and Kata Tjuta. Following the retreat of those flood waters from the Australian continent, the landscape began to dry out. The chemicals in the water still trapped between grains of sand, pebbles, boulders, etc. continued to form a binding and hardening material similar to cement in concrete. Conclusion The evidence overall does not fit the story of evolutionary geologists, with its millions of years of slow-and-gradual processes. Instead, the evidence in the rock layers at Uluru and Kata Tjuta is much more consistent with the scientific model based on a recent, rapid, massive, catastrophic flood. Uluru and Kata Tjuta are therefore stark testimony to the raging waters of the global Flood. Many arches and natural bridges likely from the Flood by Michael J. Oard Freestanding rock arches and large natural bridges are observed to collapse today, such as Wall Arch in Arches National Park in early August 2008. The formation of large arches and natural bridges from slow weathering and erosion would take tens of thousand of years. However, the uniformitarian hypotheses for their origin are not observed. A rapid process of erosion in the past consistent with the Retreating Stage of the Flood is more likely. Figure 1. Location of Wall Arch after collapse. One of the most photographed free standing arches in Arches National Park, Wall Arch, in southeast Utah, USA, collapsed sometime late Monday or early Tuesday of August 4th and 5th , 2008 (figure 1). No one reported seeing it collapse. The arch is located along the popular Devils Garden Trail and was more than 10 m (33 ft) tall and spanned 22 m (71 ft) across before collapse (figure 2). It was the 12th largest arch of the estimated 2,000 arches in Arches National Park. The collapse of such arches provides evidence that long free standing arches and many tall natural bridges likely formed rapidly during the Flood. Rock arches Arches come in all sizes. They range from Landscape Arch in Arches National Park, the longest in the world, with a span of 88 m (290 ft) to small holes. The large ones are high enough to contain the Capitol building in Washington D.C. The small holes are called windows in Bryce Canyon National Park (figure 3). Such windows could form rapidly by weathering of the soft strata. Figure 2. Wall Arch before the collapse. Most free standing rock arches are believed to have formed without stream erosion. Although an arch is similar to a natural bridge, it differs from a natural bridge because it does not span a valley formed by erosion. Rock arches can be on ridges or the sides of a ridge. Rock arches are believed to form slowly over long periods of time by physical and chemical weathering. Four steps are proposed: (1) uplift that causes deep vertical, parallel fractures to form; (2) weathering and erosion that enlarge fractures resulting in narrow walls or ‘fins’; (3) continuing erosion with some fins breached from below; and (4) continued weathering that enlarges the holes and eventually causes the arch to collapse.1It is assumed that it takes a long time to form an arch. Geologists estimate that it would have taken 70,000 years of water, frost and wind operating in a dry climate to form the isolated Delicate Arch in Arches National Park (figure 4). 1 Nearly all the arches in southeast Utah formed in only two specific sandstone formations in the area.2 Natural bridges Figure 3. Windows in a ‘fin’, Bryce Canyon National Park from near Mossy Cave Trail. Natural bridges were formed by running water and come in many sizes. Some of the largest and most impressive natural bridges in the world are located in southeast Utah. Natural Bridges National Monument boasts three of the ten largest natural bridges in the world and they are associated with White and Armstrong Canyons. Their names have changed with the political wind. Sipapu Natural Bridge is 67 m (220 ft) high and 82 m (268 ft) wide (figure 5). It is second in size only to Rainbow Bridge, located on Lake Powell in northern Arizona.3One of the most famous is Natural Bridge, Virginia, about two miles east of Interstate 81 (figure 6). The opening under this natural bridge is about 60 m (200 ft) above Cedar Creek that flows underneath. 4 U.S. Highway 11 crosses the top of this natural bridge.Cleland5 classified many types of natural bridges on their presumed origin mechanism. One of the most common proposed mechanisms is the undercutting of the neck of a meander bend. Those in Natural Bridges National Monument likely formed this way. Another common mechanism is the undercutting of a weak layer beneath a resistant layer in a small eroding valley.6 Sometimes the resistant ‘layer’ can be a petrified log. A third common type of natural bridge is formed by the solution and mechanical erosion of limestone. A natural bridge on the Boulder River, south of Big Timber, Montana, was formed by limestone dissolution.7 Assumed uniformitarian origin not observed Figure 4. Delicate Arch, Arches National Park. Uniformitarian geologists estimate that this arch took 70,000 years to form but rapid erosion by retreating floodwaters during the Flood would have carved the arch quickly. The origin of free standing arches (as opposed to windows) and the larger natural bridges is mysterious. The explanations in the literature assume slow processes of erosion over tens of thousands of years, according to the principle of uniformitarianism. The problem with that much time is that the bridge or arch should have weathered and collapsed long before the material around it was able to erode and leave behind an arch or natural bridge. Crickmay noted that natural bridges seem to defy uniformitarianism: ‘What is remarkable about its [natural bridge] history is that, in all the time required for the stream currents to corrade downward and laterally through a vertical depth of from 10 to 12 or 60 m in resistant rock, the progress made by ‘denudation’ toward destroying the fragile-looking bridge appears to have been virtually nil—a discrepancy in rates of action that may exceed 100,000 to 1 [emphasis added].’8 Since natural bridges have streams or stream channels below them and arches do not, Crickmay’s observation applies even more so to rock arches. Such a discrepancy in erosion makes little sense and implies rapid formation of most free standing rock arches and large natural bridges.Some geologists suggest that the erosion of a less resistant rock underneath a more resistant rock causes the arches, but such a mechanism can account for few arches, at best. 9 Other hypothesized mechanisms are no more likely. Cruikshank and Aydin10 summarized: Figure 5. Sipapu Natural Bridge, Natural Bridge National Monument, southeast Utah, USA. ‘There is no need to invoke reasons such as weak cement, unloading, or exfoliation to explain the presence of arches, especially when these processes act on similar rocks in nearby regions without producing the same abundance of arches.’Cruikshank and Aydin9 hypothesized that the majority of arches are caused by ‘local enhancement of erosion by fracture concentration’, which they have identified in many arches. Why was such an ‘obvious mechanism’ somehow missed by previous investigators? However, no one has seen an arch form by this mechanism.Thus, long free-standing arches do not seem to be forming today in Arches National Park; in other words stage three and early four are not observed. And, like Wall Arch, we do observe late stage 4, their collapse. A portion of Landscape Arch in Arches National Park collapsed in the 1940s. Since 1991, three large slabs of sandstone measuring 9, 14 and 21 m long have been witnessed collapsing from the thinnest section of Landscape Arch. The longest arch in the world will likely be gone soon! The natural bridge across the Boulder River in Montana collapsed in 1989. In 1991, an arch off Point Campbell, western Victoria, Australia, collapsed.11Since we observe the destruction of large freestanding arches and natural bridges, but not their formation, the origin of these features occurred in the past by processes not observed today, like so many aspects of geomorphology.12 In other words, large freestanding arches and natural bridges are relic and likely formed by some mechanism in the past that caused quick erosion to specific locations. The Flood provides a likely mechanism for many of them. A late-Flood mechanism Figure 6. Natural Bridge, Virginia, USA. In the Flood paradigm, most of the small natural bridges and arches could have formed afterthe Flood by erosion. Since some of the small bridges are located in glaciated areas,5,7 and since these natural bridges could not survive glaciation, they must have formed after the Ice Age. Furthermore, the suggested mechanisms for their formation are reasonable expectations of post-Flood weathering and erosion.However, the large natural bridges and practically all the free standing arches require too much time to form in this manner during the post-Flood period. Erosion by normal weathering processes during the formation of large natural bridges and arches should have destroyed these features long before eroding down to their present levels. Large natural bridges and arches imply more rapid erosion—the type of erosion that would have occurred during the Retreating Stage of the Flood.12,13 Arches would have formed during either the Sheet-flow or Channelized-flow Phase of the Retreating Stage, while natural bridges probably formed during the Channelized Phase.Williams4 attributed Natural Bridge, Virginia, to erosion during Flood runoff. Since the natural bridge is located in karst country with abundant caves, he concluded that this unusual feature represents a remnant of a collapsed cave with the debris from the collapse completely washed out of the area. Natural Tunnel in extreme southwest Virginia also provides evidence for Flood excavation in karst land, but in this case a larger section of the tunnel roof remained in place.14The timing of arch and natural-bridge formation in the specialized conditions of the late-Flood period is especially compelling when we remember that large natural bridges and arches are not forming today. Arches are simply assumed to form by more rapid weathering at the base of a fin. 15 However, such differential erosion and arch formation is speculation: ‘Arch formation cannot be due solely to weathering and erosion, however, because these processes are not restricted to the sites of arches in rock fins. There must be some factor that locally enhances the effects of erosion within a rather small part of a rock fin to produce an arch. How erosion is localized within a rock fin to form an arch is enigmatic.’16 Rivers and streams can be eliminated as potential agents of local arch formation, by definition of a rock arch. The arches in Arches National Park are preserved on an anticline—a ridge pushed up by a rising salt dome. 17Although the specialized conditions that might have formed arches and natural bridges were present in the late-Flood period, the process has not been observed and we must rely on inference. Rapid downcutting by floodwater during late Flood erosion, either over a high area or during the formation of an incised valley, could have undercut less resistant rock, breaking through underneath a more resistant layer. Or, possibly mechanical erosion from the floodwater was concentrated lower down on the rock surface, eventually cutting a hole. The bridges in Natural Bridges National Monument could have formed at the very end of the Flood when the last vestiges of the Flood were extremely channelized. The formation of Natural Bridge and Natural Tunnel, Virginia, by the rapid erosion of caves in limestone 18-21 followed by Flood erosion of the roof seems like a viable hypothesis. It could be that some of the uniformitarian suggestions, such as a different lithology, weaker cementing of the sand, and local fracture concentration, in combination with catastrophic flow during Flood runoff, caused the arches of Arches National Park and elsewhere. Three Sisters: evidence for Global Flood Getting to know the three sisters reveals more than just natural beauty by Tas Walker Each year, millions of tourists visit Katoomba, a city one hour’s drive west of Sydney, Australia’s biggest city. There they enjoy the spectacular Three Sisters. These ‘ladies’ are not a group of performers, but a huge rock outcrop. Set in a World Heritage Area of the Blue Mountains, the Sisters are now something of an Australian icon.Near the lookout at Echo Point, the Sisters watch over an impressive valley. On a clear day, Kings Tableland looms in the distance (see panorama, left). Throughout the day, the vista alters as the changing sunlight transforms the magnificent colours of the Three Sisters. At night, their floodlit shape looks stunning against the blackness of the night sky.Most visitors don’t realize they are looking at compelling evidence for the global Flood . Figure 1: Many geologists consider the Sydney Basin (pink) is connected to large, long sedimentary basins (lighter pink) to the north. This sedimentary network is over 2,000 km (1,200 miles) long and contains rich deposits of coal and gas, the products of buried vegetation. Overlaying sediments have been omitted from the figure. The sandstone, of which the Sisters are made, points to huge watery deposition. The valleys and gorges, shaped when the Sisters were carved, are evidence of immense watery erosion. The global Flood explains this deposition and erosion. Let’s look a bit closer.It’s not difficult to appreciate that the sandstone covers an immense area. From the lookout, we can see that the same rocks form steep cliffs all around the gorge. Before the magnificent valley was eroded, the sandstone strata covered a large area. Vast size But the strata extend much further than we can see from the lookout. From Katoomba they reach 160 km (100 miles) south, 160 km north, and 160 km to the east—an immense rectangular deposit of sediment (see Figure 1).1 Geologists call it the Sydney Basin, the resting place for massive volumes of sediment eroded from the Lachlan Fold Belt to the west, and the New England Fold Belt to the east.Many geologists consider the Sydney Basin is the southern end of a 250-km (160-mile) wide system extending 2,000 km (1,200 miles) north (Figure 2).2 The immense size of the deposit is evidence for catastrophe—but there’s more. Deposited catastrophically We see that the sand in the Three Sisters is deposited in layers. The road cuttings in the area give a better view, or we can examine the overlying Hawkesbury Sandstone that forms steep cliffs around Sydney (Figure 4). Joining the prominent, horizontal layers is a faint, inclined layering called ‘cross bedding.’ This indicates that the sand was deposited by flowing water. Figure 2: Later, kilometre–thick deposits of sediment and vegetation were dumped on top, concealing the connection between the Sydney Basin and the northern basins. The later–deposited sediments contain abundant water resources in what is called the Great Artesian Basin. Figure 6 shows how moving water makes a wavy pattern in the sand on the bottom. The water pushes the grains of sand up the back of each sand wave until they reach the top. Then they roll down the front of the sand wave. Thus, the sand waves move forward, forming the pattern of cross bedding. The orientation of the sand waves indicates the direction of flow. The thickness of the cross beds indicates the speed of the water and its depth.3From the size of the cross beds, geologist Dr Patrick Conaghan, Senior Lecturer at the School of Earth Sciences at Macquarie University, determined the conditions under which the sand was deposited. In 1994 he described a wall of water up to 20 m (65 feet) high and 250 km (150 miles) wide coming down from the north at enormous speed.4 This catastrophic interpretation is consistent with what we would expect during the Flood.The sandstone formations are very thick, ranging from 100 m (330 ft) to 200 m (660 ft) or more. 1 To accumulate such thick deposits of sand, the water level in the Sydney Basin must have risen continuously. Otherwise, the sand would have been carried through the area to deeper water. Yet, in the thick sandstone formations, there are no indications of extended time breaks between deposition (e.g. inhabited horizons containing preserved fossil communities). Deposition from the fast-flowing water was continuous in an ever-deepening basin. Figure 3: A vertically-exaggerated east–west cross section of these later sediments, which were the last sediments deposited as the floodwaters were rising on the Earth. Click here for larger view The evidence therefore points to huge volumes of sediment being eroded from the continent and carried in a ‘river’ hundreds of kilometres wide and thousands of kilometres long. No river on the face of the Earth today is anywhere near this large. This ‘river’ sorted the sediment into its different sizes, which is why so much sand was deposited in the same place.Thus the Three Sisters speak of unusual catastrophic deposition, consistent with the global Flood. The sand was deposited as the water level was increasing on the Earth, during the first part of the one-year Flood—the Inundatory stage.5 Some of the sand formations may have been deposited in just a few days.2 Rapid erosion Figure 4 Well after the sediments of the Sydney Basin were deposited, in the second part of the Flood the offshore ocean floor began to sink and the Blue Mountains began to rise. The water then covering Australia began to run off the continent. As it did, it rapidly cut the landscapes.At first the water flowed in sheets, shaving flat vast areas of the continent sometimes producing ‘planation’ surfaces. Then, as the flow reduced, the water cut wide valleys like those we see around the Sydney area. As the volume of water continued to decrease, narrower valleys were cut at the edges of plateaus, like those we see from the Three Sisters lookout (Echo Point). Figure 5 When the water had completely receded and the land was dry, large valleys remained where the flow had been. These valleys end abruptly in blind, steep walls. We see waterfalls today at the ends of these valleys, but they are only tiny remnants compared with the flow of water that eroded the valleys (Figure 5). There is no way that such minuscule water flows could have carved the huge valleys. This pattern of erosion is exactly what we would expect during the final phase of the global Flood. In the late 1700s, these steep cliffs prevented the early settlers of Sydney finding their way through the Blue Mountains to more grazing land. The first explorers followed the rivers, only to be stopped by the steep cul-de-sacs at the ends of the valleys. Little did they realize that these obstacles were produced by the drainage of the floodwater. Then, in 1813, the famous explorers Blaxland, Wentworth, and Lawson found their way using an innovative ridge-top route—by following the eroded remnants of the uplifted plateau.6 What about carbon dating? One reason people don’t connect the Three Sisters with the Flood is that the rocks are supposed to be about 230 million years old. At this age they obviously could not have formed in a flood 4,500 years ago. However, there is a problem with the way rocks are dated. Basically, long-age geologists get the dates wrong because they make wrong assumptions about the past. In particular, they ignore the catastrophic effects of the Flood. Figure 6 Long-age geologists assume that sedimentary rocks were deposited slowly, e.g. by rivers like those we see on Earth today. With so much sedimentary rock, they imagine that it took millions of years. But catastrophic conditions during the Flood would have deposited lots of sediment quickly and eliminated the need for millions of years. Evidence of such catastrophic deposition, as we have seen, is preserved in the rocks themselves.For these rocks, long-age geologists have assigned an age of around 230 million years based on their fossil content and their relative position in the sequence of rock layers in the region. Recently, a creationist geologist measured the carbon-14 content of a piece of wood found in a quarry in the overlying Hawkesbury Sandstone.7 Long-age geologists wouldn’t bother analyzing for carbon-14 because they believe the rock is 230 million years old. All carbon-14 should have disappeared by 50,000 years, at the most. There should be no carbon-14 left. However, the analysis confirmed a small but significant amount of carbon-14 in the wood—clear evidence that the sandstone isless than 50,000 years old. The small level of carbon-14 does not reflect an age, but rather the low concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere before the Flood (carbon-14 has been building up since the Flood). Evidence of Global Flood The Three Sisters are an Australian tourist icon. They are also evidence of the Flood. These sandstone monuments display evidence of large-scale catastrophic deposition and immense watery erosion. That is exactly what we would expect from the Gobal Flood. The phenomenon of vertical fossil tree trunks Broken tree trunks deposited vertically in thickly bedded sandstone 40 km (25 miles) north of Sydney, overlooking the South Pacific Ocean. Located on the eastern side of ‘Box Head’ in Bouddi National Park, the head forms the northern entrance to the Hawkesbury River.This sandstone is part of the Gosford Formation. Lying under the Hawkesbury Sandstone, it is approximately equivalent to the formation comprising the Three Sisters, over 100 km (60 miles) west. Excellent cross bedding is obvious in the layers above the logs.The blocky appearance of the deposit and the cross bedding point to deposition from deep, fast-flowing water.The thickness of the deposit indicates that the water was continually deepening as the sand was being deposited.These logs did not grow here but were washed into place.The trunks are broken with no sign of soil or roots. They testify to the violent forces which uprooted and smashed an ancient forest, sorting roots and trunks from leaves and branches.The leaves and branches were deposited in other strata of the Sydney Basin. They form the coal measures that are now mined for power generation.Update 15 September 2008: Since writing this report I have been able to inspect close up these vertical objects at Box Head and discuss their identification with others. I described them here as being vertical logs but on closer inspection in the field they seem instead to be unusual iron concretions. There are numerous other vertical concretions of various shapes in the sandstone in that area. Even as iron concretions these objects are unusual in their shape and orientation.Although these particular objects do not now appear to be tree trunks, it does not alter the fact that these sandstone deposits comprising the cliffs and the wave platform were deposited very quickly over a huge area pointing to the fact that the Sydney basin was formed by a large watery catastrophe, consistent with theFlood. Peperite: more evidence of large-scale watery catastrophe by Tas Walker A large sheet-like igneous formation in central Australia was once thought to have been emplaced into its host rocks after they lithified, or to have been deposited on the surface as a welded pyroclastic flow. More detailed field work has shown it to have been emplaced into its host sediments while they were unconsolidated and saturated with water. This new synsedimentary interpretation is based on tell-tale characteristics of magma/sediment interaction at the sill margins, including the presence of peperite. Other large igneous bodies have similarly been found to show evidence of significant magma/sediment interaction in a watery environment. These new discoveries provide clear evidence of rapid, large-scale watery catastrophe consistent with a geologic model based on the Global Flood . In 1993, Jocelyn McPhie of the University of Tasmania published a study on the extensive Tennant Creek porphyry formation surrounding Tennant Creek, a small mining town in central Australia. 1 She identified peperite texture at the margins of the porphyry sill where it contacts thick sequences of enclosing sedimentary sandstone and siltstone. Her paper provoked responses in the geological literature, 2,3 not challenging her interpretation of peperite, but discussing the problem of how the rock formation could possibly have been emplaced within the sediment. Peperite Figure 1. Common places where peperite develops:(a) margins of dikes and other intrusions; (b)margins of partly emergent intrusions; (c) bases of lava flows; (d) margins of invasive lavas (after White, McPhie and Skilling). 5 Click image to enlarge.Peperite is not named after the hot seasoning used at the dining table, but after a town in France called Peper, near which characteristic deposits of peperite are described. 4 Peperite refers to the rock that forms when hot lava erupts into wet and unconsolidated sediment. This interaction produces a deposit that is neither sedimentary rock nor volcanic rock, but a true mix of the two. As a mixture of sediment and magma, peperite is recognized by its texture.White, McPhie and Skilling5 define peperite as: ‘a rock formed essentially in situ by disintegration of magma intruding and mingling with unconsolidated or poorly consolidated, typically wet sediments. The term also refers to similar mixtures generated by the same processes operating at the contacts of lavas and hot pyroclastic flow deposits with such sediments’ [emphasis in original]. As shown in figure 1, peperite forms in association with dikes and other intrusions and at the base of lavas flowing over the surface of wet sediments. Thus, peperite is a genetic term connected to a particular emplacement process. Tennant Creek porphyry The Tennant Creek porphyry has a very distinctive appearance. The groundmass is a very fine (microcrystalline) darkgreenish matrix, which is filled with abundant, medium (0.5 cm) to large (2 cm), quartz and feldspar crystals. 1 There are a number of outcrops of the porphyry in the area around Tennant Creek which give the appearance on a map of a tabular sheet that has been folded and broken apart (figure 2). The folding occurred when the region was extensively disturbed and faulted subsequent to the emplacement of the porphyry and its enclosing sediments.The size of the intrusion is impressive. Outcrops of the sill (figure 2) range from 60 km northwest of Tennant Creek to 40 km southeast, representing a total continuous length of some 100 km. The sheet varies in thickness from tens of metres to a few hundred metres, based on outcrop measurements and the lengths of drill-hole intersections. The width of the sheet is unknown because it is bounded by extensive faulting. McPhie suggests the volume could have been as much as 10 km 3 (equivalent to a sheet width of about 1 km). Given a length of 100 km, it is likely that the sill was much wider than 1 km, and the volume of magma may have been as much as 100 km3. Figure 2. Geographical distribution of Tennant Creek porphyry (after McPhie).1 Click image to enlarge.For years geologists have been perplexed by some of the textures observed in the rock outcrops. These have made it difficult to explain the origin of the rock and how the formation was emplaced.One early explanation was that the porphyry was derived from the sediment itself, by low temperature recrystallization and collecting together of gelatinous colloidal components.1 This explanation invokes a most unusual process, to say the least, does not really address the peculiar textures, and does not account for the tabular sheet structure.A later suggestion invoked the standard sill explanation that the porphyry formed from a crystal-rich magma that intruded the solid sedimentary rock.1 The magma would have intruded after the sediments had hardened, while the strata were still horizontal and before they were deformed. Again, this explanation does not really account for the unusual textures at the margins of the sill.Another interpretation was that the porphyry was deposited on the ground surface by the explosive eruption of a crystal-rich magma. In other words, it represents an air-borne pyroclastic flow deposit, which later welded into a crystal tuff.1 Once more, this explanation does not really account for the textures. Perplexing textures When viewed on a geological map, it is clear that the porphyry sheet is conformable (parallel) with the strata of the enclosing sediments, the Warramunga Group. However, at closer range, when observed in outcrop, the contact between the porphyry and the sediment is highly irregular. At the upper contact there is an intricate penetration of the porphyry upwards into the overlying sedimentary host rocks and of the sediment downwards into the porphyry (figure 3).‘Upward from the contact, tongues and irregular bodies of porphyry, some apparently detached from the main mass, penetrate several metres into the sandstone. Downward from the contact, sedimentary inclusions up to a few metres across are present in the porphyry; farther into the interior of the porphyry, sedimentary inclusions diminish in size and abundance to zero.’6 Figure 3. Diagram illustrating the processes involved in peperite formation at the sill margins. The important processes for the Tennant Creek porphyry appear to be a tearing of the magma into fluid-shaped clasts and quench fragmentation (from McPhie).1 Click image to enlarge.The intimate mixing of the two kinds of rock can be observed at a very fine scale. For example, wisps of sandstone only centimetres long are distributed irregularly in the porphyry and similar-sized quartz and feldspar crystals, edged with fine groundmass (from the porphyry), are ‘floating’ in the sandstone matrix. In fact, it is common for the clasts of each rock type to have a fluidal shape, suggesting that they were incorporated while they were still soft and fluid. Not only that, but close to the margin, the bedding in the fine sandstone and siltstone is rarely recognizable because it is so disturbed. To the eye, the porphyry in the mixed zone at the contact looks the same as that within the massive interior of the formation. But, the sedimentary rocks at the contact have been significantly hardened as a result of heating by the porphyry and break with a conchoidal fracture, like glass. The induration of these sediments has meant that the outcrops of Tennant Creek porphyry have resisted erosion and now stand prominently in the landscape.All these textures convinced Jocelyn McPhie that the Tennant Creek porphyry was emplacedwithin the sediments while they were still unconsolidated and still filled with water. She was not able to determine the thickness of the sediments when the porphyry was emplaced, but she suggested that they were of the order of 100s of metres thick at the time.It is easy to see why this interpretation would cause discussion in the technical literature about the geological processes involved in the emplacement. The field observations indicate that magma was emplaced at the same time as the sediment—that is, the magma was synsedimentary. McPhie concluded that the unconsolidated sediment posed little resistance to the lateral transport of the intrusion—hardly any more resistance than it would have encountered if it travelled on a free topographic surface. 7Thus, there was a large geographical area filled with extremely loose, water-filled and unconsolidated sediments. The sediments were rapidly intruded by a huge volume of molten rock that spread out over a vast area within the sediment, forming peperite at its margins as it flowed. The large phenocrysts do not imply that the magma was cooling for a long period of time before being intruded into the sediment. Large crystals can grow very fast, depending on the relative rates of nucleation and growth. 8 The magma must have intruded the region very quickly, otherwise it would have quenched and solidified and ceased to flow. There is no evidence for the formation of a significant skin at the flow contacts (i.e. like a lava tube), consistent with the concept of an extremely rapid emplacement. If the intrusion had been advancing slowly enough for a skin to form, the contact would have been more regular and would not have formed peperite.It does not appear that the intrusions were explosive or that fragmentation was caused by expansion of steam, which suggests the pressure due to the overlying water and sediment was great enough to inhibit steam generation. There was plenty of water to remove the heat so that the whole intrusion was cooled rapidly and the groundmass formed a microcrystalline texture—a coherent glass.The evidence speaks of widespread and rapid sedimentation, voluminous and rapid magma generation, and rapid magma transport—all associated with large volumes of water and all occurring faster than the time needed for sediment to settle and dewater. It does not take much imagination to see that these processes are entirely consistent with a catastrophic geological Flood model based on the creation account. One obstacle to linking these deposits to the flood Flood is a mental one erected by a prior conditioning against viewing the evidence outside of the uniformitarian paradigm. One of the strongest mental blocks of the uniformitarian way of thinking is connected to the dates that have been assigned to the rocks. In this instance, the Warramunga Group sediments which enclose the porphyry are classified as Early Proterozoic and believed to be about 1.8 Ga old. This number was calculated from U-Pb measurements on zircons from a volcanic formation near the base of the group.However, as discussed above, the field evidence associated with the Tennant Creek porphyry points to a watery catastrophic environment. The field evidence for the enclosing sediments also points to very rapid deposition. For example, most of the Warramunga Group, which is as much as 6,000 m thick, comprises graded beds of sandstone and greywacke, interbedded with shale. These are typical of sediments deposited rapidly as turbidites—that is of sediments spread over huge areas in a submarine environment as a result of underwater avalanches. Such processes do not take much time.Thus, even though the field evidence points to large-scale catastrophic deposition, radioactive dating can act as a mind-forged manacle and prevent the evidence being consistently interpreted. A recent study on the uranium, lead and helium within zircon crystals from the Jemez Granodiorite, New Mexico, USA, highlights the inconsistency of these billion-year dates. Uniformitarian geologists assigned a date of 1.5 Ga (Precambrian) to this granodiorite, but the zircon crystals still contained excess quantities of helium. This indicated that a period of rapid radioactive decay had occurred in the not-too-distant past. 9 If the zircons really were multi millions of years old, the helium should have diffused out of the zircons long ago. Instead of indicating the true age of the rocks, it seems that the zircons inherited their isotopic ratios, which are being wrongly interpreted as billion-year ages. A similar period of rapid decay could explain the interpreted age of the Tennant Creek porphyry within a young-earth Flood model. Not an isolated example The Tennant Creek porphyry is not an isolated example. In the subsequent discussion of McPhie’s paper, 10 Trendall describes a spectacular case—the Woongarra Rhyolite in the Hamersley Basin, Western Australia. This was previously thought to be an extrusive (surface) formation, but Trendall found extensive development of peperite, indicating synsedimentary emplacement. He suggested that it was injected beneath some 400 m of soft sediment. The dimensions of the igneous formation are impressive. It has a strike length of 500 km and an average thickness of about 400 m. The total volume is estimated at some 15,000 km3—one thousand times greater than the volume described by McPhie. It is informative to compare this with the volume of ejecta from historic eruptions such as Vesuvius (AD 79) 3 km 3, Krakatoa (1883) 18 km3, and Mt St Helens (1980) 1 km3.McPhie describes other examples of synsedimentary deposits in Australia— deposits which had previously been misinterpreted, including Mt Chalmers (Permian), Mt Morgan (Devonian), Brenambra (Silurian), Koongie Park (Early Proterozoic), Mt Read (Cambrian), and Mt Windsor (Cambrian). 7It is worth noting that peperite textures have been recognized in a wide range of magma compositions from basalt to rhyolite, and in many different places all over the world, such as Chile (Jurassic),11 South Africa (Jurassic)12 and California (Jurassic).13 Consistent with creation Flood From a uniformitarian perspective, it is difficult to imagine what sort of modern environment could produce the large-scale magma/sediment interactions to form large-scale peperite deposits. Some have suggested that they form in an island arc setting (where we find lots of water, lots of sedimentation and lots of volcanic activity). However, peperite is also observed within the Columbia River Basalts,14,15 which did not form in an island arc but a continental environment. In fact, such largescale peperites are not seen forming today. There are no modern-day examples of interactions of enormous deposits of extremely loose, unconsolidated sediment with huge volumes of magma.When we view the evidence from a Flood perspective, it is likely that peperites formed all through the Flood, from very early to quite late. Such large-scale peperite formations are not expected to form in the post-Flood era due to the slower rate and lower volume of sedimentation. At these slower rates, sediment tends to dewater and compact when it reaches any significant thickness. The rate of postFlood magma generation is also expected to be significantly less than during the Flood, as discussed by Holt. 16Peperites are one more example of evidence that points to large-scale watery catastrophe in the geological record, which is consistent with the a Flood. Paleosols: digging deeper buries ‘challenge’ to Flood geology by Dr Tas Walker Summary Paleosols are a favourite objection used against the global Flood and the young age of the earth. Uniformitarians believe that paleosols (ancient soil horizons) are common throughout the stratigraphic record. Soils are believed to take hundreds to thousands of years or more to form and represent periods of earth history when the area was not covered with water. Thus, it is argued, paleosols could not have formed in the midst of a global flood. However, when two examples of alleged paleosols are examined, one in Missouri, USA and the other in Queensland, Australia, they do not stand up to scrutiny. The loose, friable horizons do not have the diagnostic characteristics of soils and the interpretation of a paleosol is inconsistent with the sequence of geological events required. Instead, the field evidence fits the young age framework much better than the uniformitarian one. The soils examined did not form by subaerial weathering over a long time but by in situ ‘weathering’ during and after the global Flood.One of the favourite objections against the global Flood and the young age of the earth is the claim that ancient soil horizons (paleosols) are common throughout the stratigraphic record. Soils are considered to have formed on land from bedrock due to chemical and biological weathering over long periods. The time envisaged for a soil profile to develop is of the order of hundreds to thousands of years or more. 1 Since soils represent periods of earth history when the area was not covered with water, paleosols could not have formed in the midst of a global flood—so the argument goes.One example of this claim is by Joseph Meert, Assistant Professor of Geology at the University of Florida, who used a baseball analogy to assert that paleosols are one strike of ‘three strikes against young-earth creationism’.2 Which he states are an ‘anathema to young-earth (ye) creationism because they pose such a problem for the concept of the young earth’. Meert says: ‘If you look at the photo at the top of the [web] page, you will see an excellent example of a well-developed paleosol in Missouri. [Reproduced here as Figure 1, below] The paleosol is developed on a granite dated to 1473 Ma and underneath the upper Cambrian-age Lamotte sandstone.5 Paleosols are fairly common features throughout the standard geologic column … Why are paleosols so troubling for ye-creationism?‘Ye-creationists assert that the the [ sic] geologic record is mainly a recording of a global Gilgameshian flood (the Hebrews referred to this myth as the Noachian flood) and that most of the sedimentary rocks observed on earth resulted from deposition during this flood. Obviously, there is no chance for mature and thick soils to form during a global tempest such as the flood. … ‘[Paleosols are] data that clearly refute the notion of a global flood. Paleosols are ancient soils that develop during periods of extensive sub-areal [sic] weathering and they are sometimes preserved in the geologic record. The key is that paleosols are found throughout the geologic column and represent periods of earth history when the region they were found in WAS NOT covered by water. Paleosols in the midst of a global flood are not possible’ [emphasis in original].Clearly Meert considers that paleosols have the potential to refute the global Flood. We agree! The concept of paleosols provides a good test for any geological model. That we can use the young age timescale to develop a geological model that can be scientifically tested destroys the oft-repeated claim by evolutionists that ‘creation science’ is not science because it cannot be tested. We’re pleased that Meert acknowledges that creation geology is a valid, scientific approach. But we do not agree that the flood has been falsified. Let’s consider the evidence a little more closely, because we will see a different story. Clearing up some misconceptions Before we do, we need to clear up a couple of misconceptions that slipped in without noticing. First, paleosols are not troubling to young-earth creationists, nor are they an anathema, as Meert imagines. Froede has published an excellent treatment on paleosols in the stratigraphic record in his book Field Studies in Flood Geology,3 comparing and contrasting the field evidence from a uniformitarian and Flood perspective. Also, Klevberg and Bandy have recently published two articles on soil formation and the Flood.4 Second, Meert links the global Flood to the Epic of Gilgamesh—a flood story recorded on ancient clay tablets excavated from the ruins of Nineveh more than a hundred years ago.5,6 Parallels with Genesis are obvious but the Gilgamesh story has clear fictional characteristics such as an ark the shape of a cube, and Figure 1. Alleged ‘paleosol’ located between the Precambrian Butler Hill Granite rainfall lasting only six days and and the Cambrian Lamotte Sandstone. Photo taken by Joe Meert along Missouri nights. The tablets are conventionally 2 State Highway 67 (from Meert). (For an update since the original publishing of taken to be the older version of the this article, see Addendum.) two stories, so the young age record is interpreted as being derived from the Babylonian one. This not only implies that the record is fictional, but second rate fiction at that. However, the sheer quality of the record, including plausible dimensions of the ark7 and the quantity of detail, all described in a sober, matter-of-fact way, mean that the record is eminently credible. John Woodmorappe demonstrated that even the smallest particulars are reasonable.8 If we ignore the conventional dates assigned to the epic (Middle Eastern chronology is currently in a state of flux and dates are being revised lower9), the more plausible interpretation is that the Flood and the Epic of Gilgamesh record the same real event in history. The record is the accurate, reliable testimony while the Epic of Gilgamesh is a corrupted version. So, we shouldn’t allow this subtle linkage to Gilgamesh to distract from a proper consideration of paleosols. [Ed. note, 9 April 2004: The Gilgamesh-derivation theory that Meert accepts so uncritically is destroyed in the Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic.]Finally, we need to ignore the million-year ages quoted in the text and written on the photo. As pointed out on many occasions,10 the rocks do not have ages labelled on them. The ages are an interpretation based on assumptions about how the rocks formed—assumptions which are unprovable. 11,12 You can obtain any age you like depending on the assumptions that you make. Since they were deposited during the Flood, we would write on the photo that the true age of both rocks, based on a written eyewitness account, is 4,500 years. Interpretive frameworks Now, with regard to ancient soils in the fossil record, it is understandable that Meert believes paleosols are found throughout the geologic column because the concept of paleosols is firmly entrenched in uniformitarian thinking. It is simply a logical application of the uniformitarian framework which takes the processes we see happening today and extrapolates them into the past without discrimination. There is a voluminous literature on paleosols, 13,14 including numerous books15,16 and courses at university level.17 So it is understandable that people would think paleosols are an open-and-shut case. However, it is only when we consider an alternative interpretive framework and examine the field examples in detail that we find things are not as they are said to be.Thus, we first need to consider the place of paleosols within an alternative geological framework—one based on the young age record. There are two periods when soils would be present on the earth:Soils would exist in the pre-Flood period. However, it is doubtful that any soils from before the Flood would have been preserved through that cataclysm. Most likely they would have been destroyed. 18–20 Nor is there conclusive geological evidence for the existence of pre-Flood paleosols.Soils would form in the post-Flood period and we see soils everywhere today. There would have been rapid development of soil profiles at the end of the Flood as soil-forming reactions would have been accelerated when the land surface first emerged and air was drawn into the exposed layers. Also, the drainage of floodwaters through the surface layers would have caused rapid leeching of fine material and ionic species from one horizon to another. In fact, specific horizons of soil formation are identified in the stratigraphic record in eastern Australia where ‘deep weathering of planation surfaces’ occurred.21 Such unique windows of soil formation may well have been associated with geological processes in the very last phase of draining floodwaters. Finally, after the Flood, normal weathering would have formed soils on the postFlood land surface within years.Soils that formed at the end of the Flood and at the beginning of the post-Flood period could have been buried by subsequent geological processes such as flooding, volcanism, and wind blown processes. These would be true paleosols. In fact, the whole idea of paleosols was first developed by geomorphologists and soil scientists to explore soils in the Quaternary. The study of these post-Flood soils was then extended throughout geologic time to more ancient rocks based on the assumption of uniformitarianism. 22A good place to look for a true paleosol is where a landslide has occurred at a road cutting. Because the government builds and maintains roads, money is readily available to clear away the debris, and the slide makes the news, so it is well documented. At such a location we can see the soil profile in section where the road crews have cut away the debris. However, the colluvium (slide debris) needs to be thick enough to isolate the former surface from modern soil-forming processes, typically a couple of metres or more. One important point to make about such paleosols is that their status as a paleosol has been historically established. Meert’s ‘paleosol’ example Let’s look at Meert’s paleosol (Figure 1), which supposedly refutes the global Flood. There would be no question among most creationists that the Cambrian sandstone in Meert’s picture is a Flood deposit. Most creationists would also interpret the granite as a Flood rock although some would possibly consider it to have formed during Creation Week. The way the photograph has been annotated with lines depicting the contact between the ‘soil’ and rock could give the impression that this is a tight case for a paleosol. But we would not expect the material in the photograph to be a soil horizon. (Even if the granite formed during Creation Week, which would mean there was enough time to form soil in the pre-Flood era, we would not expect the soil to remain in place during the Flood). We will see that, not only is it not a soil horizon, but this particular example has more problems than most, and Meert would have been better served to select one that could have been more plausible.Look more closely at the outcrop photographed by Meert along Missouri State Highway 67. Of course, it is not possible to positively identify rocks from a photo at such a distance. One can’t clearly see minerals or textures, or easily discriminate between rock, lichen, mould and shadow. It would be preferable to visually inspect the outcrop. However, at the bottom of the outcrop in the photo we can see a small exposure of pale-coloured rock. It has a granular texture but does not show any clear fabric (e.g. layers or cross-bedding). We can accept that it is granite as Meert has labelled it. Sitting on the Butler Hill Granite on an uneven contact (marked by a line, but otherwise not a particularly obvious contact) is a material of similar colour and texture. However it appears to be loose and friable. To the left there are a few larger clasts scattered on the surface. There does not appear to be any horizontal layers or horizons in this loose material. This material is labelled ‘Paleosol’ on the photo and appears to be about half a metre thick (judging from the height of the plants). Sitting on this ‘loose’ material on a distinct, straight, horizontal contact is a thin exposure of a slightly darker rock about a metre thick at the most. It is labelled ‘Lamotte Sandstone’ and seems to have a thin (5 cm) horizontal bedding, suggesting it was deposited from flowing water. The apparent bedding also suggests that the strata Figure 2. A hypothetical soil profile. The have not been significantly tilted or disturbed since being A horizon has mineral particles mixed deposited. Grass and small plants are growing on top of the with finely divided organic matter that sandstone. It is not possible to identify the soil layer in which they produces a dark colour. The B horizon is are growing but it must be quite thin. enriched in clay minerals, oxides and Assessing Meert’s claim hydroxides removed from the overlying A Anyone wishing to understand paleosols first needs a basic horizon, and is lighter in colour. The understanding of modern soils and soil forming processes. Soils solum or true soil is represented by the A can develop from bedrock (such as hardened lava) as it weathers and B horizons. The C horizon is largely or from unconsolidated sediments.23 Most soils have three main unaffected by the soil forming processes horizons (layers) identified as A, B, and C horizons (Figure and may be produced by chemical 2).23 The A horizon is found at the soil surface and is described as weathering of the underlying bedrock, or topsoil by most people. It is usually somewhat dark in colour due to deposited by water or ice or volcanic additions of organic carbon from decaying plants. The B horizon is activity. Its colour may vary. The R directly below the A horizon and has experienced leaching into or horizon is unweathered bedrock. out of the horizon.23 B horizons tend to be lighter coloured than A horizons and browner than C horizons. In mature soils, the B horizon is typified by increased amounts of clay due to migration of clay from the A horizon. Clay films can be found in the B horizon which indicate clay movement into this horizon from above. The C horizon is usually weathered parent material.The three main field features used to interpret a paleosol are root traces, soil horizons, and soil structures. Additional complications associated with the way the ‘paleosol’ fits into the rock sequences also need to be considered.24The first point about the alleged paleosol in Figure 1, which Meert described as an ‘excellent example of a well developed paleosol’, is that there is no reference to any root traces. The photo is too distant to distinguish them and their existence or otherwise is not mentioned in the text. In other words, the first and ‘most diagnostic feature’ 25 of a paleosol is not addressed. However, even when root traces are described for claimed paleosols (ones clearly from Flood deposits) the roots are often simply interpreted from plant fragments, or even from empty tubular cavities interpreted as root trace fossils.26 These features can be just as easily interpreted as the product of processes consistent with the Flood framework, such as plant material being transported into place, or water escape cavities.The second and most important thing to notice about this ‘excellent example’ is that there is no evidence of any soil profile development. The alleged paleosol has the same colour as the granite from which it has been derived, and at best could be described as decomposed granite. There is no hint of any development of either a B horizon (with the addition of clay or precipitates due to leaching) or of an A horizon (with the addition of organic carbon).The third field characteristic used to interpret paleosols is soil structure. Soil structures appear massive or hackly at first sight.27 Presumably Meert used this characteristic as his criteria for interpreting the paleosol in Figure 1. However, just because a geological horizon is loose and friable does not mean that it developed by subaerial weathering over a long time. There are other plausible ways of explaining this characteristic within a framework consistent with the Flood, as we will see.Thus, there is no indisputable diagnostic evidence in the photograph to support Meert’s claim that the unconsolidated material is a well developed paleosol. In other words, just because someone calls something a paleosol and labels it as such does not mean it really is. Rock sequences Apart from the three main field features discussed, there are other complications that need to be considered and these have to do with the way paleosols fit into the rock sequences.28 When we consider the sequence of events imposed on the geology of the area by Meert’s claim we can see that the idea of a paleosol is even more problematic. This is because of the types of rocks involved. Let’s think of the implications of Meert’s idea. The sequence of steps required under a uniformitarian framework is illustrated in Figure 3 and outlined below: 1. Granitic magma intruded the country rock (which is now no longer present) forming and filling a large magma chamber, which eventually cooled to form a granite pluton. (Uniformitarians generally believe plutons form at considerable depth within the continental crust and took millions of years to cool. These misconceptions have been addressed in a number of articles about the formation of granites.29–32) 2. The overlying country rock (perhaps tens of kilometres thick) was slowly and completely eroded away by normal subaerial weathering processes until Figure 3. Sequence of geological the granite pluton was exposed. For the whole of this period of weathering, processes needed to produce and a soil layer was continuously being produced at the surface and preserve a paleosol on Precambrian continuously being removed. granite within a uniformitarian 3. The land was then inundated by water which deposited sand (which framework. later turned into sandstone) on top of the soil layer. The bedding in the sandstone indicates that the water was flowing and very energetic. 4. Finally, the sandstone was weathered away by subaerial processes until the small metre-thick section observed in the road cut today is all that is left. Step 3 is the one that presents a major problem for Joe Meert’s paleosol claim. How could flowing water, energetic enough to carry volumes of sand and produce horizontal flat bedding not remove the soil—a thin surface layer, which is friable and loose? Why wasn’t the granite washed clean like the rock outcrops we see jutting into the sea at the coast? What sort of amazing process could have preserved this soil layer on the granite in the midst of fast-flowing current of water? It seems that Meert’s choice of an ‘excellent example of a well developed paleosol’ is not helpful for his argument. A more plausible example? A more plausible example of a paleosol, at least from a rock-sequence point of view, is in a basalt exposure on the Mapleton-Maleny plateau, Queensland, Australia (Figure 4).33 Here we see a series of basalt flows with red earthy horizons between them, which have been interpreted as ancient soils that have been buried by subsequent lava flows. The thickness of one ‘soil’ in particular has been interpreted as indicating that ‘there was a considerable time gap (probably thousands of years) between the eruption of one flow and the next.’ At least the sequence of events required to produce such a ‘soil’ layer is feasible, unlike those in Meert’s Figure 4. Line drawing of alleged ‘old soil layers’ between basalt example above. The first basalt flow could have flows on the Mapleton-Maleny Plateau, Queensland, Australia. been deposited subaerially. Then, over time, the Compare the flat topography of the ‘old soil layers’ with the basalt surface could have weathered into a soil layer present hilly landscape (from Willmott and Stevens).40 as shown. And finally, a subsequent basalt flow could have flowed across the land and covered the soil. This rock sequence is at least plausible.The basalt plateau has been ‘dated’ as Late Oligocene, which places it late in geological history. The basalt plateau has also been extensively dissected by broad valleys suggesting that it was eroded during the last phase of the Flood by the considerable volumes of floodwaters still receding from the continent. Thus, from a Flood perspective we would expect the basalt to be a Flood deposit and the friable horizon would not be a true, subaerially weathered soil. When we examine the alleged paleosol in the field we find that it is simply a thick horizon of loose, friable, material. There is no evidence of root traces within it. Neither is there an A or B horizon. The evidence needed to convince us that the alleged soil is a soil is lacking. But there is more. First, if the thick friable horizon had been a soil layer before the subsequent eruption, we would expect to find a baked zone immediately under the basalt flow in the ‘old soil layer’, but none is present. Second, note the difference in topography between the present landscape and the landscape of the ‘old soil layer’. The present landscape has a significant vertical relief—it is a hilly terrain. Yet the old soil layers are straight, horizontal and parallel across the plateau. How could thousands or tens of thousands of years of weathering produce such a thick layer of soil without producing any topographical relief? Thus, even though the setting at Mapleton-Maleny has a better chance than Meert’s, it still does not make the grade as a real paleosol. A Flood interpretation How did the loose, friable layer form beneath the sandstone under the granite as shown in Meert’s photograph? Can Flood geology provide a plausible answer? Of course. This friable layer of material is not a ‘troubling’ problem for young-earth geology. One simple Flood scenario is illustrated in Figure 5 and described as follows: 1. During the first half of the global Flood, as a consequence of tectonic movements, granitic magma intruded the country rock (which is now no longer present) forming and filling a large magma chamber and eventually cooling to form a granite pluton. The intrusion need not have been particularly deep, nor did it need to cool slowly to produce the granitic texture.29,32 2. Later, still during the first half of the Flood, water flowing rapidly over the land eroded the country rock, exposed the granite, and deposited the sandstone on the granite. 3. In the second half of the Flood, water receding from the continent eroded the sedimentary strata leaving only the thin sandstone layer in this area.34–36 4. After the Flood, the granite at the interface decomposed as a result of water pooling at the interface.37 The sandstone would be permeable and readily allow precipitation to flow through it to the interface. The granite would act as an impermeable barrier and cause the water to pool. Perhaps underground channels formed in particular areas as routes for the removal of Figure 5. Sequence of geological processes the water from the landscape. Also, oxygen and organic acids would needed to produce and preserve a paleosol penetrate to the interface because the sandstone layer is so thin at this on Precambrian granite within a Flood point. These are particularly aggressive in breaking down the minerals in the framework. rocks, especially the more susceptible minerals in the granite such as biotite and amphibole, leaving the more resistant minerals such as quartz and feldspar.This is a simple, plausible model and does not invoke any miraculous processes to keep the ‘soil’ layer intact as needed in Meert’s paleosol hypothesis. A similar model can be applied to the loose, friable layers between the basalts on the Mapleton-Maleny plateau. In fact, the disintegration of the basalt in situ would have been much more rapid because heat from the basalt flows would have accelerated the chemical reactions. Thus, these two examples of paleosols are not troubling to Flood geology. Instead of paleosols, the friable horizons only have a superficial appearance of soil—they are pseudosols.In the uniformitarian literature there could be thousands of geological horizons which have been interpreted as paleosols. In fact, the whole paleosol methodology assumes the uniformitarian paradigm and is geared to interpret paleosols throughout the stratigraphic record. Although paleosols are common in the Quaternary they are rare in the earlier rocks and this makes sense within the Flood framework and a post-Flood boundary in the late Cainozoic. It is not consistent with the idea of uniformitarianism which holds that recent geologic processes have applied through all geologic time. Most geologists have no insight into the Flood framework and so are not alert to field clues which would discriminate between a true paleosol and a pseudosol. It would be an interesting (and almost endless) exercise to examine a wider range of alleged paleosols and reinterpret them within the Flood paradigm. Froede 3 and Kleveberg and Bandy4 have addressed many of the issues on the topic and provide a good foundation for further field work. The uniformitarian claims about paleosols are similar to their claims about paleokarst. It was shown by Silvestru that alleged paleokarst in the Pre-Cenozoic is not karst at all, but pseudokarst.38 True karstification occurred in a very specific window geologically—a window that is best explained from a Flood geology perspective.39 In the same way, soil formation from a Flood perspective fits into a very small window which can provide a great tool for field geologists to properly interpret the stratigraphic record. Conclusion The presence of a loose, friable layer between the Butler Hill Granite and the Lamotte Sandstone in a road cut on Missouri State Highway 67 represents no ‘strike’ against the Flood or young-earth creationism. Neither does the alleged ‘old soil layer’ on the Mapleton-Maleny Plateau, Queensland, Australia. Rather than an ‘anathema’ to young-earth creationists, when we look at the field evidence from a perspective, we find it fits the framework much better than the uniformitarian one. The alleged soils did not form by subaerial weathering over a long time, but by in situ ‘weathering’ during and after the global Flood. In the final analysis, unless it has been historically attested, the concept of a paleosol is merely an interpretation, not an observed scientific fact. Addendum In his case against ‘young-earth creationism’, Meert used Figure 1, above, as the prime exhibit of a ‘paleosol’. Following publication of this Journal of Creation article, Meert changed the image on his web page (reproduced here). He reduced the width of the photo to about 57% to correct a scaling error he made on the original gif image. He also changed the position of the lines used to delineate the alleged ‘paleosol’. These lines now omit the ‘scree’ (loose debris) associated with the larger clasts on the left. Even in this Joe Meert’s revised figure. 200 dpi image, these clasts are clearly visible and I noted them in the above article. He has also changed the label from paleosol to ‘Regolith and Paleosol’, backing away from the claim that all the loose material was once a soil.None of Meert’s changes affects the arguments in the above article or the conclusion. In fact, Meert himself now admits that this picture was not a good example. He says that his photo was not intended to document the paleosol and that he will take some better photos next time he visits the site. That won’t help because this loose material does not represent a paleosol. Nothing in the example Meert has presented represents any sort of challenge to the Flood. This exchange illustrates how to respond to such anti-creationist challenges. It is important to ignore the bluff and bluster, and carefully examine the evidence. When we do, the supposed problems disappear and those who are making the charges frequently change their story. Fluidization pipes: evidence of large-scale watery catastrophe by Tas Walker A few years ago, some geologists in Australia were objecting in print to the idea of interpreting geology in terms of the Flood.1 They argued that it was impossible to explain the rocks of the world within a 6,000-year time-frame, even allowing for a year-long global flood. For some reason they had not appreciated that the evidences of large-scale, watery catastrophe in the geological record2 are just what we would expect from the global Flood. 3 Indeed, one vivid illustration was featured on the cover of the same issue of the magazine in which their objections were published.4 Fluidisation Pipe: Cone shaped sandstone column piercing a thick layer of bedded sandstone.4The cover (Figure, left) showed a bedded sandstone formation in a remote part of Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve, Northern Territory, Australia. The sedimentary bedding varies in thickness from thin to medium, and is sub-horizontal. Altogether the sandstone pictured, which is quite friable, is over 5 m thick.This particular outcrop is part of a 340-m-thick unit called the McKay Sandstone within the mildly-deformed McArthur Basin of northern Australia. The unit comprises medium- to coarse-grained sandstone together with minor fine-grained sandstone, granules, pebbles and basalt. 5 It has been classified as Paleoproterozoic, based on interpretations of U-Pb dating of zircons from igneous units in the area. 5,6In the picture, a large, cylindrical structure cuts vertically across the bedding of the sedimentary rock. The diameter of the columnar structure is not constant, but varies from 1.3–1.7 m over its length.Like the surrounding sedimentary rock, the column is composed of sandstone, but in this case it is unbedded, except for vague vertical layering, concentric with its circumference. The base of the column sits on top of a fine-grained basalt sill 3–4 m thick. The top of the sill has a ropy surface and contacts baked and vuggy7sandstone and mudstone, in places brecciated. The sill contains distinctly zoned amygdales 8 that are larger in the middle of the sill.Numerous similar pipes occur within the sandstone, at irregular intervals along strike,9 at the same level immediately above the sill. They vary in diameter from 2–10 m and are up to 5 m high. The longest preserved length is over 4 m. 4,5These columns point to large-scale geological catastrophe. When the basalt lava intruded horizontally, the sand was still wet and unconsolidated. The heat from the molten rock boiled the water immediately above the sill. As a result the water welled up, forming a vertical column through the sandstone. The upward flowing water suspended the sand particles against gravity, causing the sediment to behave like a fluid. Naturally, the flow destroyed the layers of horizontal bedding. Because of this behaviour, the structure has been called a ‘fluidisation pipe’.It is clear that fluidisation pipes point to large-scale rapid geological processes.First, the sedimentation rate must have been extremely rapid to produce an unconsolidated, water-filled layer of sand at least 5 m thick over a large geographic area. There are many other evidences in the McKay Sandstone that the sedimentation rate was very high, including the occurrence of planar lamination (even in thick-bedded units),10 metre-scale folding of beds, and large dewatering structures.11 Rather than millions of years, the sedimentation rate indicates very rapid deposition.The basalt sill also points to large-scale rapid, catastrophe. The complete thickness of the sill must have intruded quickly over the whole area before the water-logged sediments were able to quench and harden the magma. A thin sill would have been easily quenched, and a slow intrusion rate would have allowed time for the water to start circulating and cool the magma. The entire sill must have been emplaced very quickly before the overlying water had time to boil and establish the strong circulation that fluidised the sand.And finally, the fluidisation pipes mean that sedimentation and sill emplacement occurred together, indicating that there was virtually no time between the two processes. Thus, fluidisation pipes are one more example of large-scale, watery catastrophe in the geological record.With such clear evidence of pervasive, inter-woven catastrophe, it is surprising that geologists do not see the implications. Even though they carefully describe the structures and appreciate something of the speed and scale of the processes, they do not realise that the evidence destroys the concept of millions of years. This illustrates how a paradigm can constrain people from seeing the implications of what they observe. The bigger implication, of course, is that the evidence is just what we would expect from the global Flood. Seeing the Global Flood in geological maps by Tas Walker Figure 1. The 1:250,000 geological map series covers the whole of Australia. The Goondiwindi map is shaded. Geologists have long recognized that a knowledge of the past history of the earth is fundamental to their discipline.1 Modern secular geology arose when workers such as Hutton and Lyell dismissed creation history and assumed a different history using the philosophical principle of uniformitarianism—the past has always been similar to the present.2 Traditionally, the science has been split into two parts—physical geology and historical geology.Once a theoretical model has been developed it is necessary to examine the geological evidence and classify that evidence within the model. Fortunately, vast areas of the earth have already been explored in detail and their geological features documented in the form of geological maps. These available for most countries. Here I will briefly how geological maps can be used to interpret the an area from a creation perspective. Figure 2. Goondiwindi 1:250,000 geological map. Click for larger image. Australia 1:250,000 geological map series are readily describe geology of In Australia a comprehensive series of geological maps was prepared in the 1960s and 70s as part of a government program, and this has been published as the 1:250,000 scale series (figure 1). These maps can now be downloaded free from the website of Geoscience Australia.6 Figure 2 shows the sheet for Goondiwindi (300 km west of Brisbane), Queensland, Australia. 7 The information on this sheet is typical of what is provided on each map, with the map itself covering an area about 150 km by 100 km. As usual, the sheet has an interpreted geological cross–section as well as a wealth of other geological material, including the locations of quarries, mines and fossil finds, as well as gravity anomalies.These maps provide an excellent overview of any area of interest. It is easy to visually scan the whole area of the map and study the cross–section to understand the big picture of what is present geologically. Furthermore, it is a simple matter to refer to adjoining maps and see how the geology extends across the continent. This is exactly what is needed to understand the connection with the Flood because the Flood was a global event and we can only understand its impact by seeing the big picture. We need to keep in mind that there can be some degree of subjectivity in the way the geological units shown on the maps are defined but the map provides a good starting point. Connecting with the Flood Figure 3. Geological section of Goondiwindi. Vertical exaggeration, v/h = 8. The layers are labelled with letters indicating their names: e.g. the symbol Jlh stands for Jurassic, lower, Hutton sandstone. The first letter refers to the geological system: C means Carboniferous, P = Permian, = Triassic, J = Jurassic and K = Cretaceous.The geological cross–section on Goondiwindi extends from west to east. The vertical scale on the section is exaggerated, as it often is, in order that the relatively thin geological layers can be easily seen. Some 75% of the width of the section from the map has been reproduced in figure 3, and the vertical scale has been increased even more than on the sheet, resulting in a vertical exaggeration of 8 times. Figure 4. The geographical extent of the sedimentary deposits connected with the Great Artesian Basin. The need for this vertical exaggeration illustrates the first feature of the sedimentary layers shown on the map—they are relatively thin compared with their lateral extent. This characteristic is something that Ager noted and described as “the persistence of facies”.8 The layers exposed in the Goondiwindi area extend for nearly 2,000 km to the west into the Northern Territory and South Australia (figure 4). Such a vast lateral extent of strata is not a prediction from geological uniformitarianism but it is a prediction for sediments laid down during the global catastrophe of the Flood: “It is expected that the structures formed during the Inundatory stage would be of continental scale.” 9In figure 3 it can be seen that the sedimentary layers dip down to the west. (The dip looks steep on the section due to the vertical exaggeration but in the field it dip is quite gentle.) Note the strata sit on a ‘basement’ (consisting of sedimentary and volcanic deposits) that is described as “intensely deformed”.10In other words, there is a clear geological demarcation between the sedimentary strata and the geological unit underneath. The total thickness of all the sedimentary layers is more than 2 km at the western end of the section.A detailed analysis of the geological characteristics of these strata using the classification criteria within the creation geological model concluded that they were deposited during the first part of the Flood—the Zenithic phase.11That is, these sediments were deposited as the waters of the Flood were rising and just before they reached their peak. This conclusion was based on the expectation that the movement of water during the global Flood would have spread the sediment over vast geographical areas (the scale criterion). Another factor was the presence of footprints and trackways. Certain strata in these layers contain footprints of dinosaurs, temporarily stranded as they tried to escape, which means the layers were deposited before the waters had reached their peak and all air-breathing animal life had perished.Concerning the deformed sediments and volcanics beneath the strata, one possibility is that they could have been deposited during Creation. However, these strata contain fossils, which is why they have been classified on the map as Carboniferous (labelled with a C). Fossils mean that these sediments were also deposited in the Flood during an earlier phase. It also indicates that significant tectonic activity occurred during the first part of the Flood deforming the sediments after they were deposited.Another feature that helps synchronize the geological section to the Flood is the location of the existing land surface. As the floodwaters drained into the ocean they initially flowed in vast sheets which, as the water level reduced, eventually developed into huge channels. This period was primarily an erosional event on the continents, and it is expected that the present landscape was mostly formed at this time: “During the Recessive stage the waters moved off the continents into the present ocean basins. This was a highly erosive process.” 12 Holt called this period the “Erodozoic”. 13When we examine the horizontal land surface that runs across the section we can assume that it was mainly carved during the Recessive stage of the Flood. Of significance is the way the geological strata intersect this present land surface. On the cross–section it can be seen that, as the strata rise upwards to the east, they have been truncated at the land surface. This means that the thick strata extended much further to the east and that they have been eroded away. The enormous area of land surface affected and the quantity of material removed is a feature consistent with the global Flood. Conclusion A preliminary examination of the geological cross–section for Goondiwindi (figure 3) illustrates how geological maps can reveal the sequence of events occurring during the Flood. The readily available maps provide an excellent overview. Of course these preliminary ideas need to be checked and tested for consistency with other geological details, such as the information available in field guides, map commentaries, research papers and field reconnaissance. But this analysis shows that geological maps can be used to develop an authentic geological history of the area that fits within the creation perspective. A classic tillite reclassified as a submarine debris flow by Michael J. Oard Tillites, assumed to be the lithified equivalents of glacial till (rubble), are often found in the strata of the Earth. Hence, uniformitarian scientists postulate a number of long-lasting pre-Pleistocene ice ages, the Late Palaeozoic ‘ice age’ in southern Africa being the most notable. Many glacial-like diagnostic features also are associated with these tillites. However, Schermerhorn questioned the conclusion that many of these tillites, mainly from the Late Precambrian, were caused by ancient glaciation, pointing out that practically all the claimed diagnostic properties can be duplicated by mass flow and other processes.1One of the classical Late Pre-cambrian tillites is the Bigganjargga tillite of northern Norway. It is even called Reusch’s moraine. The tillite overlies a striated pavement in which two striae directions, a sharp NW–SE set overprinting a faint E–W set, were embossed on the sandstone below. Two subparallel sets of striae are supposedly diagnostic of glaciation. One author claimed to have observed striated and faceted clasts within the tillite. The top layer of the tillite is composed of thin beds containing clasts larger than the thickness of the bedding, reminiscent of dropstone varvites. The above three characteristics of the Bigganjargga tillite are the main diagnostic features for an ancient ice age. 2 Thus, most geologists accepted without question that the tillite was a remnant of the Late Precambrian ‘ice age’. 3,4,5 However, a few geologists did question whether the tillite was really glaciogenic or else a mudflow deposit. 6Recently, a more in-depth analysis has indicated that this classical tillite is very likely a submarine debris flow. 7 The striated pavement was found to have been made by rocks sliding along soft sandstone, because a few clasts are embedded in the sandstone. Moreover, clast imprints on the sandstone have the same random spacing as in the ‘tillite’ above. There are other soft-sediment deformation features. The sandstone had been assumed lithified and dated 150 million years older than the tillite. The authors now suggest this time gap is not real.The matrix and clasts in the ‘tillite’ are rounded with the fine fraction missing. This is very unlike a glacial till. The rocks in the ‘tillite’ show flow layers around clasts indicating an underwater mass flow origin. Marine deposits are also closely associated with the ‘tillite’. Jensen and Wulff-Pedersen conclude: ‘The evidence for a debris flow origin for the Bigganjargga diamictite [a non-genitive term for till-like rock] seems compelling; the diamictite is massive and has random fabric, mound formed top, marginal snout(s), projecting boulders and a striated pavement.’8The implication of this result is that the main diagnostic features for an ancient ‘ice age’ are really not diagnostic at all. It has been known for a long time that the fabric of a ‘tillite’ cannot be distinguished from a debris flow. Early workers did not concern themselves with distinguishing between the two processes and just assumed ancient glaciation. It is, therefore, no surprise that the strata of the Earth have so many remnants of ancient ‘ice ages’. Just as with Reusch’s ‘moraine’, these claimed ancient ice ages are very likely submarine debris flows — a process that is consistent with a global Flood.9,10,11,12 CAN CANYONS BE FORMED QUICKLY Canyon creation Faster than most people would think possible, beauty was born from devastation by Rebecca Gibson Many people believe canyons take a long time to form. In North America, though, there is a canyon that simply wasn’t there 150 years ago.1Providence Canyon is near the town of Lumpkin in southwest Georgia. Where there were once rolling hills covered with untouched pine forest, there is now a deep chasm with nine finger-like canyons. They range in size up to 50 metres (160 feet ) deep, 180 metres (600 feet) wide and 400 metres (1,300 feet) long. 2,3The exposed canyon bluffs are extremely beautiful with many bands of different coloured rocks—bright red clay, white kaolin, as well as sands coloured ochre, pink, orange, beige, purple, lavender, grey, yellow, tan and black. 4,5In the base of the canyon, where it is often humid, trees such as sweet gums, weeping willows, tupelo, maples and blackjack oaks grow. 2The area is a haven for over 150 varieties of wildflowers, including dwarf irises, rhododendrons, foxgloves, magnolias, evening primroses and the rare red and orange plumleaf azaleas.6–8Wildlife such as white-tailed deer, red and grey foxes, raccoons, armadillos and birds such as woodpeckers, warblers, turkeys, thrushes and owls may be seen.8 What happened here? What caused this dramatic change from rolling hills to such a ruggedly beautiful landscape? It’s all tied up with the settlement of the area for farming in the early 1800s.Native Americans of the Creek (Muscogee) 9 tribe inhabited the area now known as Georgia long before European settlement. Between 1790 and 1830, as the European population increased six-fold, Creek land was successively resumed by the state government for settlement by farmers. 10Local folklore says that trickles of water running down old Native American trails started the erosion. 11 Other stories say that water running off a barn built by the Patterson family in 1855 3 or perhaps off the local schoolhouse roof,4,11 caused the problem. These accounts aren’t too far from the truth. Bad farming practices From the 1820s onward, clear-felling of trees (the roots of which deeply stabilize soil), to grow crops such as cotton and corn, set the scene for the start of rampant erosion, 3,5 as the land was exposed to the ravages of water run-off during the area’s frequent heavy thunderstorms.12 The uppermost strata comprised the resistant iron-rich clay of the Clayton formation, and overlay the less resistant unconsolidated sands of the Providence and Ripley formations. 13 Erosion accelerated once the water got beneath the red clay to the sands underneath. 12Back then, farmers did not preserve topsoil, or use fertilizers.3,14 Their habit was to exhaust the land with crops and then abandon it.15 By ploughing up and down hills, instead of across, they encouraged erosion gullies to form.16Old people living in Lumpkin in the 1940s say they remember stepping over ditches only 1 to 1.5 metres (3 to 5 feet) deep on their way to school in the long-gone township of Humber in this area.17 Growing canyon forced church to move Historical records show that the local Providence United Methodist church opened in 1832.1 The church had to be moved in 1859 because of the danger of being undermined by the growing canyon. 12Heavy rainfall during storms removed vast amounts of sand and silt from the canyon walls to the floor. These were then washed down the braided Turner’s Creek into the Chattahoochee River.11,12 On the way, the sediment blocked off the end of neighbouring valleys, forming two lakes known as North and South Glory Holes. 12In the 1940s, farmers had to watch every little ditch in case it turned into another gully. They said the soil melted like sugar and ran like water. 11Each year, most farmers lost some animals and farm equipment over the canyon rim. Once anything went over it was abandoned because recovery was extremely difficult. 11Locals spoke of lying in bed on cold winter nights during heavy rain and hearing bangs that sounded like cannon fire, as big chunks of earth fell from the steep-sided walls into the canyons. 11Scientists have studied cores to find out how quickly sediments were deposited in the lakes from debris washed down the creek. After they had correlated the core sediment layers with the heavy rainfall records taken at Lumpkin, they tentatively estimated that canyon development started in 1846. 12 It was only 13 years later that the church had to be shifted to the other side of the road because the canyon had come too close! Formation of a state park By 1971, 448 hectares (1,108 acres)18 in the immediate area were set aside to become the Providence Canyon State Park to preserve and protect this unique area.2 The park is now known as one of the seven natural wonders of Georgia and is often called Georgia’s Little Grand Canyon. 18Visitors are able to walk through nine of the canyons that are part of the day access area, or around the trail that skirts the rim where views into the canyon are spectacular.8 Canyon keeps on growing Measurements taken between 1984 and 1994 confirm that the canyon is still growing mainly in width. 19 Even now fences have to be relocated and roads rerouted because of these changes.20So, it does not take millions of years for huge canyons to form—it just takes the right conditions. If it had not been seen to happen, hardly anyone would have believed it. Erosion after the global Flood would have been especially rapid through the still soft, freshly laid sediments. In fact, it has been documented in this magazine that erosion overall is happening so fast that the continents cannot be millions of years old or they would have all eroded away.21Providence Canyon beautifully illustrates how the geology of the earth is consistent with the short timescale . Georgia’s ‘Little Grand Canyon’ (1) View looking into a part of the canyon shows it disappearing deeply below the cover of trees. An old photograph (2) shows the canyon before foliage had taken root. The small stream running through the base represents only a tiny portion of the water which during storms has ravaged the sediment, stripping it away to leave this colossal hole in the ground. What began as tiny furrows in the ground due to poor farming and land practices has resulted in a landscape that is mute testimony to the power of water over a short time period.Downstream (3), the river reveals large amounts of sediment which has run off as drainage from the canyon area. Had the history of this site not been known it seems very likely that a much older age would have been assigned to it. How old is Grand Canyon? by Michael J. Oard The origin of Grand Canyon is a mystery unexplained by uniformitarian geology. In order to solve that mystery, uniformitarian scientists would like to know the date of its origin. The date for Grand Canyon started off older than 70 Ma. Then the western and central portions of the Canyon were dated as 5 to 6 Ma old—a date always uncomfortable with uniformitarian scientists since it implied rapid erosion within their paradigm. Recently, the Canyon has been redated, twice. One dating technique discovered that the western Canyon was about 17 Ma old. Another found that the western and central portions are 55 to 65 Ma old. Those who believe that the canyon is only 5 to 6 Ma claim these new dating methods are flawed, while the advocates of the new dating techniques claim the opposite. Regardless, none of these dates help resolve the origin of Grand Canyon from a uniformitarian point of view—all hypotheses have serious problems. Vertical cliffs and lack of talus indicate the Canyon is young, suggesting a catastrophic origin. The dam-breach hypothesis is currently the most popular creationist hypothesis, but it has numerous problems, two in particular that seem fatal. A second creationist hypothesis originates the Grand Canyon during late Flood channelized runoff. Figure 1. The antecedent stream hypothesis from a plaque near one of the Yakima River water gaps, Washington. The stream is first established, then the ridge slowly uplifts while the stream is able to erode through the barrier. Grand Canyon is one of the most awesome, readily seen deep canyons in the world. But yet its origin is cloaked in mystery. Grand Canyon also lies at the forefront of competing paradigms for its origin, namely the uniformitarian and catastrophic paradigms: “The famous landscape of the Grand Canyon lies along the front lines of competing scientific and non-scientific views of Earth’s antiquity and evolution.”1 So, the paradigm that provides a reasonable explanation for the origin of Grand Canyon would mostly likely be correct.Despite abundant data collected since John Wesley Powell’s first courageous trip down Grand Canyon in 1869,2 a uniformitarian theory for the origin of the Canyon is still unknown: “Regional geological knowledge of the Grand Canyon is especially rich and detailed, but it is frustratingly difficult to synthesize and communicate to the public.”1 In a popular book on the geology of Grand Canyon, Greer Price admitted: “But while the principles of erosion, like so much of geology, are simple, the detailed history of the Colorado River and its canyons remains elusive and difficult to grasp.”3 In another recent book, Wayne Ranney repeatedly notes how little is actually known about the origin of Grand Canyon: “The canyon’s birth is shrouded in hazy mystery, cloaked in intrigue, and filled with enigmatic puzzles. And although the Grand Canyon is one of the world’s most recognizable landscapes, it is remarkable how little is known about the details of its origin.”4 The difficulties of finding a good hypothesis for the origin of Grand Canyon is shown by periodic revision of the uniformitarian age of Grand Canyon. An earlier revolution in dating the Canyon For a long time Grand Canyon was considered old. Such an old age started after John Wesley Powell floated the river in 1869 and assumed the origin of Grand Canyon was by antecedence. An antecedent stream is defined as “A stream that was established before local uplift began and incised its channel at the same rate the land was rising; a stream that existed prior to the present topography.” 5 In other words, there was a river flowing before uplift on a landscape of low relief. Then a barrier, such as a mountain range or plateau, uplifted in the path of the stream, but the uplift was “so slow” that the stream or river was able to maintain its course by eroding down into the rising landscape. Powell was convinced this river was able to maintain its present course for tens of millions years while the mountains and plateaus slowly uplifted across its path. Figure 1 shows the antecedent stream hypothesis for the origin of the Yakima River water gaps. Powell and other early advocates of this hypothesis were dogmatic in their insistence (like current evolutionary dogmatism), despite the absence of evidence. 6 Their belief was simply that; an arbitrary deduction based on their uniformitarian faith. So, the Colorado River and Grand Canyon were assumed to be older than 70 Ma, the assumed uplift time of the Kaibab Plateau during the “Laramide orogeny”. This belief lasted about 60 years and was assumed to be a fact.7 Figure 2. Basalt lava flow that started from near the northwest rim of Grand Canyon and flowed down into Grand Canyon blocking the Colorado River for a short time.However, it was later realized that the Colorado River did not flow west of Grand Canyon through the Muddy Creek Formation and the overlying Hualapai Limestone. 8 Since the Muddy Creek Formation is dated as late Miocene or Pliocene, this means that Grand Canyon isyounger than late Miocene. More recent dates on basalt or ash from west of Grand Canyon in the Muddy Creek Formation, the Hualapai Limestone, and Bouse Formation gave an age for the Colorado River of about 5.5 Ma. 9 Such a young date within the uniformitarian dating system, 7% of the previously assumed date, spawned all kinds of speculation on the origin of Grand Canyon and the whereabouts of the “ancestral” Colorado River during the past 70 Ma. Grand Canyon had to cut down more than 1.5 km in less than 6 Ma! Then it was discovered that K-Ar dates of lava flows in western Grand Canyon ranged from 3 million to 1,000 years.10 Multiple lava flows, mostly from the northwest rim had flowed down into Grand Canyon (figure 2), blocking the Colorado River and causing many lakes to back up in Grand Canyon. Two lakes supposedly extended into Utah. 10 Lake deposits were discovered upstream in Grand Canyon and were cited as evidence of occasional large lava-dammed lakes. Even shorelines have been observed.11 Thus, such dates of basalt near the bottom of Grand Canyon showed that the Canyon was near its current depth several million years ago. Hence the Canyon must have been carved in even a shorter time of only a few million years within the uniformitarian paradigm! However, the uniformitarians could not quite come up with such rapid incision rates over 6 Ma. 12,13These were radical changes and made many geologists unconformable. Such quick development of a deep canyon within the uniformitarian paradigm contrasts sharply with the almost complete lack of erosional features within the walls of Grand Canyon. The horizontal strata represent almost 300 Ma of deposition, and yet extremely little erosion is found within and between layers in all that time. Especially revealing is the gap of 140 to 160 Ma between the flat contacts of the Muav and Redwall Limestones (figure 3). The knife sharp contact between the supposedly wind blown Coconino Sandstone and the subjacent Hermit Shale (figure 4) over more than 300 km represents 10 Ma missing with no erosion. Uniformitarians cannot appeal to some deep-sea environment protected from erosion for 300 Ma, since the claimed environments for the horizontal formations of Grand Canyon range from shallow marine to terrestrial. Such non-existent erosion for 300 Ma contrasts with the observation that at the current erosion rate, the continents can be worn down to sea level in only 10 Ma.14 This figure is a minimum. If other factors are included, the wearing of the continent down to sea level would probably be a maximum of around 50 Ma. Regardless, both times are short enough to expect abundant evidence for deep canyons and valleys in the walls of Grand Canyon. Because there is little or none, the walls of Grand Canyon support rapid deposition over large areas, consistent with the deposition during the Flood. Figure 3. The contact between the Redwall Limestone and the underlying subjacent Muav Limestone (arrow) from the North Kaibab Trail. There are 140 to 160 Ma of missing uniformitarian time at this contact. So, the 6 Ma age of Grand Canyon became established as the consensus view: “In spite of over a century of work on the Grand Canyon, there are still fundamental questions about the age of the canyon and the processes that have formed it. There is consensus (e.g. Young and Spamer, 2001) that the present Colorado River system through Grand Canyon took its shape only in the last 6 Ma, ca. 65 Ma after Laramide uplift of the Colorado Plateau and 10–20 Ma after the Sevier/Laramide highlands collapses to form the Basin and Range province in the Miocene.”15 It also had been assumed that the southwest Colorado Plateau significantly uplifted in the past 6 Ma to cause downward incision.13Not much changed for almost 50 years, except that some of the original K-Ar dates for the basalt flows within western Grand Canyon were found to be erroneous. The lavas were dated younger, which gave uniformitarian scientists about 5 Ma to erode Grand Canyon instead of a few million years: “Earlier 40K/40Ar dates indicated that Grand Canyon had been carved to essentially its present depth before 1.2 Ma. But new 40Ar/39Ar data cut this time frame approximately in half … ”16 This does not inspire confidence in K-Ar dating. However, it was also discovered that the impounded lakes east of the lava dams in Grand Canyon were very short lived.17 What about all those lake features well upstream? “Shorelines” and other evidence of impounded lakes in Grand Canyon have been “reinterpreted” as formed by other processes.18 The basalt dams apparently formed only small lakes that soon failed catastrophically. There certainly is no contradiction with the existence of these basalt-dammed lakes and the short post-Flood time scale. New “age” of Grand Canyon turns previous “age” on its head Figure 4. The contact between the Coconino Sandstone and the underlying subjacent Hermit Shale below (arrow) from the North Kaibab Trail. Ten million years are missing at this widespread, dead flat contact. Of course there have been previous consensuses on aspects of Grand Canyon history that have since come and gone. The established ages above, all worked out with meticulous radiometric dating techniques and detailed incision rates during the past 6 Ma, are now in the process of being tossed by a number of geologists.Three scientists publishing in Science19,20 determined that western Grand Canyon was carved about 17 Ma ago and eroded headward to connect the central and eastern Grand Canyon. Such a change in dates for the origin of Grand Canyon were based on U-Pb dating of cave speleothems assumed to record ground water changes as Grand Canyon deepened. It is interesting that this older date is actually a relief to some geologists, who seemed to have been internally chafing over the 6 Ma date for the beginning of Grand Canyon: “This [new] time scale is not surprising—many geologists have long suspected it—but the study uses an ingenious combination of methods to demonstrate it firmly for the first time (emphasis added).”21 Again, another supposedly firm date that cancels out previous “firm” dates.But that is not all, another group of scientists have dated the canyon by what is called apatite thermochronometry and discovered that a “proto-Grand Canyon” of kilometer-scale depth had incised by 55 Ma ago. 22 This means that “Grand Canyon” could have started eroding by 65 Ma ago and the last of the dinosaurs may have seen it, as a internet science news service states: “How could everyone have gotten it so wrong? New research indicates that the Grand Canyon is perhaps 65 million years old, far older than previously thought—and old enough that the last surviving dinosaurs may have stomped along its rim.”23 Now that is really turning the previous Grand Canyon dates on their head! So, in this new scenario, the Colorado Plateau uplifted during the Laramide orogeny and the Grand Canyon is of similar age.24 Who knows whether the uniformitarian belief in the origin of Grand Canyon, in the future, will turn full circle and come back to Powell’s antecedence hypothesis. All they have to do is date Grand Canyon a little older than the Laramide uplift of the southwest Colorado Plateau. The old guard fights back The new dates, of course, leave a lot of unanswered questions, such as where was the Colorado River west of Grand Canyon before 6 Ma? Predictably, the old guard is not happy with the new dating results for Grand Canyon. Some researchers, who have spent years trying to solve the origin of Grand Canyon, claim in letters to the editor that the new results contradict several lines of “established” geological knowledge: “This contradicts several lines of published geological knowledge in the region, hinges upon unjustified hydrogeological assumptions, and is based on two anomalous data points for which we offer alternative explanations.”1 Such claims had no impact on those geologists who generated the new results: “Although it is true that this concept does contradict pre-early 1990s knowledge, it does not contradict more recent findings … ”25 But, a full assault on these new dates was published in the November 2008 Geology.26 Karl Karlstrom and colleagues dogmatically insist that Grand Canyon is less than 6 Ma old. They claim that they have falsified a key assumption used in the dating of the western Canyon at 17 Ma. This is the assumption that water table decline, which supposedly can be dated from speleothems in caves, is not equivalent to Grand Canyon incision rate. It is interesting that these researchers “discovered” just the right incision rates for the Canyon to be a little less than 6 Ma. They apparently believe the dates of 55 to 65 Ma ago for “proto Grand Canyon”, since they do not challenge these dates. Instead, they state that western Grand Canyon “reused” these preexisting Tertiary paleocanyons. It is hard to tell how this controversy will turn out. Figure 5. Block diagram of the superimposed stream hypothesis. The stream maintains its same course as most of the covermass (top layer) is eroded (illustration drawn by Bryan Miller).Regardless, it is quite interesting (to creationists) that a previous uniformitarian history with “firm” dates, etc. could simply be brushed off by some researchers with “new” dates. And these new dates are also claimed to be flawed. It tells me that the uniformitarian dating methods and conclusions really are not that solid to begin with, and that they are mostly the results of “consensus”. Uniformitarian origin hypotheses show little evidence Figure 6. Kanab Canyon as seen from the Colorado River. The dates still do not solve the main problem and that is the origin of Grand Canyon. Over the years uniformitarian scientists have used the assumed ages of events in the Grand Canyon area to postulate a number of hypotheses for the origin. There have been generally three uniformitarian hypotheses for its origin: (1) the antecedent stream, (2) stream piracy, and (3) lake spillover.4,6,27-32 Superposition (figure 5), one of the ideas for the origin of water gaps, was considered by only a few early geologists, but was soon seen as impossible. A water gap is defined as: “A deep pass in a mountain ridge, through which a stream flows; esp. a narrow gorge or ravine cut through resistant rocks by an antecedent stream.”33 Although this definition was made for a mountain ridge, it applies to a perpendicular cut through any topographical barrier, including a plateau.34 Furthermore, antecedence is only one of about four hypotheses and should not be in the definition of a landform. Superposition is the hypothesis where rivers maintain their course while eroding straight down through a layer of sedimentary rocks (figure 5). After the layer erodes the river ends up flowing through ridges and mountains.As already mentioned, the antecedent stream hypothesis for Grand Canyon was rejected in the mid twentieth century. So, that leaves only stream piracy and lake spillover as currently believed hypotheses. Figure 7. Havasu Canyon as seen from near the entrance to Grand Canyon. The stream piracy hypothesis is incredible Stream piracy in relation to Grand Canyon has many problems. 27,31 It asserts that a stream plunging from the uplifted or uplifting Colorado Plateau into the Lake Mead area eroded headward 160 to 320 km and captured the ancient Colorado River. This is an incredible claim with no evidence, which is one of several serious problems with the hypothesis.35 The lake spillover hypothesis does not hold water In 1934, geologist Eliot Blackwelder 36 proposed that Grand Canyon was eroded by the spillover of a lake ponded northeast of the Kaibab Plateau. 37 His suggestion remained obscure but has recently been revived from the dustbin of rejected geological hypotheses.28,37,38-40 The hypothesis proposes that a lake developed in the region of the Little Colorado River area, called Lake Hopi or Lake Bidahochi, with another lake possibly existing northeast of the Kaibab Plateau. At some point the lake or lakes breached the Kaibab Plateau to form Grand Canyon. However, there are also many problems with this hypothesis.First, there is no evidence for a lake northeast of the Kaibab Plateau.37 Second, only a minor proportion of the Bidahochi Formation, in the northern and eastern Little Colorado River Valley, is considered a lake deposit,41 and that interpretation rests only on the sediments being fine grained.42 Third, recent work has reinterpreted these lake sediments as shallow water sediments formed in an ephemeral desert lake.43,44 Given that situation, “Lake Hopi” would have been small and there would not have been enough water to erode the Canyon.Fourth, the elevation of Grand Canyon through the Kaibab upwarp is significantly higher than the spillover points for these putative lakes. The lowest point of Grand Canyon through the Kaibab Plateau is 7,300 feet (2,225 m), while the lowest points through the Kaibab Plateau are around 6,000 feet (1,830 m) to the north and south of the highest point.Fifth, if the lake did overtop the Kaibab Plateau, it would not follow the current path of Grand Canyon, because the slope of the topography isperpendicular to the current path of Grand Canyon. 45 The water would have run off to the southwest, but instead the Canyon turns to the northwest after breaching the Kaibab Plateau. Some scientists have suggested the overspill followed a previous channel cut during the period of northeast water flow on the plateaus. This may help for part of the path, but not for western Grand Canyon.The overspill hypothesis is admittedly speculative, even by geologists who believe in it.46 Another Powell recently summarized the evidence: “Thus, lake overflow and integration appears to be another speculative idea—an educated geological guess—without direct evidence.”43 Table 1 summarizes five major problems with the spillover hypothesis. Table 1. Five major problems with the spillover hypothesis for the origin of Grand Canyon 1. No evidence for a lake northeast of the Kaibab Plateau 2. Only a minor portion of bidahochi Formation is claimed for “Lake Hopi” How about a date of 4,500 years? The myriad of dates 3. Supposed lake sediments in Bidahochi Formation now seen as formed in small lake proposed for the origin of the Canyon calls into question all 4. Spillover point across Kaibab Plateau much lower then top of Grand Canyon the uniformitarian dating methods. Creationists have 5. If lake overspilled, it is unlikely to have followed current course of Grand Canyon shown that uniformitarian dating methods are inaccurate.47 As far as the millions-of-year ages are concerned, such old ages are relished because it reinforces their uniformitarian and evolutionary beliefs. A period of accelerated radiometric decay in the past, as creationists have discovered,48,49 makes the age of Grand Canyon much younger.Other features indicate that the Canyon is very young and rapidly formed, such as the lack of talus and the vertical walled cliffs. It is interesting that a catastrophic origin is usually the first thought that comes to peoples’ minds when they first see Grand Canyon, 50,51 so we should look for a fairly recent catastrophe for the origin of Grand Canyon. Two young age hypotheses There are two hypotheses for the origin of Grand Canyon that have been developed by creationists. One is the dam-breach hypothesis.27,52 After first believing in this hypothesis, 53 and thinking about it for 20 years, I have come to realize that there is very little evidence for its support.54 Among the problems, there seems to be two fatal ones. These are the lack of evidence for lakes east and northeast of the Kaibab Plateau and the long tributary Kanab and Havasu Canyons. Both of these canyons start about 50 miles (80 km) north and south, respectively, of Grand Canyon and cut all the way down to the level of Grand Canyon. At the level of the Colorado River, Kanab and Havasu Canyons are a mile high and about one quarter mile wide (figures 6 and 7). For such long, deep tributaries to form, water must extend a hundred miles wide and channel into the main canyon of Grand Canyon. No dam-breach scenario that I am aware of suggests such a wide current. Besides, there is no evidence of such a wide current, which should be abundant using the Lake Missoula flood as an analog. 55The second hypothesis is the suggestion that late Flood channelized flow 56 carved the Canyon.57-58Grand Canyon is one of over a thousand water gaps across the earth, which could have easily been carved during late Flood channelized flow. 59,60 The fleshing out of this hypothesis will be published elsewhere.61-63 Grand Canyon strata show geologic time is imaginary by Tas Walker Visitors to Grand Canyon hear the usual geological interpretation involving millions of years. We are told that the horizontal formation at the bottom, the Tapeats Sandstone, was deposited 550 million years ago, and the Kaibab Limestone that forms the rim is 250 million years old (see diagram below). It is difficult to imagine the immense time involved in this interpretation.Interestingly, the Grand Canyon strata extend over 400 km (250 miles) into the eastern part of Arizona. 1 There, they are at least 1,600 m (one mile) lower in elevation. Supposedly, the uplift of the Grand Canyon area occurred about 70 million years ago—hundreds of millions of years after the sediments were deposited. One would expect that hundreds of millions of years would have been plenty of time for the sediment to cement into hard rock.Yet, the evidence indicates that the sediments were soft and unconsolidated when they bent. Instead of fracturing like the basement did, the entire layer thinned as it bent. The sand grains show no evidence that the material was brittle and rock-hard, because none of the grains are elongated. 1 Neither has the mineral cementing the grains been broken and recrystallized. Instead, the evidence points to the whole 1,200-m (4,000-ft) thickness of strata being still ‘plastic’ when it was uplifted. In other words, the millions of years of geologic time are imaginary. This ‘plastic’ deformation of Grand Canyon strata dramatically demonstrates the reality of the catastrophic global Flood. A canyon in six days! by John Morris Creationists have long had a deep interest in magnificent Grand Canyon. Visitors to this awesome wonder of the natural world, as well as eighth-grade Earth science students, have traditionally been taught that it formed slowly. It was said that the Colorado River, much as we see it today, carved out this immense gorge over tens of millions of years.In recent years, Earth scientists have increasingly rejected that idea. Although they still speak in terms of millions of years, they consider that great volumes of water occasionally rushing through the area played a much bigger part in carving the canyon. Creationist geologists agree that rushing water formed Grand Canyon. Some suggest it was the floodwaters as they flowed off the continent . Others suggest it was a post-Flood regional catastrophe caused when a huge mass of inland water, left over from the Flood (and excessive post-Flood rainfall), suddenly breached its natural restraints and rushed to the sea.The idea that canyons invariably take vast ages to form is unfortunately very firmly cemented in the public mind. Even today, most school students are, regrettably, still taught the older, longage model of formation for Grand Canyon, for instance. A small drainage ditch, like the one pictured (at top of page), was turned into the impressive canyon, well over 30 m (100 ft) deep, shown in the three other images. Layering evident in these photos was revealed as floodwaters cut through the ground. Reality check Let me introduce you to Burlingame Canyon near Walla Walla, Washington, a small-scale analogy to Grand Canyon, which was observed to form in less than six days. It measures 450 m (1,500 ft) long, up to 35 m (120 ft) deep, and again as wide, winding through a hillside. In 1904, the Gardena Farming District constructed a series of irrigation canals to provide water to this normally rather arid high desert area. In March 1926, winds collected tumbleweeds at a concrete constriction along one of thecanals situated on an elevated mesa, choking the flow of water, which at 2 m 3 (80 cubic ft) per second was unusually high due to spring rains. To clean out the obstruction, engineers diverted the flow into a diversion ditch leading to nearby Pine Creek. Before this, the ditch was rather small, at no location greater than 3 m (10 ft) deep and 1.8 m (6 ft) wide, and often with no water in it at all.The abnormally high flow crowded into the ditch and careened along until it cascaded down the mesa in an impressive waterfall. Suddenly, under this extreme pressure and velocity, the underlying stratum gave way and headward erosion began in earnest. What once was an insignificant ditch became a gully. The gully became a gulch. The gulch became a miniature Grand Canyon.The eroded strata consisted of rather soft sand and clay which was saturated by the recent rains. The dewatering of the saturated sediments into the now-open ditch enhanced the erosion. The rapidly moving water could dislodge the particles and carry them downstream, leaving underlying sediments vulnerable to further erosion. In total, these six days of runaway ditch erosion removed around 150,000 m 3 (five million cubic ft) of silt, sand and rock.Yes, canyons can form rapidly. A good maxim to remember is, ‘It either takes a little water and a long time, or a lot of water and a short time.’ But then, we’ve never seen a canyon form slowly with just a little water. Whenever scientific observations are made, it’s a lot of water and a short time. Startling evidence for global flood Footprints and sand ‘dunes’ in a Grand Canyon sandstone! by Andrew A. Snelling and Steven A. Austin Figure 1. A panoramic view of the Grand Canyon from the South Rim at Yavapai Point. The Coconino Sandstone is the thick buff-coloured layer close to the top of the canyon walls. Compare with Figure 2. ‘There is no sight on earth which matches Grand Canyon. There are other canyons, other mountains and other rivers, but this Canyon excels all in scenic grandeur. Can any visitor, upon viewing Grand Canyon, grasp and appreciate the spectacle spread before him? The ornate sculpture work and the wealth of color are like no other landscape. They suggest an alien world. The scale is too outrageous. The sheer size and majesty engulf the intruder, surpassing his ability to take it in.’1 Figure 2. Grand Canyon in cross-section showing the names given to the different rock units by geologists. Anyone who has stood on the rim and looked down into Grand Canyon would readily echo these words as one’s breath is taken away with the sheer magnitude of the spectacle. The Canyon stretches for 277 miles (446 kilometres) through northern Arizona, attains a depth of more than 1 mile (1.6 kilometres), and ranges from 4 miles (6.4 kilometres) to 18 miles (29 kilometres) in width. In the walls of the Canyon can be seen flat-lying rock layers that were once sand, mud or lime. Now hardened, they look like pages of a giant book as they stretch uniformly right through the Canyon and underneath the plateau country to the north and south and deeper to the east. The Coconino Sandstone To begin to comprehend the awesome scale of these rock layers, we can choose any one for detailed examination. Perhaps the easiest of these rock layers to spot, since it readily catches the eye, is a thick, pale buff coloured to almost white sandstone near the top of the Canyon walls. Geologists have given the different rock layers names, and this one is called the Coconino Sandstone (see Figures 1 and 2). It is estimated to have an average thickness of 315 feet (96 metres) and, with equivalent sandstones to the east, covers an area of about 200,000 square miles (518,000 square kilometres).2 That is an area more than twice the size of the Australian State of Victoria, or almost twice the area of the US State of Colorado! Thus the volume of this sandstone is conservatively estimated at 10,000 cubic miles (41,700 cubic kilometres). That’s a lot of sand! What do these rock layers in Grand Canyon mean? What do they tell us about the earth’s past? For example, how did all the sand in this Coconino Sandstone layer and its equivalents get to where it is today? Figure 3. Cross beds (inclined sub-layering) within the Coconino Sandstone, as seen on the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon.To answer these questions geologists study the features within rock layers like the Coconino Sandstone, and even the sand grains themselves. An easily noticed feature of the Coconino Sandstone is the distinct cross layers of sand within it called cross beds (see Figure 3). For many years evolutionary geologists have interpreted these cross beds by comparing them with currently forming sand deposits — the sand dunes in deserts which are dominated by sand grains made up of the mineral quartz, and which have inclined internal sand beds. Thus it has been proposed that the Coconino Sandstone accumulated over thousands and thousands of years in an immense windy desert by migrating sand dunes, the cross beds forming on the down-wind sides of the dunes as sand was deposited there.3The Coconino Sandstone is also noted for the large number of fossilized footprints, usually in sequences called trackways. These appear to have been made by four-footed vertebrates moving across the original sand surfaces (see Figure 4). These fossil footprint trackways were compared to the tracks made by reptiles on desert sand dunes,4 so it was then assumed that these fossilized footprints in the Coconino Sandstone must have been made in dry desert sands which were then covered up by wind-blown sand, subsequent cementation forming the sandstone and fossilizing the prints.Yet another feature that evolutionary geologists have used to argue that the Coconino Sandstone represents the remains of a long period of dry desert conditions is the sand grains themselves. Geologists have studied the sand grains from modern desert dunes and under the microscope they often show pitted or frosted surfaces. Similar grain surface textures have also been observed in sandstone layers containing very thick cross beds such as the Coconino Sandstone, so again this comparison has strengthened the belief that the Coconino Sandstone was deposited as dunes in a desert. Figure 4: A fossilized quadruped trackway in the Coconino Sandstone on display in the Grand Canyon Natural History Association’s Yavapai Point Museum at the South Rim. At first glance this interpretation would appear to be an embarrassment to creation geologists who are unanimous in their belief that it must have been the Flood that deposited the flat lying beds of what were once sand, mud and lime, but are now exposed as the rock layers in the walls of the Canyon.Above the Coconino Sandstone is the Toroweap Formation and below is the Hermit Formation, both of which geologists agree are made up of sediments that were either deposited by and/or in water.5,6 How could there have been a period of dry desert conditions in the middle of the Flood year when all the high hills were covered by water?This seeming problem has certainly not been lost on those, even from within the creationists community, opposed to Flood geologists and creationists in general. For example, Dr Davis Young, Professor of Geology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in a recent book being marketed in Christian bookshops, has merely echoed the interpretations made by evolutionary geologists of the characteristics of the Coconino Sandstone, arguing against the Flood as being the agent for depositing the Coconino Sandstone. He is most definite in his consideration of the desert dune model: ‘The Coconino Sandstone contains spectacular cross bedding, vertebrate track fossils, and pitted and frosted sand grain surfaces. All these features are consistent with formation of the Coconino as desert sand dunes. The sandstone is composed almost entirely of quartz grains, and pure quartz sand does not form in floods … no flood of any size could have produced such deposits of sand …’7 .Those footprints The footprint trackways in the Coconino Sandstone have recently been re-examined in the light of experimental studies by Dr Leonard Brand of Loma Linda University in California.8 His research program involved careful surveying and detailed measurements of 82 fossilized vertebrate trackways discovered in the Coconino Sandstone along the Hermit Trail in Grand Canyon. He then observed and measured 236 experimental trackways made by living amphibians and reptiles in experimental chambers. These tracks were formed on sand beneath the water, on moist sand at the water’s edge, and on dry sand, the sand mostly sloping at an angle of 25 degrees, although some observations were made on slopes of 15deg; and 20° for comparison. Observations were also made of the underwater locomotion of five species of salamanders (amphibians) both in the laboratory and in their natural habitat, and measurements were again taken of their trackways.A detailed statistical analysis of these data led to the conclusion, with a high degree of probability that the fossil tracks must have been made underwater. Whereas the experimental animals produce footprints under all test conditions, both up and down the 25° slopes of the laboratory ‘dunes’, all but one of the fossil trackways could only have been made by the animals in question climbing uphill. Toe imprints were generally distinct, whereas the prints of the soles were indistinct. These and other details were present in over 80% of the fossil, underwater and wet sand tracks, but less than 12% of the dry sand and damp sand tracks had any toe marks. Dry sand uphill tracks were usually just depressions, with no details. Wet sand tracks were quite different from the fossil tracks in certain features. Added to this, the observations of the locomotive behaviour of the living salamanders indicated that all spent the majority of their locomotion time walking on the bottom, underwater, rather than swimming.Putting together all of his observations, Dr Brand thus came to the conclusion that the configurations and characteristics of the animals trackways made on the submerged sand surfaces most closely resembled the fossilized quadruped trackways of the Coconino Sandstone. Indeed, when the locomotion behaviour of the living amphibians is taken into account, the fossilized trackways can be interpreted as implying that the animals must have been entirely under water (not swimming at the surface) and moving upslope (against the current) in an attempt to get out of the water. This interpretation fits with the concept of a global Flood, which overwhelmed even four-footed reptiles and amphibians that normally spend most of their time in the water.Not content with these initial studies, Dr Brand has continued (with the help of a colleague) to pursue this line of research. He recently published further results, 9 which were so significant that a brief report of their work appeared in Science News10 and Geology Today. 11His careful analysis of the fossilized trackways in the Coconino Sandstone, this time not only from the Hermit Trail in Grand Canyon but from other trails and locations, again revealed that all but one had to have been made by animals moving up cross bed slopes. Furthermore, these tracks often show that the animals were moving in one direction while their feet were pointing in a different direction. It would appear that the animals were walking in a current of water, not air. Other trackways start or stop abruptly, with no sign that the animals’ missing tracks were covered by some disturbance such as shifting sediments. It appears that these animals simply swam away from the sediment.Because many of the tracks have characteristics that are ‘just about impossible’ to explain unless the animals were moving underwater, Dr Brand suggested that newt-like animals made the tracks while walking under water and being pushed by a current. To test his ideas, he and his colleague videotaped living newts walking through a laboratory tank with running water. All 238 trackways made by the newts had features similar to the fossilized trackways in the Coconino Sandstone, and their videotaped behaviour while making the trackways thus indicated how the animals that made the fossilized trackways might have been moving.These additional studies confirmed the conclusions of his earlier researches. Thus, Dr Brand concluded that all his data suggest that the Coconino Sandstone fossil tracks should not be used as evidence for desert wind deposition of dry sand to form the Coconino Sandstone, but rather point to underwater deposition. These evidence from such careful experimental studies by a Flood geologist overturn the original interpretation by evolutionists of these Coconino Sandstone fossil footprints, and thus call into question their use by Young and others as an argument against the Flood. Desert ‘dunes’? The desert sand dune model for the origin of the Coconino Sandstone has also recently been challenged by Glen Visher 12, Professor of Geology at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, and not a creationist geologist. Visher noted that large storms, or amplified tides, today produce submarine sand dunes called ‘sand waves’. These modern sand waves on the sea floor contain large cross beds composed of sand with very high quartz purity. Visher has thus interpreted the Coconino Sandstone as a submarine sand wave deposit accumulated by water, not wind. This of course is directly contrary to Young’s claims, which after all are just the repeated opinions of other evolutionary geologists.Furthermore, there is other evidence that casts grave doubts on the view that the Coconino Sandstone cross beds formed in desert dunes. The average angle of slope of the Coconino cross beds is about 25° from the horizontal, less than the average angle of slope of sand beds within most modern desert sand dunes. Those sand beds slope at an angle of more than 25°, with some beds inclined as much as 30° to 34°, the angle of ‘rest’ of dry sand. On the other hand, modern oceanic sand waves do not have ‘avalanche’ faces of sand as common as desert dunes, and therefore, have lower average dips of cross beds.Visher also points to other positive evidence for accumulation of the Coconino Sandstone in water. Within the Coconino Sandstone is a feature known technically as ‘parting lineation’, which is known to be commonly formed on sand surfaces during brief erosional bursts beneath fast-flowing water. It is not known from any desert sand dunes. Thus Visher also uses this feature as evidence of vigorous water currents accumulating the sand, which forms the Coconino Sandstone.Similarly, Visher has noted that the different grain sizes of sand within any sandstone are a reflection of the process that deposited the sand. Consequently, he performed sand grain size analyses of the Coconino Sandstone and modern sand waves, and found that the Coconino Sandstone does not compare as favourably to dune sands from modern deserts.He found that not only is the pitting not diagnostic of the last Process to have deposited the sand grains (pitting can, for example, form first by wind impacts, followed by redeposition by water), but pitting and frosting of sand grains can form outside a desert environment. 13 For example, geologists have described how pitting on the surface of sand grains can form by chemical processes during the cementation of sand. Sand wave deposition Figure 5. Schematic diagram showing the formation of cross beds during sand deposition by migration of underwater sand waves due to sustained water flow. A considerable body of evidence is now available which indicates that the Coconino Sandstone was deposited by the ocean, and not by desert accumulation of sand dunes as emphatically maintained by most evolutionary geologists, including Davis Young. The cross beds within the Coconino Sandstone (that is, the inclined beds of sand within the overall horizontal layer of sandstone) are excellent evidence that ocean currents moved the sand rapidly as dune-like mounds called sand waves.14 Figure 5 shows the way sand waves have been observed to produce cross beds in layers of sand. The water current moves over the sand surface building up mounds of sand. The current erodes sand from the ‘up-current’ side of the sand wave and deposits it as inclined layers on the ‘down-current’ side of the sand wave. Thus the sand wave moves in the direction of current flow as the inclined strata continue to be deposited on the down-current side of the sand wave. Continued erosion of sand by the current removes both the up-current side and top of the sand wave, the only part usually preserved being just the lower half of the down-current side. Thus the height of the cross beds preserved is just a fraction of the original sand wave height. Continued transportation of further sand will result in repeated layers containing inclined cross beds. These will be stacked up on each other.Sand waves have been observed on certain parts of the ocean floor and in rivers, and have been produced in laboratory studies. Consequently, it has been demonstrated that the sand wave height is related to the water depth.15 As the water depth increases so does the height of the sand waves which are produced. The heights of the sand waves are approximately one-fifth of the water depth. Similarly, the velocities of the water currents that produce sand waves have been determined.Thus we have the means to calculate both the depth and velocity of the water responsible for transporting as sand waves the sand that now makes up the cross beds of the Coconino Sandstone. The thickest sets of cross beds in the Coconino Sandstone so far reported are 30 feet (9 metres) thick. 16 Cross beds of that height imply sand waves at least 60 feet (18 metres) high and a water depth of around 300 feet (between 90 and 95 metres). For water that deep to make and move sand waves as high as 60 feet (18 metres) the minimum current velocity would need to be over 3 feet per second (95 centimetres per second) or 2 miles per hour. The maximum current velocity would have been almost 5.5 feet per second (165 cm or 1.65 metres per second) or 3.75 miles per hour. Beyond that velocity experimental and observational evidence has shown that flat sand beds only would be formed.Now to have transported in such deep water the volume of sand that now makes up the Coconino Sandstone these current velocities would have to have been sustained in the one direction perhaps for days. Modern tides and normal ocean currents do not have these velocities in the open ocean, although deep-sea currents have been reported to attain velocities of between 50 cm and 250 cm (2.5 metres) per second through geographical restrictions. Thus catastrophic events provide the only mechanism, which can produce high velocity ocean currents over a wide area.Hurricanes (or cyclones in the southern hemisphere) are thought to make modern sand waves of smaller size than those that have produced the cross beds in the Coconino Sandstone, but no measurements of hurricane driven currents approaching these velocities in deep water have been reported. The most severe modern ocean currents known have been generated during a tsunami or ‘tidal wave’. In shallow oceans tsunamiinduced currents have been reported on occasion to exceed 500 cm (5 metres) per second, and currents moving in the one direction have been sustained for hours.19 Such an event would be able to move large quantities of sand and, in its waning stages, build huge sand waves in deep water. Consequently, a tsunami provides the best modern analogy for understanding how large-scale cross beds such as those in the Coconino Sandstone could form. Global Flood? We can thus imagine how the Flood would deposit the Coconino Sandstone (and its equivalents), which covers an area of 200,000 square miles (518,000 square kilometres) averages 315 feet (96 metres) thick, and contains a volume of sand conservatively estimated at 10,000 cubic miles (41,700 cubic kilometres). But where could such an enormous quantity of sand come from? Cross beds within the Coconino dip consistently toward the south, indicating that the sand came from the north. However, along its northern occurrence, the Coconino rests directly on the Hermit Formation, which consists of siltstone and shale and so would not have been an ample source of sand of the type now found in the Coconino Sandstone. Consequently, this enormous volume of sand would have to have been transported a considerable distance, perhaps at least 200 or 300 miles (320 or 480 kilometres). At the current velocities envisaged sand could be transported that distance in a matter of a few days!Thus the evidence within the Coconino Sandstone does not support the evolutionary geologists interpretation of slow and gradual deposition of sand in a desert environment with dunes being climbed by wandering fourfooted vertebrates. On the contrary, a careful examination of the evidence, backed up by experiments and observations of processes operating today indicates catastrophic deposition of the sand by deep fast-moving water in a matter of days, totally consistent with conditions envisaged during the Flood. HOW WERE LIMESTONE CAVES FORMED The age of the Jenolan Caves, Australia by Emil Silvestru The Jenolan Caves system is multi-phased with overlapping meteoric and hydrothermal speleogenesis. Dating of this system was elusive until recently when illite from clays assumed to be of paleokarstic origin was dated as being of Carboniferous age, implying that the Jenolan Caves are at least of that age. However, there are serious problems both with the karstological and dating approaches that led to this age determination. Some sediments appear to be older than the paleokarst that hosts them. The geomorphology, particularly the direction of the surface drainage, is difficult to explain unless pre-existing conduits of hydrothermal origin are admitted, which could have formed during the final stages of the Flood. The evolutionary interpretation of the paleokarst and the sediments in it is riddled with difficulties and leaves many basic questions unanswered. As for the dating, besides the well-known problems with the K–Ar radiometric dating method, the particular geological and karstological setting of the Jenolan Caves provides various sources of excess 40Ar which would yield exaggerated ages. Location and setting Figure 1. Outcrops of the Jenolan Caves Limestone in the Jenolan River area. (After Osbourne4). The ‘Jenolan Caves’ are contained mainly to the large limestone outcrop at the bottom of the diagram where road access is provided. The Jenolan Caves are located 175 km west of Sydney and are a major tourist attraction. The local Aborigines knew the caves as Binoomea (Dark Places) and probably considered them a dangerous place. In 1838 James Whalan discovered the caves as he was searching for missing cattle, possibly stolen by the cattle thief and escaped convict James McKeown. In fact, one of the less visited caves in the area is called McKeown’s Hole. The initial name for the caves was Fish River Caves: the present name was adopted in 1884 after the government of New South Wales took over the management of the system in 1866. The name is derived from the Aboriginal for ‘high place’, referring to the heights above the caves.1 There are nine show caves and the sum of all known passages in the caves is 22,503 m. 2The caves even provided the name for the limestones in which they are located: the Jenolan Caves Limestone (JCL) believed to be of Late Silurian age. The JCL outcrops as a narrow band (250 m wide) over a strike length of 5 km in the caves area, continuing north as a series of isolated outcrops for a further 4 km, attaining a maximum thickness of 265 m at the Caves House (figure 1).3 The dip is generally steep and quite variable, the layers being nearly vertical in many places.To the west, the limestone is faulted against Ordovician andesite and laminated siliceous mudstone, whilst to the east the limestone is overlain by silicic volcaniclastics. To the north, east and south of the caves Carboniferous granitic plutons intrude the sedimentary sequence.3The scientific literature about the caves is limited and leaves many significant karstological questions unanswered. The caves The Jenolan Caves proper consist of interconnected passages and rooms of various shapes and sizes, north and south of the ‘centrepiece’ of the location, the Grand Archway. The caves on each side of this major landmark are distinctly different: south of the Grand Archway the caves comprise a series of large dome-shaped chambers, termed cupolas, formed by the dissolution of the limestone and interconnected by north-south trending passages. Recent diving explorations in the Mammoth Cave, one of the Jenolan Caves, have revealed even larger, flooded cupolas—up to 100 m high—below the water table (Daniel Cove, official cave guide, personal communication, January 2004). There is also a large breakdown (formed by the breaking down of the ceiling and walls) chamber, the Exhibition Chamber.3 Cupolas are not characteristic north of the Grand Archway, where multi-level, north-south trending passages are the norm. The northern caves contain significant amounts of coarse alluvial sediment which does not display evidence of high velocity flow. 3One major characteristic of the caves is that they repeatedly intersect what are believed to be paleokarstic deposits: these are deposits found in the caves that predate the cave formation. 3,4 Osborne4 has proposed karsting episodes during the Late Carboniferous, Early Permian, Permian, Late Cretaceous, Tertiary and the Cainozoic (table 1).Recently, the same author followed up by identifying clays inside the caves that have been dated to the Carboniferous.3 The Jenolan Caves conundrum Table 1. Osbourne’s4 framework chronology for the Jenolan Caves. The number against the process indicates the number of times it has taken place. Existing literature acknowledges that, unlike the vast majority of documented cases, some sections of the Jenolan Caves and caves in other karst areas in Eastern Australia have developed along alleged paleokarst deposits which would have acted as guiding features. Some authors like Ford 5 believe that such situations are due to a different type of speleogenesis (cave formation), namely per ascensum hydrothermal speleogenesis. Hydrothermal solutions are driven by thermal convection through the limestone and in places have followed pre-existing paleokarst filling. Consequently Osborne4 suggested that at least two of his proposed paleokarsting episodes, the Early Permian and the Late Cretaceous, were in fact hydrothermal.There are not many cases in the karstological literature in which so many speleogenetic phases, allegedly covering over 300 million years, have unfolded in such a small lithostratigraphic unit. As a matter of fact, it may well be that this is the longest overlapping speleogenesis anywhere in the world!Osborne 4 and Osborne et al.3 have pointed out that the Jenolan Caves have a special characteristic: parallel surface and underground drainages. The semi-dry channels of the Jenolan River and Camp Creek are closely followed, almost bend-by-bend, by the present underground drainages. This also appears to be the case for the paleochannels above the present rivers and previous, now dry or sediment-filled, caves.These unusual characteristics are part of a broader characteristic of the Jenolan Caves and their surroundings which seems to be ignored in the literature I consulted. The surface drainage of the Jenolan River and Camp Creek is longitudinal to the structure in which the JCL represents a limestone bar that is, a narrow, long limestone outcrop surrounded by non-karstic formations. In countless field examples, such bars are cut more or less perpendicularly by the hydrographic network, oftentimes through some of the most spectacular gorges. 6 Such cases are even more characteristic when the limestone bars were covered by other sediments in which the valleys were encased. The Jenolan Caves area presents enough evidence to suggest that the limestone was at some point covered by Permian conglomerates and sandstones and that valleys were cut in those formations.Longitudinal drainages represent a marked exception and even when they occur, the valleys are cut along the boundary between the limestones and the adjacent rocks. The Jenolan River and Camp Creek, however, are mostly confined within the narrow, less than 300 m wide, limestone bar. Such a setting is most unusual and is an intrinsic characteristic of the limestone, implying that conduits existed within the limestone at the time it was first exposed to karsting. In other words, the limestones were already karstified without any connection with the surface! Only one type of karsting can achieve this: hydrothermal, per ascensum karsting. Hydrothermal karsting In the karstological literature ‘hydrothermal’ refers to ‘warm water’ as against hot mineral rich magmatic emanations. There is evidence that the same solutions can change their characteristics, dissolving rather than depositing minerals. 7 I have referred to this type of karsting as ‘endogenous karsting’. 8 Osborne3 does not define the Jenolan Caves as hydrothermal karsting (HTK) but his attribution of pyrite in the paleokarst fills to hydrothermal activity seems to suggest endogenous karsting rather than thermal water activity. HTK seems to always involve two stages: 1) the excavation of the karstic voids and 2) their total or partial filling with hydrothermal deposits.I have dealt extensively with HTK, 9–11 especially in the context of paleokarsts, pointing out that paleokarst features surviving over extended periods of time in active karst areas represents a huge problem. Yet the scientific literature I consulted seems to completely ignore that and proposes repeated, overlapping hydrothermal and normal, meteoric karsting and speleogenesis over 300 million years, with each phase leaving its own signature and karst network. This involves marine transgressions which have invaded and filled the caves with layered crinoidal limestone.3,4 Yet crinoids would have not lived inside submerged caves. The notion of limestone accumulation inside a submerged cave stretches the imagination especially in this case where the authors have specifically emphasized the lack of calcite in the cave samples.12The only kind of calcite found in these sediments is in the form of clasts coming from the host limestone. Figure 2. Recently cemented coarse gravel from the Thanksgiving Cave (Vancouver Island, Canada) found in an area frequently flooded by the subterranean stream. Note the cementcoated cobble in the centre.I have seen recent calcite-cemented alluvia in Imperial Cave in the area where the lower fossil cave connects to the active cave. Cemented alluvia is a common feature in most active caves (figure 2) and I have even found it on the bottom of a flowing subterranean stream in the cave Huda lui Papară in Romania. But such cementing will never occur in salt water, during the submerged phase of the JCL.In normal spelean conditions soluted calcite from the host limestone will always end up in the cave sediments, even more so after an alleged 8 phases of karstification covering 300 million years! Osborne’s description of the paleokarst deposits3,4 suggests that they are a clearly separated entity within the host limestone. As the assembly of the JCL was submitted to HTK one would expect that all these entities—if they predated the HTK—would have been seriously affected and not preserved untouched. Such karsting develops by massive fronts of hydrothermal fluids ascending through the host rock and all existing discontinuities, paleokarst being a major discontinuity. Only meteoric speleogenesis, with passages acting as drains of infiltrated water, would cut through paleokarstic deposits and leave the rest unaffected. The paleofills and the associated problems The way Osborne et al.3 present the geological and karstological setting of JCL and the paleofills raises a series of problems if compared to other more or less similar documented locations. a) An overly long period of continuous karsting Osborne et al.3 have recently dated ten primary cave paleofills from the Jenolan Caves, as well as six surface samples, using the K–Ar method on illite, and in one case dating cave clay, using the fission track method on zircon grains. The ages yielded cover the interval from the Devonian (Emsian) to Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) with the majority of cave samples falling within the Carboniferous-Permian, from the Tournaisian to the late Ufimian, roughly 100 million years. This implies that the JCL has been submitted to karsting for all of that time. Using the existing measured karst denudation rate (KDR) in New South Wales, namely 24 mm ka-1 in the Coleman Plains,12 at least 2.4 km of limestone would have to be removed during this period. Though not clearly specified in the texts, it appears that even the earliest alleged paleokarst features are similar to the most recent ones, which are controlled by the nearly vertical bedding planes. This seems to imply that the tilting of the JCL occurred in the earlier stages of the Variscan Orogeny, hence the 2.4 km of limestone would not have been removed from a more or less horizontal structure but from a nearly vertical one.Adding the other postulated karsting phases and assuming a similar KDR, the total height of that limestone bar would have been at least double. For the sake of a simpler argument, let us assume that for all the rest of the Carboniferous—nearly 100 Ma—the JCL was covered by other sediments which are now completely missing. This would be very difficult to prove and even more difficult to admit in a karstological context. Shaw and Flood (1993), quoted by Osborne et al.,3 believe that up to 5 km of rock was removed from the Lachlan Fold Belt, of which the JCL is part, during the Late Carboniferous! That means that the assumed removal of limestone was not due to karsting but to some other, more energetic erosional episode.Assuming the Late Carboniferous lasted for a maximum of 33 Ma, the erosional rate would have been 150 mm ka -1, much higher than any measured KDR. Obviously, if the period was shorter, the erosion rate would have been even more intense. Under such circumstances karsting processes would have been extremely intense and would have left much more visible landmarks than the ones found in the field. Also, the issue of longitudinal drainage as mentioned above becomes even more problematic since now we have to account for the preservation of a preferential drain in a very narrow band of rock for 360 Ma whilst the regional erosion has eroded away all other formations. A series of perpendicular gorges cutting the limestone bar would be a much more appropriate interpretation. b) An unreasonably deep burial Based on the assumptions above, one can infer that the portions of the JCL that are exposed today would have been buried at the time of the Late Carboniferous to at least 5 km depth at which low grade metamorphic features should be present. I find it very difficult to believe that karsting, even as HTK, could have occurred at that depth without voids being constantly compressed leaving no room for infills. It therefore seems very unlikely that the ages determined for the clays could fit any known karsting scenario. Timing discrepancies Osborne et al.3 make no reference in their text to the discrepancy between the timing of karsting/speleogenetic phases as shown in table 1 and the span of the alleged ages the radiometric dating has yielded. Thus it is assumed that the first meteoric karsting phase occurred in the Late Carboniferous, yet the oldest karst filling is dated to the Early Carboniferous (Tournaisian) and is hydrothermal! So when and how did those infilled karst voids form? Invoking a Devonian karsting episode does not really work in the general context of their paper because one of the cave samples was dated as Devonian. This represents a different type of clay filling in a joint-like feature, unlike the true karstic samples dated as Carboniferous. Their paper provides no answers, merely listing them as topics for further research. The K–Ar dating method: more problems This method is based on the decay of 40K, with a half life 1.39 x 109 years13,14 to 40Ar. The problems with using 40K–40Ar have been frequently described. Austin has dealt in detail with the excess of 40Ar in dacite in a lava dome on Mount St Helens formed in 1986 and which yielded a K–Ar age of 0.35 ± 0.05 Ma. 15 The reason for this is inherited argon from the magma itself which was incorporated in the phenocrysts while they were formed. In the Jenolan Cave situation the mineral dated was illite, a phyllosilicate with three layers very similar in structure to muscovite.As mentioned before, Osborne 4 proposes at least two hydrothermal speleogenetic phases. The dated illite is believed to come from in situalteration so that the radiometric dates represent the age of the hydrothermal alteration rather than the age of the altered mineral. Under such circumstances, no sample should be dated earlier than the Late Cretaceous, the age of the last alleged hydrothermal phase.Recent research16 has also revealed another source of Ar in pure authigenic, recent to present-day smectite from Pacific sediments: ‘ … excess 40Ar, which represents radiogenic 40Ar released from nearby altered silicates, might be temporarily adsorbed at the surface of the rock pore spaces and is therefore available for incorporation in nucleating and growing particles’. In other words radiogenic Ar produced in adjacent rocks can easily contaminate secondary illite; the higher the 40Ar contents, the older the sample is supposed to be. It is interesting to notice that Osborne et al.3 make no reference to possible sources of 40Ar contamination. Yet one sample dated to 167.12 ± 3.60 Ma, which corresponds to the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian), is described as ‘weathered andesite’ from ‘Mesozoic dykes’: however, these dykes are not shown on their map. This could well be a possible source of excess Ar within the JCL itself.In addition to this, this paper presents many other magmatic formations in the areas adjacent to the Jenolan Caves: Early Devonian volcanics, Carboniferous granite and Carboniferous basic intrusions.It is very difficult to believe that with so many close sources of contamination, all the 40Ar in the dated samples comes from the decay of 40K in these same samples! Therefore it is perfectly reasonable to question the Carboniferous age of the cave sediment samples. A simpler scenario A simpler solution to all of these problems can be proposed: there weren’t eight speleogenetic/karsting phases during 300 Ma. The majority of Jenolan Caves were formed by hydrothermal karsting in four stages 11 from the final moments of the Flood to the present.In stage 1, while the limestone was still submerged, hydrothermal solutions (HTS) produced during the paroxysmal stages of the Flood, were ascending through the crust causing rapid diagenesis. 11 Locally, as diagenesis depleted the mineral contents, the same solutions became aggressive, dissolving the rocks they helped create. Such situations have been recorded in the case of hydrothermal metasomatic ore deposits. 7 Though still en masse, the circulation of these aggressive solutions was partly controlled by the textural and structural features of the newly-formed JCL. The larger karstic halls and cupolas connected by large conduits were formed by such solutions. As the solutions were more aggressive at depth, the size of the karstic voids should increase with depth, which is exactly what explorations at the Jenolan Caves have revealed. This runs counter to a meteoric speleogenesis.In stage 2, during the recessive stage of the Flood,17 the entire sedimentary sequence emerged from the sea and was tilted, the JCL being still covered by massive nonkarstic deposits. The HTS activity changed, the convectional per ascensum movement being gradually replaced by a gravitational per descensum flow. This flow was controlled by the structural features of the limestone. Confined between non-karstic deposits, in its search for an outlet, the drain became mostly longitudinal. The lack of cupolas north of the Great Archway suggests that the drain was from the north towards the south, along large passages with some of the cupolas becoming temporary collectors. The large amounts of HTS and the increased pressure resulted in a dramatic acceleration of the karsting processes, the cupolas and halls rapidly growing in size. Many authigenic sediments, mainly clay minerals from the insoluble fraction in the dissolved limestone, were generated during this time and they travelled extensively through the system, being trapped and rapidly cemented in what we could call ‘hydrodynamic traps’—lateral, calmer passages.During stage 3, erosion brought the JCL to the surface. By this time most of the HTS in the system were chemically dampened as the supply from inside the crust had practically ceased. At some point the fluid-filled system was opened by erosion and the fluids rapidly drained. The longitudinal north-south subterranean drain was thus made available not only to infiltrating water from the surface but also to surface streams which were pirated by this ready-made drainage system.Surface erosion would have eventually reached some of these drains, causing ceiling collapse and turning the passages into surface river channels. Thus the Jenolan River and Camp Creek were formed, preserving segments of the old conduits and even erosional ledges paralleling the remaining subterranean drains. This pre-existing drain was already so deeply entrenched that it ran and still runs counter to the normal hydrographic trends for a limestone bar geomorphic setting.The upper chambers and conduits that were partially or completely drained were reached by infiltrating water which was probably much more aggressive than it is today due to the abundance of organic materials in the adjacent Flood-laid sediments. As a result, speleothems started growing very quickly.Stage 4 corresponds more or less to the present conditions; no HTS are present. Meteoric speleogenesis reshaped the existing voids and surface erosion further dissected the cave system of the Jenolan Caves, leading to the present complex setting. The constant decrease in precipitation and consequently the reduced flow in the subterranean drain have left many of the passages dry. The deep, below water table, cupolas had their fluids gradually replaced by the infiltrating water, with many of these large reservoirs acting today as annexes to the main drain.18 Conclusions Though recently hailed as the world’s oldest (340 Ma) open cave system, 19 the Jenolan Caves system can be explained as the result of hydrothermal karsting during the final stages of the Flood, subsequently reshaped and disorganized by meteoric speleogenesis and surface erosion.The standard evolutionary interpretation of the complex cave system assumes no less than eight speleogenetic phases including both meteoric and hydrothermal activity. This leads to many problems, discrepancies and unanswered questions.Clay sediments in alleged paleokarst dissected by the cave passages have been dated by the K–Ar method as Carboniferous. However, the K–Ar method is notoriously error-prone, contamination being the most important issue. The geological and karstological situation in the area provided abundant sources of contamination which could have easily led to an excess of 40Ar and consequently exaggerated ages. In an attitude that has been consistent for many years now, radiometric dating prevails over logic, geomorphology and karstology. It seems that the accelerated return of neo-catastrophism in geology is being compensated by a desperate quest for antiquity of landscapes, both surficial and subterranean, and Australia has long been a first stage for this quest. A classical intermittent karst spring. For 30 minutes the water flows out at a minimum of 50 and a maximum of 1,800 litres per second (depending on precipitation). Then it stops completely for another 30 minutes only to start flowing again. This behaviour is due to the geometry of the chambers and connecting conduits, and having to fill to a certain level before draining. Fontaine de Fontestorbes, Central Pyrénées, France. Caves for all seasons by international cave expert Dr Emil Silvestru Of all the landscapes decorating our planet, only one continues below the earth’s surface. Deep inside limestone rocks (high in the mountains or under the sea) there is a kind of mirror image of the surface, a subterranean landscape—a world of caves. Caves are part of a larger feature called karst—rough limestone country with underground drainage. The word probably goes back to the archaic karra, meaning ‘stone’.The first karstland scientifically investigated was Slovenia’s ‘Kras’, near the border with Italy. This is marked ‘Karstia’ on a medieval (1585) map by the famous Dutch cartographer Mercator.1 Austrian geographers of the Kras region Germanicized it to ‘Karst’, which is the accepted scientific term. From boyhood, I have been enthralled by the numerous caves of Transylvania, the province of Romania where I was born. This fascination has led me to study geology and into a lifetime of scientific adventure, exploring and studying caves all over my native land and elsewhere.What makes karst unique? Its rivers, as if hiding some shameful secret, choose to flow underground, sometimes more than a mile (1.6 km) deep and seven miles (11 km) long. Rainwater infiltrates the rock and slowly seeps or hastily runs to join these deep, dark rivers.But rainwater has a huge appetite! It contains dissolved carbon dioxide (CO 2), which makes it acidic. (The thicker the soil that covers the rock, the more CO2 is supplied by bacteria in that soil.) The acid reacts with the solid calcite (calcium carbonate or CaCO3) that makes up most of the limestone, taking some of the calcite into solution.The stolen calcite leaves a void behind and winds its way in solution towards the underground streams. Like a satiated snake ignoring potential prey under its nose, the saturated fluid now passes through the limestone leaving it untouched. But if it happens to meet a larger void—a cave—the saturated water ‘awakens’. Its CO2 readily bubbles away, forcing the dissolved calcite (now calcium bicarbonate) to return to its original crystalline state. This is how dripstones (such as stalactites and stalagmites), curtains, flowstones, etc.—speleothems in one word—rapidly form. A large uvala (enclosed hollow formed by the These do not just beautify the darkness of the caves—they also fill merging of numerous sinkholes). Note the flat them. Often a large void becomes completely blocked with new, bottom (due to sediment infill) on which small almost-pure calcite, which is structurally stronger than the limestone suffusion (draw-down) sinkholes formed. Almost itself. every sinkhole is ‘inhabited’ by spruce and fir Where does this underground ‘water on the move’ go? Just as (because they preserve snow and mysteriously as it sank into the ground, ‘adult’ rivers, sometimes rainwater). Balileasa, Padis Plateau, Apuseni huge in size, burst out of the limestone. Their exits are usually Mts., Transylvania, Romania. calledemergences or karst springs. Some of these springs are so large that they discharge (on the average) some 90 tonnes of water every second—enough to supply more than twice the population of New York. And during floods, they can reach over 500 tonnes per second!2 Karst aquifers store enormous volumes of good water, keeping subterranean rivers alive in times of drought. The underground world of karst is certainly dramatic, but even the surface features are unlike most other landforms. The unsaturated water begins its meal on the limestone at the surface. Here, looking like the face of a very old person, the barren rock is full of wrinkle-like grooves and runnels called karren, which can cover large areas as limestone pavements. Large funnelshaped depressions called sinkholes (on the North American continent, dolines in Europe) pock the face of the earth. They collect Tectonic karren (limestone pavement) the runoff and rush it towards the underworld. overlapped by gravitational karren (the grooves Before deciding whether to flow under the sun or in absolute parallel to the slope).Hohgant Range, Swiss darkness, many rivers cut spectacular deep gorges—some of them Alps, Switzerland. among the world’s most beautiful! Once a river chooses the world below, it often disappears at the foot of an escarpment that abruptly ends what is called a blind valley. In almost perfect symmetry, the river returns to daylight at the foot of another escarpment, representing the abrupt beginning of a blind gorge called a pocket valley. Here and there, windows open to the surface, connecting the two worlds by means of caves or vertical shafts. We are told that caves take a long time to form. Even more so since thousands of radiometric ‘age’ assessments on speleothems yield ‘dates’ up to a million years or more! And the particular radiometric methods used are claimed to be the most accurate of them all. So how could caves have formed only after Flood, about 4,500 years ago? (See box, Human use of caves, below.) We must first emphasize that despite much effort, secular science (karstology in this case) still does not have an acceptable explanation of how water can manage to form large caves hundreds or thousands of feet underground. To eat away the limestone, the water must be acidic. How The ‘Mammoths’: very large stalagmites does it get deep inside the rock without losing its towering nearly 20 m above the cave acidity? Thousands of measurements show that by floor. Reds and browns are mainly due dissolving limestone, the water loses its acidity within to iron hydroxides and organic matter. some 10 metres of the surface. 3) It is only possible for The whites are pure calcite. Dârninii water to flow deep underground if it follows preCave, Apuseni Mts., Transylvania, existing conduits. Romania. But when and how were those conduits formed? I believe it was at the time of the Flood, byhydrothermal solutions (HTS). These hot and chemically hyperactive solutions originated deep inside the earth as a result of the tectonic and volcanic processes associated with the global upheaval. These HTS could eat away enormous amounts of limestone in a year or even less.A somewhat similar process was documented in the Carlsbad Caverns area (New Mexico, USA). There, sulfuric acid, formed from A through cave, i.e. the river flows hydrogen sulphide (H2S) that was produced from the through a natural tunnel. Humans have oil deposits underneath, ate away the limestone. made use of it by cutting the smaller Excavation of the Big Room, a cavern of more than a hole on the right to let a local road million cubic metres (35 million cubic feet) only penetrate into the cave and exit a needed about 10% of the H2S of the annual couple of hundred metres downstream. commercial production of the neighbouring gas fields.4 Important ancient human artefacts were After the Flood the HTS from deep underground died found in the cave. The cave Mas d’Azil, away and the solutions linked to water seeping from Central Pyrénées, France. the surface took over the caves and started to reshape everything. The slow processes we can see and measure today are not the ones that created the caves. They only added the ‘final touch’ to what HTS created quickly Proteus anguinus (‘cave at the time of the Flood.What about the radiometric ‘dates’? These olm’)—a distant aquatic, are not to be accepted because they are based upon several blind and pigmentless unprovable assumptions, and have been shown (for rocks of known relative of the age) to be wildly inaccurate.5 The situation is worse for the dating of salamander—bred in caves. The methods completely ignore the significant chemical plastic tanks. Aulignac changes which the HTS would have induced in the distribution of the Cave, Central Pyrénées, radioactive isotopes—a major source of potential error. And they France. overlook the fact that stalactites, stalagmites and other speleothems have been observed to grow rapidly. Such observations mock the radiometric ‘age’ results (see box, How logic is stretched to accommodate long ages, below). Conclusion Strip away the long-age presuppositions, and the facts about caves are wonderfully consistent with the true history of the world. In addition to being immensely beautiful, caves are a spectacular reminder of the massive physical and chemical processes that occurred during the flood. Emil Silvestru, M.Sc., G.Eng., Ph.D., obtained his Ph.D. in geology from the Babes-Bolyai University, Romania, where he was Associate Professor of Karstology. He was head of the nearby Speleological Institute and is a world authority on cave geology. Dr Silvestru is now a senior scientist and speaker with Creation Ministries International, Canada. Human use of caves We do not know (there is no Scriptural evidence) if caves existed before the Flood. Even if they did, they would have been destroyed and buried in that global cataclysm. Thus, all of the caves existing today must have formed after most of the sediment had been deposited during the Flood. In fact, the fossils of creatures buried during the Flood can be seen lining the walls of many caves.Secular history teaches that caves were the very first shelters that humans used, yet clearly indicates that humans built cities at the dawn of human history. Later, some people used tents. The word ‘cave’ appears some 40 times in the Bible, in most cases as a hiding place, but also as a burial (and on one occasion as a dwelling) place. The first mention is in Genesis 19:30, referring to the cave in which Lot and his daughters dwelt. Thus, roughly 300 years after the Flood, caves Cave painting representing a young were available to humans in the Middle East.Some of the oldest-known aurochs (extinct wild ox). This painting archaeological sites are shows great artistry and accuracy located in caves, with (including the typical raised tail). Gotte Longgupo Cave in Cave paintings: Bison and ibex de Gargas (cave), Central Pyrénées, China the oldest thus wounded by arrows—typical France. far.1 In southwestern hunting ritual drawings. Note the Europe (France and simplicity and powerful Spain) caves have also expression of these ‘primitive’ been used as religious sanctuaries and some of them decorated drawings. And consider the with extraordinary paintings. After visiting one of the most famous lighting conditions the artists had of them—Lascaux—the renowned painter Picasso said: ‘We have at hand: a dim, flickering flame of discovered nothing.’ So much for the evolution of painting from a carved stone oil lamp! Grotte ‘primitive’ to post-modern. de Niaux (cave), Central In modern times, caves have been used for various purposes, Pyrénées, France. from preparing and storing cheese in France, Italy and the Czech Republic to hiding complete weapons factories during WWII. Some economically significant resources are also associated with caves. The world’s first drilled oil well, in southern Ontario, found oil in a buried cave;2 phosphates have been extracted from several caves; and aluminum ore (bauxite) is associated with old caves and karstlands. Finally, caves are often windows to huge subterranean water reservoirs in karst aquifers. Up to 25% of the world’s population obtains water from karst aquifers and new reserves have been identified.Caves are often excellent archives; whatever comes to rest in them (sediments, animals, crystals, etc.) is left undisturbed, protected by the calm environment. Thus scientists are often able to reconstruct a more accurate image of the One of the most beautiful show caves in the world past.More recently caves have gained public displaying hundreds of huge, ‘saucer stack’ attention due to their use by terrorists in stalagmites. Some in this picture are over 10 m Afghanistan. high. They can even take the shape of cypress How logic is stretched to accommodate trees! Such patterns emerge when the calcite-rich long ages seepage water falls from great heights (over 90 m By elementary logic, dripstones (such as in this case), rapidly losing CO2 during the fall and stalactites and stalagmites) are younger especially when hitting the floor.Aven Armand, than the caves. So, if caves formed after the Causse Méjean, Massif Central, France (Lozère). Flood, how can we have thousands of dripstones and flowstones dated by radiometric methods to hundreds of thousands of years? Let us focus only on stalagmites (the ones growing from the floor), and use uniformitarian assumptions (process rates have always been more or less the same). To find its age, we measure the rate at which a stalagmite grows today, consider it an average, and divide its length by that rate. Strangely, there seems to be little or no systematic measurement of stalagmite growth rates. Why should one bother, the thinking seems to go, when all one has to do is take the radiometric ‘age’ and divide it by the stalagmite’s length to get the rate? However, where growth rate has been measured in show caves (which are not necessarily the fastest growing), it varies from 0.1 to 3 mm (four thousandths to 1/8 of an inch) each year. Thus, to grow 2 m (7 ft), a stalagmite could takeanywhere from 700 to 20,000 years. Not all stalagmites have the same length, so we can assume that some had higher growth rates and some lower ones. Logically, the long ones have grown more quickly. So, a 2 m (7 ft) stalagmite could form in 700 years. At 0.1 mm per year, another one would only measure 1 cm as it turned its first century. In any cave with dripstones, one can see dozens of such stalagmites side by side.Now, let’s consider one of the tallest stalagmites in the world, in the cave Armand (France)—shown above. At 3 mm per year it would have reached its present 38 m in 12,700 years. 1 Clearly, this contradicts the ages of hundreds of thousands of years obtained from radiometric dating! But, on the surface, it would appear to be too old for the Flood.However, as I looked closely at this stalagmite, I realized that its growth must have been even faster in the past, because the water falls over 90 m (300 ft) from the roof to the tip of the stalagmite. This drop, plus the powerful splash at the end, would make it lose CO2 faster. Furthermore, the climate in the area used to be much wetter about a millennium ago, which would have accelerated growth even more.All the above assumes that the growth was continual, without major disruptions, which is reasonable, since we are talking about ‘historical times’. Even though all of this reasoning is fully within the uniformitarian mindset, it is not the ‘standard’ view by any means! In order to accommodate the most fundamental belief of secular origins science—the multibillionyear-old earth—here is what happens. First, stalagmites are cut along their long axis, the growth layers (see photo at left) are sampled, and the samples are dated by radiometric methods. Now, suddenly, tens and hundreds of thousands of years of age appear—even millions in some cases. And when that is not enough, paleomagnetism is used, and we go even farther back in time. Returning to our generic example: if a 2 m stalagmite were 200,000 years old, its annual growth rate must have averaged 0.01 mm per year. This is ten times slower than the slowest measured today! Long-agers try to explain this by saying that the growth occasionally stopped completely, perhaps for 10,000 years at a time. And after 10,000 years, they assume that nothing changed—the water drops start arriving again at exactly the same point, with millimetre This cave’s entrance is over 1,000 m precision, to fall on the tip of the above sea level. The high ridge (over stalagmite!Such explanations Section through 2,400 m) of the Pyrénées is visible in require common sense to take a stalagmite the background. The mound in the nap. Thorough investigation centre is actually a monument in shows that the path followed by memory of the 19-year-old Belgian water from the surface to the dripping point of a caver Michel de Donnéa, who died in stalagmite is long, winding and extremely sensitive to the the cave during a flood in slightest change (remember, chemistry is involved, too). 1952.Cigalère Cave, Central Moreover, huge amounts of field data reveal that Pyrénées, France. karstland surfaces change dramatically and quickly, in a matter of centuries. World cave records: Longest cave: the Flint Ridge-Mammoth Cave System in Kentucky, US, over 550 km (350 miles). Deepest cave: Voronja Cave, Caucasus Mountains, Georgia, 1,700 m (5,600 ft). Longest underground river: Son Trach, over 11 km (7 miles), in a cave called Hang Khe Rhy, Vietnam. Largest cave chamber: Sarawak Chamber in Good Luck Cave, Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia, a volume over 20 million m3 (700 million cubic feet). Longest submerged cave: Ox Bel Ha in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, over 30 km (19 miles). Deepest anyone has dived in a cave: over 275 m (900 ft) in a karstic well called Zacaton, Mexico.1 Limestone caves by Robert Doolan, John Mackay, Dr Andrew Snelling and Dr Allen Hallby Late one summer’s afternoon in 1901, a cowboy named Jim White was riding through the arid foothills of the Guadalupe Mountains in south-east New Mexico. Suddenly he was startled by a huge black cloud rising from the ground in front of him. He reined his horse to a stop. This cloud was not like any he had seen before, so he decided to see what made it different. As he galloped closer, Jim realised this funnel shaped cloud was formed by a massive swarm of bats! Millions of them were spiralling out of the sandy hillside. Jim was puzzled. What were so many bats doing here? Where did they come from? He resolved to find out.With a battered kerosene lamp and a rope ladder, Jim descended deep into a hole he found in the mountain side. He found tunnels and passageways. Warily he followed one tunnel. Soon it led him to the bats’ resting place. The floor was slippery with bats’ droppings.Cautiously Jim crept back. He followed another passage. Before long this tunnel opened up to reveal something amazing. In the flickering light of his lamp, Jim realised he was in an enormous room. He could see huge stone ‘icicles’ hanging from the high ceiling. Great pillars rose from the floor. Slender sticks of stone were everywhere, and in a far corner he could just make out a pond with stone ‘lily pads’ floating on its surface. It looked like Ali Baba’s cave - only these treasures were in stone.Over the following years, Jim found miles of connecting corridors in the cave, and bigger and more beautiful limestone chambers. His cave was like a glorious stone palace. Jim White, the ‘limestone cowboy’, had discovered Carlsbad Caverns, the most spectacular cave in North America, and one of the most spectacular in the world.Carlsbad Caverns’ largest room, called the Big Room, is so large it could contain almost 50 basketball courts. In one area the ceiling is higher than a 30-storey building. In 1924, US President Calvin Coolidge declared these spectacular limestone caves a national monument.But how did such beautiful limestone caves form? When did their formation occur? Did they really form over huge time spans? Or can they be explained in the framework of the Flood not many thousands of years ago? In the Beginning New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns have been said to have begun forming some 60 million years ago by the action of groundwater on the original beds of limestone. 1 As acid rainwater fell on the limestone beds, it ‘nibbled’ away at the rock until hair-thin cracks appeared. More rain trickled down, enlarging the cracks and forming paths. Paths widened into tunnels. Tunnels crisscrossed and grew into rooms.2 That many limestone caves formed by the solution process is indicated by four types of geological evidence. 1. Modern limestone caves often show evidence of ongoing solution - the chemical composition of groundwater leaving caves often confirms this. Continually growing stalactites and stalagmites within caves prove that solution is occurring above the caves. 2. The shapes of structures in the limestone layers within caves often resemble structures produced in solution experiments. This is particularly so at the intersections of fractures in the limestone layers that geologists call joints, where shapes that have been produced can be predicted on the basis of solution kinetics theory.3 3. The passages in limestone caves usually follow joints, fractures, and the level of the land surface in such a way as to suggest that the permeability of the limestone layers, that is, the obvious paths along which groundwater must have flowed, has influenced the position of cave passages.4 4. Caves resembling those found in limestone do not occur in insoluble, non-limestone rocks. The apparent causal relationship implies that some characteristic of the limestone (i.e. its solubility) has affected the occurrence of the caves. That solution therefore is a major factor in the formation of limestone caves appears to be well substantiated. Most geologists, however, would believe that these solution processes take millions of years to form caves. But millions of years are not necessary for limestone cave formation. Geologist Dr Steve Austin, of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, California, has studied water chemistry and flow rates in a large cave-containing area in central Kentucky. He concluded that a cave 59 metres long and one metre square in the famous Mammoth Cave Upland region of Kentucky could form in one year! 5 If even remotely similar rates of formation occurred elsewhere, huge caverns obviously could form in a very short time.Dr Austin proposes that the high rate of solution of limestone in that area should cause concern to geologists who believe that slow, uniform processes have brought about formation of such caves. In two million years - the assumed duration of the Pleistocene Epoch and the inferred age of many caves - a layer of limestone more than 100 metres thick ‘could be completely dissolved off of Kentucky (assuming present rates and conditions).6 So how could limestone caves form, using a catastrophic model of earth’s history which includes acceptance of a world-wide Flood? Model for Caves Origin The problem is of course that we are attempting to understand the origin of limestone caves for which the evidence of the events forming them has been largely removed. But this problem confronts all scientists endeavouring to explain the formation of limestone caves. Nonetheless, there would be general agreement over the processes of formation, but not the rate of formation. Dr Austin’s studies, plus our own, convince us that the following model for limestone cave formation is entirely feasible within the short time framework of a recent worldwide catastrophic Flood, based on the available verifiable evidence.First, the limestone layers have to be laid down. Dr Austin believes most major limestone strata accumulated during the Flood.(7) The primary reason for this belief is that most of the major limestone strata either contain large numbers of catastrophically buried fossils (often corals and shellfish) or are in a sequence of other strata that contain large numbers of catastrophically buried fossils.As a layer of lime sediment was deposited, it would have been buried rapidly under huge amounts of other sediments. The weight on top of the lime sediments would compact them, and tend to expel the water they contained. Fluid pressure in the sediments would have been great, but lack of a direct escape exit would retard water loss and tend to prevent sediments from completely drying out and thus slow down the process of turning to stone. The major water loss would probably be through joints (internal cracks) formed while the sediments were hardening.Second, as the Flood waters receded, uplift and other earth movements would have occurred 8Thus such earth movements would fold and tilt the sediment layers all over the earth so that concurrent and subsequent erosion would have worn the upper layers down to a new level. The layers of lime sediments would now again be near the surface. Continuing earth movements would cause movement on the joints and build up fluid pressure; the removal of the overlying sediment layers would probably have speeded up both compaction and fluid outflow from the partly hardened sediments. Pressure would be highest near the surface, causing sediment to be ‘piped out’, that is, removed along the joints where the rock would have been weakest. As the joint opened, channels for both vertical and horizontal water flow would appear.Third, when the Flood waters had receded completely, the groundwater level of the area would not be immediately in balance, and so horizontal flow would be considerable. Acids from decaying organic matter at the surface, and below, would tend to move to just below the water table, where the fastest horizontal flow would be occurring. Solution of newly hardened limestone would occur mainly in horizontal channels just below the water table. Conditions ideal for solution of limestone just below the water table would also be helped by the mixing with the groundwater of these carbon dioxide rich, oxygen poor, organic rich, highly saline waters percolating down from the surface. This would then develop a cave system at a particular level.Fourth, when the excess groundwater had been largely drained away and the caves dissolved out, the water table would then be at a lower level so that the caves would become filled with air instead of water. Such conditions coupled with continued downward drainage of excess surface and nearsurface waters would finally bring the rapid deposition of stalactites, stalagmites, and flowstone in the cave systems. Conclusion and References In this model of cave origin, there seems to be no major obstacle to a short time period for the solution of limestone caves. Caves need not have formed slowly over many thousands or millions of years, but could have formed rapidly during the closing stages of, and after, the world-wide Flood ,several thousand years ago. Rapid cave formation by sulfuric acid dissolution by Michael Oard Anti-creationist Arthur Strahler takes creationists to task for not having enough time to dissolve limestone caves and deposit speleothems (e.g. stalactites and stalagmites). He writes: ‘If it can be shown that either the excavation of caverns or their subsequent filling must require a vastly longer time to accomplish than the post-Flood limit, literal acceptance of the young chronology is untenable. We turn first to rates of removal of limestone by the process of carbonic-acid reaction.’1 The theory that caverns are dissolved by the percolation of CO 2-rich ground water through joints or along bedding planes in the limestone, forming a weak carbonic acid that reacts with the limestone, is quite old. It is likely based on strict uniformitarianism, since carbonic acid is the only acid that forms in significant quantities in ground water today. Thus, carbonic acid dissolution has simply been assumed, although some scientists have admitted that the mechanism for cave excavation is unknown: ‘Ground water forms caves, but exactly how is not known.’ 2 Modern textbooks continue to teach the above explanation for cave formation.3A recent article4 and accompanying commentary5 add another variable to the origin of limestone caves that will be of interest to creationists. It appears that sulfuric acid has been primarily responsible for the excavation of at least 10% of the caves in the Guadaloupe Mountains of southeastern New Mexico and west Texas. This is especially the case for the larger caves, such as Carlsbad Cavern and Lechuguilla Cave. This result is based on the discovery of the reaction products of sulfuric acid dissolution trapped in the cave. The sulfuric acid is formed by the oxidation of hydrogen sulfide in hydrothermal water. The reaction products include elemental sulfur, gypsum, hydrated halloysite, alunite, and other minerals. Alunite apparently can be dated by the 40Ar/39Ar dating technique, which provided the incentive for geologists to investigate the above reaction products. The 34S/32S ratio indicates the hydrogen sulfide is biogenic.What this means for creationists is that cave formation, in at least some cases, was much more rapid, since sulfuric acid is much stronger than carbonic acid. Sulfuric acid dissolution is not only postulated for the caves in the Guadaloupe Mountains, but it is thought that 10 % of known major caves worldwide were carved out by sulfuric acid. 6,7 In the Guadaloupe Mountains, the reaction occurred below the water table (phreatic zone), which is currently much lower. Thus, cave formation is not necessarily a post-Flood phenomenon as Strahler thought. It could have formed anytime after the limestone was first deposited in the Flood, since hydrothermal water would be expected to begin moving through the limestone soon after deposition. Furthermore, once the cavern is formed, deposition of speleothems, mainly flowstone, can also occur below the water table, which contradicts the conventional wisdom. 8 The biological signature of the sulfur isotopes would also fit into the Flood scenario of rapid deposition and decay of plants and animals upon burial.It is possible that many more than the postulated 10 % of caves worldwide were formed by sulfuric acid dissolution, because these types of caves are recognised in dry areas where some of the dissolution products remain in the cave. 9 However, in humid climates, the reactants may have been washed out of the cave. So, it is difficult to know whether a cave in a humid climate was excavated by sulfuric acid.10It is of further interest that the dating of alunite resulted in significantly older dates for Carlsbad Cavern and the other caves in the Guadaloupe Mountains. The new dates range from 4 to 12 million years (Ma) in the uniformitarian timescale. Furthermore, alunite ages increase and correlate strongly with the elevation of caves in the Guadaloupe Mountains from 1090 m to 2040 m. Previously, the cavern was dated at 1.2–0.75 Ma,4 or as much as 3 Ma based on the timing of mountain uplift.11 The younger dates were not only based on field evidence, but also on paleomagnetic, uranium-series, and electronspin-resonance dating.12 This does not give one much confidence in dating methods.Sulfuric acid dissolution may have further creationist application in the rapid formation of karst topography, which forms approximately 10–20 % of the Earth’s land surface.13 Karst topography is caused by dissolution of subsurface bedrock, mainly carbonate, followed by subsidence and local collapse of the surface. Karst formation by sulfuric acid has been suggested by Carol Hill. 14 Sulfuric acid reactions may also be related to the rapid formation of some hydrothermal alteration products and ore mineralisation.14 HOW DOES THE FLOOD EXPLAIN STALAGMITES, STALACTITES AND OTHER SPELEOTHEMS Rapid stalactites by Stephen Meyers and Robert Doolan Those beautiful stone ‘icicles’ you see hanging from the ceiling of limestone caves are called stalactites (they ‘stay tight’ on the ceiling). The forms you see growing up from the cave floor are called stalagmites. When they meet, the joined pair becomes a column. Sheet-like layered deposits on cave walls or floors are called flowstone.Although these fantastic features are commonly thought to represent perhaps tens of thousands of years or more of groundwater action, 1 there is much evidence that they can form rapidly under certain conditions. For example, Sequoyah Caverns, south of Chattanooga at Valley Head, Alabama, has fast-growing formations. Director of the caverns, Clark Byers, cemented a clear plastic panel in front of some stalactites in April, 1977, to prevent tourists from breaking them off. In less than 10 years the stalactites grew about 25 centimetres (10 inches or one inch per year). On the ceiling of the cave, animal tracks can be seen, and there are fossils of many marine creatures—plus a bird fossil which looks like a chicken. In an interview in 1985, cavern director Byers made no secret of the fact that he believes these fossils are a result of the Flood.So how fast can stalactites and stalagmites form? Bat Cave In October 1953, National Geographic published a photo of a bat that had fallen on a stalagmite in the famous Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, and had been cemented on to it. The stalagmite had grown so fast it was able to preserve the bat before the creature had time to decompose.2Stalactites many centimetres long are sometimes seen under modern-day bridges and in tunnels. Some stalactites have formed quickly in a tunnel in Raccoon Mountain, just west of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The tunnel was blasted through the mountain’s limestone rock to build a power plant in 1977. Water from the plant’s pumpturbines dissolves the limestone, and stalactites form rapidly.At Australia’s Jenolan Caves in New South Wales, a lemonade bottle was placed below a continually active stalactite in the ‘Temple of Baal’ in 1954. In the following 33 years a coating of calcite about three millimetres thick has formed on the bottle. The same amount of deposit has formed since development in 1932 of the Ribbon Cave in the jenolan system. At this time pathways were cut through areas of flowstone. Water flowing down the sides of these cuttings over the past 55 years has built up the current deposit.A photograph taken in February, 1968, shows a curtain of stalactites growing from the foundation ceiling beneath the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Some of the stalactites had grown to five feet long (a metre and a half) in the 45 years since the memorial was built in 1923. 3At jenolan Caves and many other places there are examples of stalactites and stalagmites developing from man-made structures. Like the Lincoln Memorial, the jenolan structures contain cement-mortar which is highly permeable, allowing these formations to develop rapidly. The resultant formation is quite powdery and brittle however. Slow Growth? The growth rate of stalactites and stalagmites in many caves today is of course quite slow. But even in such caves the current slow rate of growth cannot be guaranteed to have always been this sluggish. Caves and their formations in tropical areas develop much faster than those in more temperate regions because of higher annual rainfall. But many factors, apart from the obvious unknown rate of water drip in the past, influence growth rate.Stalactites can, and do, grow quickly. A talking point at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the fact that stalactites are growing on the cement wall steps between the university’s Anderson Hall and Gladfelter Hall. Right below the stalactites, some stalagmites are forming. Although only several centimetres high, they have all formed since the concrete stairway of Gladfelter Hall was built in May, 1973.There are a number of bridges in Philadelphia which have stalactites growing on them. Some are more than a foot long (30 cm), but many smaller examples have also formed. One bridge was built in 1931 by the City of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Railroad, so all these formations are less than 56 years old.Formations in the hot water springs in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park grow about 2.5 cm (one inch) per year. And there are many examples of rainwater tanks in country areas of Australia that have stalactites growing on them. Conclusion Because of the evidence for fast-growing stalactites now becoming available, we can safely conclude that the world’s beautiful limestone cave formations may not have needed countless thousands of years to form. These spectacular formations could have formed quite rapidly in just a few thousand years—a time framework consistent with the view that they were formed during the closing stages of, and after, the worldwide Flood. ‘Instant’ stalagmites! by Don Batten The photo records a large stalagmite shawl. A shawl is a limestone formation which has formed by running down the rock, rather than being free-standing like stalactites (which ‘stick tight’ because they hang from the roof) or stalagmites (which grow up from the ground).Guides to limestone caves usually say that such large lumps of limestone take many thousands—even millions—of years to grow. However, this specimen was found in an abandoned gold mine tunnel near Burrendong Dam in central New South Wales, Australia. This is not far from Stuart Town, the town of ‘The Man from Iron Bark’ in A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson’s poem by the same name.The Australian gold rushes began not far from here at Ophir in 1851, so the tunnel dates after that. Since the tunnel cuts through solid basalt rock, it was probably blasted out with a considerable amount of explosives. Such engineering feats were not undertaken by the average gold rush fossicker and so this tunnel almost certainly dates from considerably later than 1851. In any case, the tunnel and the shawl can be no older than about 140 years.The horizontal tunnel is about 1.6 metres (about 5 feet) high and runs 50 metres (160 feet) straight into a hill. There are no side-tunnels, so the exploratory tunnel apparently failed to reveal any worthwhile gold-bearing veins. The shawl in the photo is near the inside end of the tunnel—in the middle of the hill.The lesson? Stalactites and stalagmites do not need a long time to form!Caving in to reality The shrinking ’age’ of stalactites and stalagmites. by Carl Wieland ‘But don’t stalactites and stalagmites take millions of years to form?’ This is a very common question at seminars.Most of us have ventured underground to see spectacular limestone formations like those pictured here. Guides commonly labour the point about the alleged ‘millions of years’ of slow and gradual formation—or at least they used to. Comments from supporters around the world indicate that caverns offering guided underground tours are becoming less confident about the belief that cave decorations need long ages to form. In fact, many have become notably silent about the whole subject.Creationist publications, like this one, have undoubtedly contributed to this by putting photographic evidence for rapid formation of limestone cave structures into the hands of hundreds of thousands of people. So the average guide must contend with a fair chance that any tour party might contain at least one informed creationist—perhaps even armed with a relevant copy of Creation magazine. For example, the issue showing the stalagmite shawl in a mining tunnel less than 150 years old;1 or the very long stalactites and fair-sized stalagmites in a disused mining shaft; 2 or the host of stalactites growing under the Australian War Memorial;3 or perhaps even the Western Australian waterwheel which was frozen in limestone after only 65 years!4The change is also happening because, it seems, reality must eventually catch up with even the most cherished myth. A delightful recent article in a secular travel magazine 5 about a journey down into an Arizona cave powerfully made this point.The article concerned a descent into a cave called ‘S.P.’ near Sierra Vista, Arizona. It featured comments by and about Jerry Trout, a cave specialist with the Arizona Forest Service. Trout has been a high-school teacher and a geologist. The writer states, ‘What geologists used to believe was fact, in terms of dating a cave, now is speculation, Trout says.’ Trout is then quoted as saying: ‘“From 1924 to 1988, there was a visitor’s sign above the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns [New Mexico], that said Carlsbad was at least 260 million years old. In 1988 the sign was changed to read 7–10 million years old. Then, for a little while, the sign read that it was 2 million years old. Now the sign is gone.”’ The article continues: ‘In short, he [Trout] says, geologists don’t know how long cave development takes. And, while some believe that cave decorations such as S.P.’s beautiful icicle-looking stalactites took years to form, Trout says that through photo-monitoring, he has watched a stalactite grow several inches in a matter of days.’ IS THERE EVIDENCE THAT ROCKS AND GEMS FORMED IN THE YOUNG AGE TIMEFRAME Granite grain size: not a problem for rapid cooling of plutons by Tas Walker One objection to the earth being young is the claim that the coarse-grained texture of granites shows they cooled slowly over millions of years. Sceptics allege that if the magma had cooled quickly, the texture would have been a fine-grained lava-like rock or even a volcanic glass. However, this objection is based on the false idea that grain size depends solely on cooling rate. Granitic dykes and pegmatites are well-known examples of granitic rocks that formed when cooling was more rapid than the cooling of a pluton. Also, large fine-grained rhyolite bodies show that coarse-grained texture does not necessarily form when cooling is slow within them. Crystal size depends on many factors, including nucleation rate, viscosity, original composition of the melt, pressure variation and the amount of volatiles. In fact, fluid inclusions in crystals within granites Figure 1.Upper and the lack of evidence of crystal accumulation in the granite plutons Mesozoic intrusive indicate that crystallization occurred quickly. Another evidence of rapid plutonic activity crystallization is the presence of radiohalos of short-lived isotopes of affected large areas polonium in biotite and muscovite crystals in granite. Rather than of Queensland, being a problem for rapid cooling, the crystals point to rapid Australia (scale crystallization. The Tatoosh pluton in Washington State is an example 1:20,000,000; after of a shallow granite pluton that crystallized quickly after rapid Day et al.).44 reduction in vapour pressure due to a sudden loss of volatiles. This is exactly the opposite of the conventional ideas on which the sceptic’s claims are made. The granite cooling objection One of the many objections to the earth being young is the idea that large bodies of magma (molten rock) need millions of years to accumulate and cool.1–4 Today huge volumes of once-molten rock, called plutons, are exposed at the surface of the earth, having been unroofed by erosion of the overlying material (Figures 1 and 2). Most plutons intruded into the upper crust are of granitic composition. That is, they are comprised mainly of the lightcoloured minerals, the feldspars and quartz—a composition often referred to as ‘felsic’. Although dark minerals such as biotite and hornblende are usually present, giving the rock a speckled appearance, they are never abundant. It is important to remember that such objections to the young-age for the earth are not based on observations, but on assumptions about the past. The behaviour of magma deep in the earth in the past is deduced from evidence observed at the surface of the earth in the present—evidence such as field relationships, laboratory experiments, thermodynamic modelling, and isotopic measurements. All conclusions about magma behaviour depend directly on how the researcher interprets his observations, and his interpretations are constrained by what he already believes about the past.Such beliefs (or assumptions) cannot be checked or proven because no-one has ever monitored the cooling of a pluton as conventionally described. First, the body of magma is inaccessible to direct observation because it accumulates deep (supposedly) inside the earth. Next, the process supposedly occurs over a time frame of tens of thousands to millions of years, far too slowly for changes to be measured. And then, the events occurred in the past, millions of years ago it is claimed, but no-one was present to observe them happening. Hayward2 illustrates how arguments about the cooling of intrusions are based on assumptions. A persuasive unitarian critic of young-earth geology, he gives the impression that the igneous-cooling issue is an open-and-shut case. He argues that ‘The mathematical laws of cooling are well known, and have been confirmed by countless experiments. Consequently, it is not difficult to calculate how long it must have taken an igneous intrusion to cool.’ He then quotes minimum cooling times for various igneous bodies, all of which are greater than 6,000 years. However, he fails to mention that these calculations all assume that the cooling is governed by conduction alone—conduction from the magma chamber into the surrounding rock.That cooling entirely by conduction would represent what occurs in the real world is unlikely in the extreme. Geologists have long recognised that fluids have played a crucial role in the emplacement and cooling of magma inside the earth, and different Figure 2. Part of a granite pluton exposed at the sources for the fluids have been identified.5Those originating from the surface. Bald Rock, Tenterfield, New South magma itself are called magmatic and hydrothermal fluids and those Wales, Australia. from the country rock are variously called meteoric fluids, and connate and ground waters. During the global Flood, water would have been especially abundant! More about fluids later.The question of how granite plutons could have been emplaced, cooled, and unroofed in a couple of months has been soundly answered in a number of geological papers by Snelling andWoodmorappe.6–8 The key is to interpret the data within the framework of the global Flood. First, there is no problem with rapid emplacement of liquid magma—it occurs via dykes due to crustal movements and can happen quickly.9,10 Interestingly, even the atheist Henke, in his attack on the work of Snelling and Woodmorappe, had to admit: ‘Geologists should accept the possibility of fast emplacement [of granite plutons] by dykes because it’s based on good data’.11 Second, rapid solidification and cooling of granite plutons is easily explained when the cooling effects of voluminous water are considered. This includes the water rapidly expelled from the magma itself, transferring heat in the process. In addition, the pressure of the water being expelled and flashing into steam would fracture the pluton and country rock allowing the connate and ground waters to set up convection cells and continue to remove the heat. 6 And finally, large volumes of floodwater moving across the earth during the global Flood explain the rapid unroofing. The granite texture objection Figure 4. Typical rhyolite showing the groundmass containing a few tiny crystals. fine-grained Figure 3. Typical granite texture showing the large mineral crystals in hand specimen. However, the issue of granite cooling does not stop there. Critics of the yiung age of the earth argue that the texture of granite means it must have cooled very slowly. Granite has a crystalline texture of interlocking mineral grains ranging from 1–5 mm (Figure 3). Usually the grains are randomly arranged with no regular bands or layers. Some granites may contain a sprinkling of larger crystals (phenocrysts) within an otherwise coarse and even-grained rock.A volcanic rock of felsic composition similar to granite is rhyolite, but it has an entirely different appearance (Figure 4). The main groundmass of rhyolite is very fine-grained, with crystals so small they are not visible even with a hand lens. A few tiny but visible crystals, such as quartz and feldspar, are often scattered through the fine-grained groundmass. Flow banding, caused by the parallel alignment of the small crystals as the lava was extruded, is frequently evident.Critics argue that granites could not have formed from magma that cooled quickly in days or weeks because the resulting mineral texture would be fine-grained like rhyolite—not coarse-grained and granitic. 12,13 Furthermore if the fractures in the granite provided access for cooling by fluids, they argue, there would have been a large variation in the cooling rates between the rock near the fractures and the rock further away. This should lead to a differentiated texture, with a finegrained texture near the fractures and a course-grained texture in the parts more centrally located. But granites generally exhibit a reasonably regular coarse-grained texture, pointing to slow and steady cooling. So the objection goes.This objection is based squarely on the belief that the mineral structure of the igneous rock depends solely on its cooling rate. However, confronted with such an apparent conflict, the person who believes the creation model would question such thinking, and would seek a scientifically credible solution consistent with the young age for the earth. Indeed, with a better understanding of the field data and geological processes, such a solution emerges. It is also worth noting that the issue has already been discussed by Snelling and Woodmorappe in their broader treatment of granites.6 Field clues that cooling rate is not the only factor affecting grain size The idea that the grain size of an igneous rock is inversely related to its cooling rate is described by Wambler and Wallace14 in the Journal of Geoscience Education as a common misconception. They claim it causes students to misidentify hand specimens, infer the wrong crystallization sequences, and ignore the crucial role of volatiles in rock formation. They attribute the problem to writers of introductory geology textbooks and field guides, and recommend that, in future, writers explain how crystal size depends on many factors other than cooling rate; factors such as nucleation rate, viscosity, original composition of the melt, pressure variation and the amount of volatiles.There are many field clues that suggest grain size is not controlled solely by slow cooling over millions of years. For example, dykes are often associated with granite intrusions and these also have a granitic texture. One well known example is the dykes discovered in Scotland by James Hutton, the father of modern geology. These showed the granite had invaded the fractured country sedimentary rocks demonstrating that it had been forced into them as a liquid.15 Trezise and Stephenson provide more field examples near Townsville, Australia, of granitic dykes, one about 10 m wide.16 In such dykes the grain size is usually smaller than the grain size in the associated pluton, but the individual grains are still visible, giving the rock a sugary texture. 17 Such thin dykes should have cooled much faster than a large pluton yet they still have visible crystals. The faster cooling has not produced the volcanic rock, rhyolite.Pegmatites provide another clue that crystal size is not dependent on cooling rate alone. Pegmatites have the typical appearance of igneous rocks with randomly distributed interlocking crystals such as quartz, feldspar and mica. However, pegmatites are extremely coarse-grained, customarily with crystals more than a few centimetres across but occasionally as large as 10 m! 18 Usually pegmatites are associated with intrusive granitic rock bodies, commonly taking the form of large veins, dykes, sills or irregular masses.19 So, although pegmatite bodies are physically smaller than the granitic intrusions with which they are associated, and should have cooled more quickly, the mineral crystals are larger. That is the opposite of what would be expected if crystal size depended on cooling rate alone. Consequently geologists explain the larger pegmatite crystals, not due to longer cooling time, but due to different physical conditions. It is generally agreed that they formed from the last stages of the crystallizing magma within the igneous body. 20,21 It is envisaged that as the magma crystallized, the residual melt became more and more concentrated in water, volatiles, alkalis and other elements, which enabled the large crystals to form.But there is more evidence for the role of fluids in pluton emplacement. The hot, rich fluids expelled from the magma as it intruded the country rock were responsible for many of the great mineral deposits in the world.22 These include igneous iron deposits and porphyry and hydrothermal deposits of copper, silver, lead, gold, molybdenum and tin, all in association with felsic intrusions. Field evidence shows that huge volumes of magmatic and hydrothermal fluids (and volatiles) were released when these plutons were emplaced. We have seen that the interpreted faster cooling of the smaller pegmatite bodies does not produce smaller crystals. Conversely, slower cooling does not necessarily produce larger crystals. Bodies of rhyolite are often relatively large (compared with veins, dykes and sills) but they still have a fine-grained volcanic texture in the middle of them. For example, a rhyolite intrusion at Coolum in Queensland is 1000 m long, 800 m wide and rises 200 m above the landscape (Figure 5).23 Yet the intrusion has a volcanic rhyolitic texture even within rock taken from inside the intrusion in a quarry. If cooling rate was the only factor affecting grain size, the inside of such a large volume Figure 5. The domed rhyolite body at Coolum, Queensland, of magma would cool more slowly and produce a Australia. Long columnar jointing through the dome suggests that a coarser-grained texture.What are some of the factors, large volume of lava was extruded at one time and would have other than cooling rate, that affect grain size? Field cooled more slowly inside than at the surface. Yet the texture is evidence shows that granites are often associated fine-grained even inside the body. with folded sedimentary rocks, suggesting crustal compression was important. For example, the orogeny (mountain building) that uplifted and folded the sediments in part of eastern Australia, in what is known as the New England Orogen, was typically followed with the emplacement of granitic plutons and extrusive rhyolite deposits.24Again, it has been long recognised that many ore deposits are clearly related to mountain building, which in turn is related to igneous intrusive activity.25 Uniformitarians assume compression and emplacement took tens of millions of years.24 However, when we understand that these events occurred during the catastrophic Flood,26 we realise that the processes occurred in less than one year, and may have only taken days. In this case, the dynamic forces of compression would have been huge, heating the rocks as they were compressed and producing colossal pressure changes in the magma generated by partial melting. Pressure affects a material’s melting point which in turn affects its crystallization behaviour. Specifics differ for individual materials depending on the relationship between pressure, volume, temperature, density, and entropy. Crystallization theory The science of crystallization has been developing apace because Figure 6. (a) High nucleation rate and low crystal growth rate creates a crystallization is widely used in the product with a fine-grained texture. (b) Low nucleation rate and high growth chemical industry, metallurgy and rate generates a coarse-grained product. ceramics and so is of enormous economic importance. Today many books are available on the scientific understanding of the process.27,28 The size of crystals depends on two factors: the rate of crystal nucleation and the rate of crystal growth. Our present understanding of both these factors is still in its infancy. If the physical and chemical conditions are such that the rate of crystal nucleation is high and the rate of crystal growth is low, then the product will have abundant fine-grained crystals (Figure 6a). To produce large crystals, as occur in granite, the rate of nucleation needs to be low, and the rate of growth high (Figure 6b). Such a situation would be produced if the physical and chemical conditions changed rapidly, not providing time for nucleation to occur but allowing for crystal growth.One laboratory study by Swanson determined that crystal-growth rates could reach several millimetres per day within polyphase granitic systems. 29 With such growth rates he concluded that granite could be produced rapidly. Swanson found that maximum growth rates of crystals are lower in systems which contain a H 2O-rich vapour phase and higher in systems that are undersaturated with H 2O. This means that a sudden loss of volatiles within a magma chamber would lead to rapid crystal growth. Swanson’s work demonstrates that long periods of time are not necessary to produce the coarse-grained granitic textures. Another factor is the degree of undercooling, that is, the extent to which the temperature of the melt is lower than the crystallization temperature. Under conditions of low undercooling, a relatively small number of large crystals could be grown in a few days. The degree of undercooling within a magma chamber would depend on magma chamber pressure and magma volatile content, both of which could be changed quickly by the tectonic processes associated with the Flood. It is worth noting that this work by Swanson has already been discussed in the context of rapid cooling of granite by Snelling and Woodmorappe.6Another laboratory study30 on silicate melts found crystal growth starts at nucleation sites already present before the magma cools. This produces granitic textures much faster than previously thought.Crystallization theory and practice reveals other clues that point to granite crystals having grown rapidly. First, when crystals grow rapidly they trap some of the surrounding liquid, forming fluid inclusions inside them.31 In many industrial applications it is important to grow crystals sufficiently slowly so they do not have inclusions. But mineral crystals in granite contain fluid inclusions, indicating they grew quickly, not slowly over millions of years.Second, in industrial applications, special attention is needed to prevent crystals settling.32 If the crystals in granites formed slowly over millions of years, we would expect them to have settled into layers. The layers would reflect the relative density of the crystals and the order of crystallization. There are many igneous intrusions, called cumulates, where such layering has occurred. 33 The heavier, early-crystallizing minerals tend to settle out by gravity, and the resultant texture shows clear evidence of concentration by accumulation. But the crystals in granites are reasonably homogeneous throughout the pluton, suggesting the rock crystallized rapidly before the individual crystals had time to settle. Layered intrusions commonly occur with mafic intrusions where the minerals (such as olivine, pyroxene, chromite, magnetite and plagioclase) have a wider range of specific gravity, and the magma viscosity was low. But cumulates also occur in some syenitic and granitic intrusions,34,35 indicating that under appropriate conditions crystals can settle by gravity from a felsic magma. Polonium halos Polonium radiohalos are also evidence that granites crystallised very rapidly. Radiohalos are concentric, discoloured circles observed under the microscope in translucent minerals such as biotite, muscovite, fluorite and diamond. 36–38 It is generally accepted that they were formed by decay of radioactive isotopes at the ‘radiocentre’ of the halo, as emitted alpha particles damaged the mineral. The alpha particles left a spherical discoloured region, the diameter of which depends on the emission energy of the alpha particle. Radiohalos can be erased when the host mineral is heated, even at temperatures as low as 250°C.39A number of different radiohalos have been identified and these can be distinguished by the different number of concentric rings present.40The rings have been related to the 238U decay series in which eight of the isotopes in the series liberate alpha particles when they decay. The different types of radiohalos have been linked to a specific parent isotope concentrated in the ‘radiocentre’. A 210Po parent produces a single-ringed halo, a 214Po radiocentre produces a two-ringed halo, and a 218Po centre the three-ringed halo. 238U produces an eight-ringed halo.All three polonium isotopes decay very rapidly with half lives varying from 164 micro seconds (for 214Po) to 138 days (for 210Po). Polonium halos have been found abundantly in minerals from granites from many localities.37 Because polonium isotopes have such short half-lives, the processes that caused the polonium to separate from its parent uranium and concentrate in the radiocentres must have been extremely rapid. In other words, the mineral must have crystallized very quickly after the radiocentre formed for the surrounding region to discolour as the radiocentre decayed. If the mineral took significantly longer than the half-life to crystallize, then the melt would not have preserved the effects of radioactive decay. Snelling suggests that the polonium radiocentres were concentrated by hydrothermal fluid transport and that the timeframe for the transport and cooling of the associated granitic magma was very short, perhaps only days.41 Tatoosh Pluton, Mt Rainer National Park In the final analysis, geological ideas need to be tested in the field, so we will consider an example of a granite pluton. The Tatoosh pluton42in Mt Rainier National Park, Washington State is one case where the field evidence contradicts the conventional idea that granite plutons formed from slowly cooling magma deep inside the earth. Composed of medium- to coarse-grained granodiorite, the pluton is roughly oval in shape and extends under Mount Rainier (Figure 7), a large volcano formed from andesitic lava. 43 Although an area of some 130 km2 of the granite pluton is exposed at the surface, the area would be more than doubled if the lavas and glaciers of Mount Rainier were removed. Classified as Miocene by its field relationships, the pluton shows evidence of shallow emplacement and rapid cooling as follows. Detailed field characteristics imply that the magma crystallized rapidly due to dehydration under a cover so thin that volatiles streamed up through the roof. One characteristic is the presence of vertical strings of large vesicles (cavities) near the roof of the pluton. These cavities were formed by the expansion of gas bubbles during the solidification of the rock, and suggest the existence of upward streaming volatiles at that time. Some of the cavities in the rock near the roof are lined with welldeveloped (euhedral) crystals projecting into the spaces. The well-developed crystals point to unrestricted growth suggesting crystallization from a volatile phase which has subsequently escaped. This is supported by the fact that the crystals in the cavities are characteristic of the minerals which crystallize during the late stages of a solidifying magma, chiefly quartz.Another field characteristic that suggests crystallization due to rapid dehydration is a remarkably widespread zone of fine-grained porphyritic rock up to 100 m thick or more. This zone is adjacent to the roof of the pluton in some areas but not in others. It is difficult to explain how this zone could have been caused by chilling by simple conduction into the wall rock because we would expect the zone to be always present at the top of the pluton. The fact that it is only intermittently present Figure 7. The Tatoosh pluton extends under Mt Ranier, indicates that the zone was produced by rapid transfer of Washington State. heat and volatiles to the surface and this almost certainly was associated with volcanic activity above the pluton at the surface. The sudden, explosive liberation of the volatiles would have caused an abrupt drop in the vapour pressure, causing the remaining magma to solidify and form the thick porphyritic zone.Further evidence that the processes involved in the emplacement of the pluton were rapid and catastrophic is the presence of sharply angular rock fragments (volcanic breccia) within a large circular zone, possibly at the root of a former vent. The spaces between breccia fragments are filled with minerals such as amphibole, quartz, scapolite, magnetite and apatite, which are characteristic of deposition from the late-stage volatiles. Some 600 m below this breccia the pluton is pervaded by a fine-grained granophyre, apparently the product of a sudden and final crystallization. This evidence suggests that the violent explosion which produced the breccia liberated volatiles causing the remaining magma to crystallize suddenly.One more evidence that the magma crystallized rapidly is the almost complete absence of marked flow banding and mineral lineation throughout the pluton. This suggests that there was no prolonged period when the material moved as a viscous crystal mush.These field characteristics of the Tatoosh pluton indicate that the sudden and explosive creation of voids in the pluton, coupled with the upward streaming of volatiles, reduced the vapour pressure abruptly, speeding up solidification of the magma. This example contradicts the conventional idea that granites only form from slowly cooling magma deep inside the earth. Conclusion Recent sceptic arguments citing coarse-grained granite texture as a case against rapid cooling of granites are ignoring, either wilfully or carelessly, previous creationist work which has addressed crystal size and shown it to be an invalid indicator of cooling rate.6 The claim that coarse-grained granite textures need long periods of time to form is based on a misconception—that crystal size is inversely proportional to pluton cooling rate and that large crystals develop only if they have time to grow slowly. Wampler and Wallace 14 recommend that this misconception should no longer be taught. They claim it is counter productive to clear geological thinking because it discourages students from understanding the possible processes of formation.Field and experimental evidence demonstrates that crystal size depends on factors other than cooling rate. These include nucleation rate, magma viscosity, original composition of the melt, pressure variation in the magma chamber and the amount of volatiles. Relevant field evidence includes granitic dykes, pegmatites and large rhyolite bodies. In addition, laboratory experiments on granitic melts show that a granitic texture can develop in days. Furthermore, the presence of discoloration halos of the short-lived isotopes of polonium in biotites and muscovite in granite are evidence of very rapid crystallization. And finally, in a field example, the Tatoosh pluton in Washington State demonstrates that, contrary to popular ideas, pluton emplacement can be shallow and cool rapidly The rapid formation of granitic rocks: more evidence by John Woodmorappe Summary It was once thought that granitic magma was so viscous that it would take hundred of millions of years for granitic rocks to form. However, recent research shows that granitic magmas are orders of magnitude less viscous than previously believed. Furthermore, the physical environment in which silica-rich magmas are segregated, transported and emplaced reveals that granitic magmatism is a rapid, dynamic process.. Granitic magmas may have been generated in the Earth in the 1,600-year period between Creation and the Flood, and emplaced and partly cooled during the Flood. Alternatively, it is possible that the dynamic tectonism associated with the Flood may be adequate to explain granites entirely within the Flood’s one-year timeframe, but this needs further investigation.For more than a hundred years, the generation and cooling of plutonic rocks has been conventionally believed to take millions of years. The entire process of granite formation consists of several steps. To begin with, heat must be injected into the parent rock material (protolith) in order for partial melting to occur. This molten fraction (granitic magma) has to separate and be extracted from the remaining protolith matrix (residuum). The melt must then be transported through the multi-kilometre-thick crust before it pools within a section of crust. Finally, this intruded mass of granitic magma must be allowed to cool and crystallize.The last two processes, transport through the crust and cooling, have already been shown to occur within a timescale of a few thousand years at most. 1 In summary, magmas do not have to rise in the crust by slow, density-driven diapiric processes, or stoping processes where the magma detaches and absorbs blocks of surrounding rock. Rather the magma can be rapidly squeezed through dikes and other pre-existing conduits. And even granitic bodies of batholithic dimensions can crystallize and cool in only a few thousand years if convective, waterbased cooling is available, as surely must have been the case during, and immediately after, the Flood.Now there are a variety of evidences, recently summarized, 2 which indicate that the first two processes, the partial melting of protoliths and the extraction of granitic magmas, are also fully compatible with a young Earth. A major uniformitarian dogma about the high viscosity of granitic magmas had to fall to make this fact conceivable. Viscosity—the rate determining variable While taking igneous petrology classes over 20 years ago, I was taught as fact that granitic magmas were so viscous 3 that they were almost indistinguishable from solid rock, in terms of their gross physical behaviour. With such a high viscosity it would require millions of years for the magma to differentiate and to rise through the crust. In fact, uniformitarian geologists for the better part of the 20th century had accepted the very high viscosity of granitic magmas as fact. 2 Now it is found to be a myth—as discussed below.Why is magma viscosity so significant? It turns out that the viscosity of the granitic magma is the rate-determining variable that governs how rapidly the magma can be extracted from its partially-molten protolith. 4 In general, and with other factors remaining equal, an order-of-magnitude decrease in the viscosity of granitic magma corresponds to an order-of-magnitude increase in melt-extraction rate from the partially-molten protolith, as well as an orderof-magnitude increase in the rate of transport of granitic magma through the crust.5 The physical environment of magma generation As heat is injected into the protolith and it begins to melt, the minerals with the lower melting points melt first. This leaves cavities within the still-solid material, which is now composed of the remaining higher-melting-point minerals. In other words, the magma first forms myriads of droplets, each of which is surrounded by the remaining, now-porous unmelted-rock matrix. In terms of physical and mechanical behavior, the partly melted protolith is like a sponge filled with small droplets of liquid. The sponge however is kilometres thick—so thick that the bottom can be crushed by the weight of the massive overlying part of this giant ‘sponge’, squeezing out some of the liquid.Naturally, it would take a long time for a very viscous liquid to be squeezed out of a sponge and to percolate to the top. However, the time needed would be significantly reduced if the sponge had hollow, vertical pipes driven into it—like the dikes that cut through the crust of the Earth. In this situation the liquid would not have to be squeezed very far before it could flow into a dike and rise to the top. The time needed to extract the magma would be reduced still further if external pressure were applied to the sponge: like squeezing a hand-sized sponge but by tectonic forces on a vastly larger scale. A further reduction in the extraction time, perhaps the greatest effect, would occur if the liquid in the sponge were less viscous. The difference would be similar to the difference in time needed to squeeze tar out of a sponge compared with squeezing water! And of course, if all three effects (dikes, tectonic strain and low viscosity) occur simultaneously, the reduction in extraction time for the granitic magma will be cumulative. Magma viscosity Just how viscous are granitic magmas? For the longest time, ‘dry’ granitic magmas were supposed to have viscosities in the neighborhood of 109 pascal seconds (Pa s),6 in contrast to mafic magmas, which have viscosities of only 10–100 Pa s.7 However, recent experimental evidence indicates that even relatively dry granitic magmas (1–3% water) are as much as two to four orders of magnitude less viscous (at 10 5–107 Pa s) than previously thought.8 Moreover, a magma containing several percent by weight of water can be at least two orders of magnitude less viscous than a dry magma. 9 It should also be added that the viscosity of granitic magmas, while extremely sensitive to water content, appear to be largely independent of the containing overpressure,10 but moderately sensitive to temperature.5 It is unclear at this stage how ‘thin’ a granitic magma can ultimately be. Extrapolations of experimental data 11 suggest that exceptionally hot and wet granitic magmas can have viscosities as low as 1 Pa s. Extraction and emplacement times To appreciate the significance of low viscosity in magmas, let us now consider the time required to extract about 10% by volume of granitic magma from a 1-km layer of protolith. We assume a temperature of about 700¡C, and that neither heat flow into the protolith, nor the physical strain on the rock matrix, are limiting factors. With a magma viscosity of 10 12 Pa s, the extraction of the magma would take 100 million years. Reducing the viscosity to 10 9 Pa s would reduce the time to approximately 20,000 years. Finally, at a viscosity of 10 6 Pa s, the requisite time shrinks to a mere 100 years! This is much less than the 1,600-plus years available between the Creation and Flood, even allowing a considerable margin of error in the estimated time of extraction itself, which could even be shorter than 100 years.Is there any petrologic or petrographic evidence that granitic magmas have been extracted in timescales of only decades or centuries? Definitely. I will provide just two examples. In some Himalayan leucogranites there is a strong undersaturation of the element zirconium. 12 This indicates that the granitic magma was extracted so rapidly from the remaining matrix (a maximum of 150 years or so), that the zirconium did not have sufficient time to come into equilibrium between the two phases. In a similar situation in Quebec, Canada, based on comparable evidence, the inferred separation time between granitic magma and the residuum is an astonishingly short 23 years.13 Sources of heat Where did the heat come from that melted the protoliths by the time of the Flood? One possible source is the heat stored in the mantle and crust as a leftover of the divine processes during Creation Week itself. These, of course, ordained the Earth as a planet in general, and formed the solid crust in particular. In uniformitarian thinking, the inferred-slow heating of the protolith comes primarily from the heat released by internal radioactive decay. Humphreys 14 has suggested that the decay rates of nuclides was accelerated, such as uranium, by many orders of magnitude. This, he suggested, was an intentional mechanism for generating the prodigious amounts of heat necessary for such things as rapid orogenesis, the rapid melting of protoliths, etc. He also suggests that one of these episodes of accelerated nuclear decay occurred during the first three days of Creation Week. In this scenario the requisite heat buildup would have been sufficient to eventually re-melt a significant fraction of the just-created crust during the ensuing 1,650-year interval between the Creation and Flood. Thus a large reservoir of molten granitic magma would have been generated in the lower crust, waiting to be mobilized, intruded, and partly cooled during the Flood year itself.Although the idea of accelerated radioactive decay is interesting, we creationist scientists must not ‘put all our eggs in one basket’. Other models for rapid protolith melting need to be examined that do not require any acceleration of radioactive decay as sources of heat. There is, in fact, a model15 for rapid crustal melting which meets this specification. It is attractive because it is very simple and can generate copious volumes of molten granitic crust. It requires no more than heat transfer between mafic magma and sialic crustal material. Mafic magmas usually have temperatures around 1,200¡C prior to crystallization. On the other hand, granitic magmas commonly flow at temperatures as low as 700¡C and material of granitic composition can be partially molten at about 850¡C. 16Now consider what happens when a large volume of basaltic magma intrudes into solid granitic crust. As the heat leaves the mafic magma, and it starts to crystallize, the surrounding granitic crust will absorb the heat and begin to melt. Very significantly, such melting can occur quickly, even for granitic crust of batholithic dimensions. Consider, for instance, a 500-m thick basaltic sill injected into solid granitic crust. In only 90 years or so, 60% of the basalt will have crystallised such that the sill will no longer undergo internal convection. Within the same period of time, a layer of granitic magma will be generated from the crust, varying in thickness from 500–1,400 m, depending upon the initial conditions of the mafic magma.17 Within the one-year Flood? We can take the implications of the studies cited in this report even further, when we remember that they have all been conceptualized and developed within the basic uniformitarian mind set. Could protolith melting and granite-melt extraction occur, to an appreciable extent, within the Flood year itself? Heat flow is one of the major factors in these studies that limits melt-extraction to 100 years (see Figure 16 of Rutter and Neumann 18). However, it is unlikely that such a thermal limit existed in the recently-created Earth, as was discussed earlier. It is certainly worth exploring whether appreciable amounts of granitic magma of exceptionally low viscosity and exceptionally high water content could be extracted from a partiallymolten protolith in a year or less. Further, we need to explore the effect of very high strain rates, which must have existed as a result of catastrophic tectonism during the Flood. The physical pressures resulting from such strain rates would be applied directly to the partially-molten rock matrix. Appropriate studies could determine whether or not such strain rates are possible, even for brief periods of time, and reveal whether granite petrogenesis in one year is a realistic proposition.However, this question is rather moot. Regardless of whether or not significant quantities of granitic magma were generated during the Flood year itself, it is clear, from recent reports, that the entire process of granitic petrogenesis could have occurred on an Earth that was only several thousand years old: ‘As a result, dynamic models that operate on timescales of months to centuries are replacing the once-prevailing view of granitic magma production as a slow, equilibrium process that requires millions of years for completion.’19 It would be difficult to make the implications any clearer for a young Earth. Furthermore, the abolition of the long-held uniformitarian myth about granite formation constitutes nothing less than a revolution in geology. What other uniformitarian myths are we even now tacitly accepting that are likewise ready to fall? Conclusion The viscosities of silica-rich granitic magmas are orders of magnitude less than has been conventionally believed for over a hundred years. Consequently, the millions of years, previously believed necessary to form granitic rocks, are no longer required. The underlying physical processes involved in the segregation, transport and emplacement of granitic magmas operate on a timescale of months to centuries. Besides magma viscosity, important factors controlling the rate of emplacement include tectonic deformation of the crust, the protolith structure after partial melting, and the emplacement of magma by dike networks. Granitic magmatism is a rapid, dynamic process. Granitic rocks may have been generated in the Earth in the 1,600-year period between Creation and the Flood, and emplaced and partly cooled during the Flood. Alternatively, it is possible that the dynamic tectonism associated with the Flood may be adequate to explain granites entirely within the Flood’s one-year timeframe, but this needs further investigation. Granite formation: catastrophic in its suddenness by Tas Walker ‘In fact, just about everything that was taught as recently as ten years ago about granitic magmatism has been turned on its head.’1So concludes John Clemens in his overview paper about the origin of granite, published in the UK in the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association.In his introduction to Clemens’s paper and the accompanying discussion, editorial board member W.J. French explains that the origin of granite has been controversial since before James Hutton (1726–1797). After summarizing the turbulent disputes through the 1950s and up to the present, French boldly proclaimed that with Clemens’s paper, ‘The granite controversy ends’! Conflict with the scripture Figure 1. Model for the origin of granite: (1) partial melting of source rock deep inside the crust, (2) separation of magma from solid residue, (3) transport of magma in dykes to upper crust, (4) accumulation of magma into tabular pluton, (5) crystallization of pluton, and (6) cooling of pluton. For more than a century geologists have accepted that granites formed slowly over millions of years. Any suggestion that the young age account be taken seriously has been dismissed as nonsense.Geologist Paul Blake, in the newsletter of the Australian Geological Society, argued exactly that—that granite formation means that any geological model based on ‘the flood myth’ is absurd, and ‘all the available evidence contradicts such ideas.’2 He illustrates his point using granite outcrops: ‘Field relationships [in this area of Australia] show that there are two entirely separate granitoid intrusive events in the sequence, each of which require at least 3,500 years to cool. How does Dr Walker fit 7,000 years worth of granitoid cooling into 60 days? Unless Dr Walker can find a way to emplace, cool and unroof granitoids within a couple of days then his model does not stand up to scrutiny.’2 But, according to Clemens, slow-and-gradual ideas about granite formation are wrong: ‘The long-cherished picture of granitic diapirs [balloons of magma] slowly pushing their way toward the upper crust and grinding to a halt by solidification has been replaced by an altogether different picture of narrow feeder dykes punching their way upward in months, pulsing with magma and feeding rapidly growing plutons.’1 Surprisingly, Clemens suggests that belief in an old earth has long led thinking down the wrong path. He claims that the idea the earth is 4,600 million years old had ‘a psychological effect of tempting one to consider geological processes as slow and continuous. After all, there is all that time to fill.’ He concludes that granites belong with increasing number of geological processes that were ‘catastrophic in their suddenness’.Clemens has researched igneous rock-forming processes most of his professional career. He specialised in crystalline rocks, particularly granites, and applied field, geochemical, isotopic and experimental approaches to understanding their origin.One of the contributors invited to discuss Clemens’s paper, Wallace Pitcher, took mild exception to the idea that Clemens’s views are new. Pitcher, who had researched the granite problem for over 60 years, said he had ‘long abandoned the idea of vertically extensive, deep-seated pyramidal batholiths, envisaging instead dyke-interconnected magma chambers, themselves filled pulsively.’ 3 Note the word ‘pulsively’, suggesting crustal dynamics were involved.The whole thrust is that granites form quickly, much faster than previously imagined, something that creationists have previously reported.4 Magma production Granite magma is the result of melting or partial melting of a pre-existing source rock (figure 1). The second step is that the melt must be separated from the solid residue and collected into bodies. The evidence points to the process of melt segregation being rapid.5Clemens explains that metamorphic rocks of the granulite facies 6 are considered to be the solid residue from the process of partial melting and melt segregation. So, since the granitic magma was produced rapidly, then the associated metamorphism was also rapid. The mineral transformations that occur during metamorphism are the result of chemical reactions, and these need abundant water to allow the free exchange of ions. With the appropriate physical conditions chemical reactions proceed quickly. Magma transport Also, since the melts are produced deep within the crust, the magma must have travelled tens of kilometres upward. How this occurs depends in part on the physical properties of the melts, which can be quite complicated. Some of the findings have been surprising.Viscosity calculations have shown that the flow properties of granitic magma remain relatively unaffected by the presence of crystals. 7Furthermore, for magma to ascend to the surface it is found that the critical widths of the dykes are quite small, of the order of 1–2 m only. In other words, narrow dykes can be very efficient transporters of granitic magma in the crust.7With the dyke model, the ascent rates of granitic magma could vary by less than 10% over a broad compositional range.7The crystals that form in granitic magma can actually resorb during and after ascent. This means that any remnants of the source rock (resistite) could be destroyed during ascent causing the magma viscosity to lower. In fact, the ascent rate could increase during ascent, meaning that the magmas would accelerate rather than slow down.7Magma can be transported through pre-existing structures such as faults and joints. However, pre-existing structures are not necessary because the buoyancy of the magma in vertical cracks will cause the cracks to propagate. Any sudden failure of the wall rock would lead to an upward migration of the crack tips and an upward flow of the magma.So how long does it take for magma to ascend 20 km in the crust? With typical magma and crust properties it could be anywhere betweenfive hours and three months. Clements says: ‘Such rapid ascent rates are clearly negligible on the scale of geological time. This would make granitic magma ascent effectively an instantaneous process … ’8 What sort of time would it take to build a huge pluton? According to Clemens, a dyke 3 m wide and 1 km long (in plan) could build a batholith of 1,000 km3 in 1,200 years.While this is longer than the creation timescale, remember that that Clemens is working within the uniformitarian paradigm of a 4.6-billion-year-old earth. A period of 1,200 years is probably the longest he could comfortably stretch the time. A slightly modified combination of parameters (such as dyke dimensions, magma viscosity and fluid content) would make the young age timeframe even more plausible. ‘Huge batholiths could be created quickly with relatively small dykes or pipes that tap magma sources many kilometres to tens of kilometres below.’ 8Clemens describes how the crystals in some granites are arranged in patterns resembling textures in sedimentary rocks: gradedlayering, cross-layering, scour and fill structures, flame structures and swirls or enclaves of crystals. 9 According to Clemens these ‘attest to the fluid character of the magma’. But they do more than that. They point to the fact that the magma was flowing when the crystals settled, and that the flow was pulsing. These support the concept that the batholiths filled quickly during times of tectonic disturbance. Magma crystallization Another idea that Clemens ‘turns on its head’ is that the large crystals in granite grow slowly over long periods of time. This has long been used as an argument against the reliability of the timescale, but it has been refuted before. 10 Clemens too notes that crystallization can be much faster than previously imagined possible: ‘Experimentally measured rates indicate that a 5 mm crystal of plagioclase could have grown in as short a time as 1 hour, but probably no more than 25 years.’11 Pluton cooling is another geological process that has been said to take millions of years, but geological understanding of pluton geometry no longer supports this. Recent geological and geophysical observations have revealed that the world’s granitic plutons are mostly tabular in shape and typically only a few kilometres thick. This runs counter to the old idea of vertically extensive batholiths, but this is now accepted as an observational fact.8 Figure 2. A polonium halo. Given this tabular shape, it is a simple matter to model the cooling by conduction of a 3 km sheet of granitic magma.8 Based on conduction alone (i.e. ignoring the cooling effect of fluids) it would take only 30,000 years to completely solidify from the initially liquid magma. But we know that fluids play a controlling role in the cooling of granitic magma, and their behaviour would drastically reduce the time.12Rapid crystallization and cooling is also indicated by the presence of tiny spheres of radiation damage within biotite crystals in granite. Halos produced by polonium (figure 2) are abundant in granites, pointing to catastrophic geologic processes on a young earth. 13,14 Clemens did not mention this remarkable evidence, but it further confirms the general thrust of his paper.Pitcher agrees with Clemens’s conclusions about the shape of granitic plutons, quipping that ‘the single towering body was an offence to reason.’ 15 He also pointed out that a thin geometrical shape ‘is consistent with the remarkably low degree of contact metamorphism against bodies of considerable outcrop area.’16 More and more consistent with the young age timeframe Clemens’s overview of the latest findings on the origin of granite demonstrates that the geological evidence is leading to models that are consistent with the young age record.But there are still important unanswered questions. Why do granite rocks form in the first place? What initiates the melting of the source rocks? The enormous tectonic upheaval involved is sufficient cause—from beginning to end. Global scale catastrophe created continental scale crustal movements that initiated partial melting deep inside the earth, forcing the magma through the crust, and emplacing it in huge magma chambers—all quickly. We do not see granitic magma being produced and emplaced on these scales today.In spite of the revolution in thinking about granite discussed in the Geologists’ proceedings, and the recognition of granitic catastrophism, the authors nowhere suggest that the age of the earth should be questioned, even though they recognize the harmful psychological effects of the long-age paradigm. This problem was not recognized or explored. But, now that they have extended geologic catastrophism from sedimentary rocks to igneous (and, by association, metamorphic) ones, where do they propose inserting the billions of years of time? Rapid rock Unexpected application for hard-rock recipe by Tas Walker Wikimedia Commons/Tobias Alt Most people imagine that it takes millions of years to form sedimentary rock. That is certainly the impression we are given in our culture today. However, some Australian scientists have developed a revolutionary new chemical process that transforms loose sediment into rock within days. 1,2 The invention does not use strange, synthetic materials, but mimics natural processes. Some may find it hard to believe, but it’s true. Contrary to the general impression, it does not take millions of years to produce sedimentary rock. All it takes are the right conditions. What is sedimentary rock? Sedimentary rock, such as sandstone, is composed of grains of material held together with cement. The grains may be fragments of other rock, or minerals such as quartz or calcite. 3 The fragments may be minuscule, like mud, or larger like sand, pebbles or even boulders. The rock may be composed of particles of similar size (‘well sorted’) or a mixture of sizes (‘poorly sorted’). Technically the particles are called clasts and the rocks are clastic rocks.Except for fine-grained rocks like mudstone, clastic rocks are usually porous. The spaces or pores between the grains can store pore fluid such as water, which can move through the rock. Oil, gas and water are stored underground like this.In natural rocks, many minerals can cement the grains together. Common cements include calcite, quartz, or minerals of iron. Different cements produce rocks with different strengths and different colours. For example, iron minerals produce red rocks.Sometimes the sediment is well cemented, making a hard, uniform rock, prized for building stone, e.g. Hawkesbury Sandstone around Sydney. Sometimes the cement is uneven and the quality of the rock is variable—hard in places and crumbly in others. Occasionally the cement is confined to small pockets and forms concretions with unusual shapes.When a rock is poorly cemented, engineers find that building foundations subside and embankments collapse. An obvious way of improving the strength of the foundations would be to increase the amount of cement in the rock. This is how the new rapid-rock invention works. Chemical solutions The new invention is simple to use. All that is needed is to spray two solutions onto the porous sand, soil or rock. The waterbased solutions seep into the material, replacing the existing pore fluid. Alternatively, the solutions can be injected into the material. Because the solutions flow easily, like water, the sediment is quickly penetrated. And being entirely non-toxic, the solutions do not pose a health or environmental hazard.Once inside the pores, the chemicals react to form calcite crystals on the surface of each grain of sediment. The calcite cements the grains together and gives the sediment rock-like strength. The speed of the reaction can be controlled from one to seven days to allow the solution to penetrate into the sediment as far as desired.Because the cement only covers the grain surface, the spaces between the grains remain open. Thus the porosity of the rock is only slightly reduced and the flow of groundwater is not obstructed. This means that the solutions can be applied a number of times to the same sediment and continue to penetrate the pore spaces, adding extra cement each time. The sediment could be converted into almost-solid rock with the pores mostly filled, but this would take many applications and a few months to achieve. Ordinary water will not soften calcite, so the cement bonds should remain strong indefinitely.2 Lots of applications The rapid-rock invention has many practical uses, including strengthening weak foundations, stabilizing embankments and strengthening tunnels. One of the first projects was to repair a historic tunnel in Western Australia that was dangerous and closed to the public. After only three applications, the tunnel was strengthened, and the method saved lots of money.The London Underground has tested the method for stabilizing some of its embankments with the big advantage that the materials can be strengthened in situ. The process could also be used to preserve historic monuments. Chemical solutions penetrate the pore spaces and react to form calcite crystals on grain surfaces. When cemented, the sediment is rock hard. The process mimics how sedimentary rock forms in nature.Repeated applications result in further build-up of calcite cement around grains. The Calcite In-situ Precipitation System (CIPS) mimics natural crystallization around particles, which improves stability. ‘Don’t tell the creationists’ One unexpected application of this research is that it dramatically demonstrates the fact that rocks do not need millions of years to form. Certainly, for one of the inventors, this application came as a shock.When CMI-Australia first heard about this invention, we wrote to Dr Ed Kucharski for details. However, we didn’t receive a reply and assumed that he was no longer working on the project or that we had the wrong email address.Imagine our surprise when we read an article published in the UK about the process, where Dr Kucharski was reported to have said, ‘We had some enquiries which appeared strange. When I looked into them, I realised that they were from a group of creationists trying to disprove Darwin’s theory of evolution. I didn’t call them back.’ 4 Obviously, that was our inquiry.One powerful misconception is that rocks take millions of years to form. This claim is not true. The new research vividly demonstrates that, with appropriate conditions, rocks can form very quickly.The global Flood is the key. Floodwaters flowing over the Earth during that cataclysm dumped the huge deposits of sediment. And the same floodwaters contained the dissolved chemicals that quickly cemented the sediment into rock. Mud experiments overturn long-held geological beliefs A call for a radical reappraisal of all previous interpretations of mudstone deposits by Tas Walker New research presented in Science magazine documents how, contrary to conventional wisdom, mud can deposit from rapidly flowing water.1 These findings cut across beliefs held by geologists for over a century and signal that ‘mudstone science is poised for a paradigm shift.’ 2Using specially designed laboratory equipment, Juergen Schieber, John Southard and Kevin Thaisen have shown that mud-sized material will deposit under much higher current velocities than previously thought.For more than a hundred years, geoscientists have assumed that long periods of quiet water conditions are required for the deposition of mud. Based on that belief, whenever geologists have encountered mud deposits in the sedimentary record they have interpreted them as forming in a tranquil deposition environment.Long-age scientists have long attacked the idea that the Flood was a real, historical event, and disparaged the claim by young-earth creationists that the year-long Flood can account for most of the geological deposits exposed on the earth today. One of their major arguments concerns this widely held but erroneous belief.For example, Alan Hayward uses the Haymond rock formation in the USA for this purpose, describing it as almost a mile (1.6 km) thick, extending over a large area, and containing more than 30,000 alternating layers of shale and sandstone.3Hayward assumed the conventional geological beliefs about the deposition of mud as fact: ‘Shale is made of compacted clay. As most readers will have noticed, clay consists of exceedingly fine particles which take a long time to settle in water. Turbulence keeps them in suspension and consequently clay will only settle in calm water.’He then uses these erroneous ideas to disparage the account of the global Flood: ‘How did the Flood bring in a thin layer of sand and deposit it over a large area, then bring in a thin layer of clay and all this to settle quietly—all in a matter of minutes? And then repeat the whole performance fifteen thousand times?’He then mocks the scientific standing of Flood geologists. ‘It seems rather obvious that there is only one way in which a series of events could possibly occur. Geological interpretations will be affected.In other words, Flood geology is not real science because it needs to invoke supernatural intervention to explain an otherwise implausible (in his view) position.However, the latest research report in Science turns Hayward’s argument on its head. The fact that muds deposit from flowing water means that the whole formation could be explained by catastrophic deposition, possibly within days or hours.Daniel Wonderly is another who has used much ink and paper to mock young-earth creationist writings. He insinuates that young-earth creationists are uninformed, as reflected in the title of his book, ‘Neglect of Geologic Data: Sedimentary strata compared with young-earth creationist writings’.4Surprisingly, his writings skeptical of the Global Flood are posted on the web site of the ASA, the American Scientific Affiliation, which describes itself as a fellowship of creationists in science who share a common fidelity to the creation and a commitment to integrity in the practice of science.Wonderly follows a similar line to Hayward. In chapter 2 of his book he describes the immense thickness of sediments in the Appalachians, eastern USA, and argues that this amount of sediment could not possibly have been deposited in the year-It’s not that there is too much sediment but that the deposition rates were too slow.His arguments hinge on his assumed deposition rates, which is why the latest experiments on mud deposition are so relevant. Wonderly says, ‘Most of the shale and mudstone strata were deposited in fairly deep waters in inland seas, and their rate of deposition was probably no more rapid than the slower rates we have cited for continental shelves.’ Interestingly, Wonderly here describes in detail events that occurred in the past but which have never been observed by any geologist. His whole argument is based on his beliefs. He goes on:‘Even when a body of water is tranquil, at least many hours are required for the settling out of a single clay particle to become part of a shale or mudstone deposit. Even if the suspended clay particles have undergone flocculation (clumping), the water has to be essentially tranquil as the small clumps of flocculated clay are not nearly so dense as grains of sand.’6 Wonderly concludes, ‘One year just does not allow enough time for anything like the number of relatively quiet settling periods needed for the existing clay and mudstone layers. Mud can settle from flowing water.Again, the latest research documented in Science shows that these ideas are wrong.Schieber, the lead researcher for the Science article, said it should have been obvious that mud can settle from flowing water. ‘All you have to do is look around. After the creek on our university’s campus floods, you can see ripples on the sidewalks once the waters have subsided. Closely examined, these ripples consist of mud. Sedimentary geologists have assumed up until now that only sand can form ripples and that mud particles are too small and settle too slowly to do the same thing.’ 7With graduate student Kevin Thaisen, Schieber designed and built a ‘mud flume’ that looks a bit like an oval race track. They installed a motorized belt with paddles to keep the muddy water moving at a constant speed.For mud they used extremely fine clays, calcium montmorillonite and kaolinite, as well as natural lake muds. According to conventional geological wisdom, talc-sized clay material would not settle from rapidly moving water. However, after only a short time the mud was moving along the bottom of the flume. According to Schieber, ‘They accumulated at flow velocities that are much higher than what anyone would have expected.’Schieber suggests that one application of his research is by oil companies prospecting for oil and gas, because both organic matter and muds are sticky and are often found together. Along this line, his work could also be relevant to the way coal deposits form. Coal beds frequently alternate with shale and mudstone, so the traditional geological interpretation of coal forming in a swamp environment could be another cherished belief overturned by these findings.Macquaker and Bohacs say of this research: ‘The results call for critical reappraisal of all mudstones previously interpreted as having been continuously deposited under still waters. Such rocks are widely used to infer past climates, ocean conditions and orbital variations.’ 8 What other sweeping global interpretations have been made from a faulty belief about the deposition of mudstone, a sedimentary rock comprising some two-thirds of the geological record? Creating opals Opals in months—not millions of years! by Andrew A. Snelling Opals have fascinated people for centuries. As early as the first century AD, the Roman Pliny wrote of opals: ‘In them you shall see the living fire of ruby, the glorious purple of the amethyst, the sea-green of the emerald all glittering together in an incredible mixture of light.’Mark Antony loved them, and is thought to have assaulted a senator to get a particularly nice one. Napoleon presented Josephine with ‘The Burning of Troy’, a magnificent red example. Shakespeare called them ‘that miracle and queen of gems’, and Queen Victoria of Great Britain made the new discoveries from far-off Australia a fashion necessity.Prized for their vivid hues, Australia’s renowned precious opals command retail prices from US$5 to $3,000 per carat, depending on quality. The finest opals have become more expensive than many other gems, and Australia is responsible for practically all of the world’s supply. (Mexico is the only other significant producer.) Coober Pedy, together with Andamooka and Mintabie, all in South Australia, account for approximately 70 percent of total world production. However, since 1988 the value of production from Lightning Ridge in New South Wales, with its famed highquality black opal, has outstripped the South Australian fields.The opals are said to have formed millions of years ago (30 million years ago at Coober Pedy), although the host rocks are all claimed to be more than 65–70 million years old. And surprising as it may seem, the ingredients of opal are commonplace stuff. Water in the ground carrying dissolved silica (similar to the glass in windows) is said to have seeped through beds of sand and grit, where the silica particles are deposited in cracks. As the water subsequently evaporated, the silica particles became ‘cemented’ together to form the opal. Light bending around the silica produces the variety of glowing colours. Fossils made of opal Even fossils found in the host rocks have not escaped the percolating silica-rich groundwaters. Occasionally, bones, seashells and seed pods are found fossilized by having been ‘turned’ into opal. Perhaps the most famous example in recent years is ‘Eric’ the pliosaur (a marine reptile), which was the subject of high-profile public fund-raising by The Australian Museum in Sydney in order to purchase these opalized bones from the Coober Pedy miner who found them in 1987. ‘Eric’ is said to be about 100 million years old. No wonder then, in most people’s minds, because of these claimed time scales, and because of the almost universal perception/indoctrination that geological processes are almost always slow and gradual, opals ‘must’ have taken a long time to form in the ground. ‘Not so’, says Len Cram, a Lightning Ridge ‘bush’ scientist who earned his Ph.D. for his opal research. Secret of ‘growing’ opals A committed creationist, Len has discovered the secret that has enabled him to actually ‘grow’ opals in glass jars stored in his wooden shed laboratory, and the process takes only a matter of weeks! (See: Snelling, A., Growing opals—Australian style! Creation 12(1):10–15, 1989.) Len’s man-made opals are so good that even experienced Lightning Ridge miners can’t tell the difference between them and opals found in the ground. Furthermore, scientists from Australia’s CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) can’t distinguish Len’s opal from natural opal even under an electron microscope—they look identical!No, Len is not about to disclose the formula and ‘flood’ the world with manmade opals. His quest has always been to find out how opal forms so as to discredit uniformitarian (slow and gradual) geological theories. He believes the opals took only a few months to form within suitable portions of the thick sediment layers laid down catastrophically during the Flood, and his experiments undeniably demonstrate that this was feasible.All it takes is an electrolyte (a chemical solution that conducts electricity), a source of silica and water, and some alumina and feldspar. The basic ingredient in Len’s ‘recipe’ is a chemical called tetraethylosilicate (TEOS for short), which is an organic molecule containing silica. The amount of alumina which turns to aluminium oxide determines the hardness of the opal.The opal-forming process is one of ion exchange, a chemical process that involves building the opal structure ion by ion (an ion is an electrically charged atom, or group of atoms [molecule]). The process starts at some point and spreads until all the critical ingredients, in this case the electrolyte, are used up. Within a matter of weeks of this initial formation, the newly forming opal has beautiful colour patterns, but it still has a lot of water in it. Slowly over months, further chemical changes take place, the silica gel consolidating as the water is ‘squeezed’ out.Len can now ‘grow’ opal in natural Lightning Ridge opal dirt, the sandy grit in which the natural opals are found. Once the electrolyte is mixed into the opal dirt, colour starts to form within four to six days. Seams of opal then actually grow, identical in shape and form to that found in the ground, some with colour and some without, the process taking about three months. Thus seam opal is not necessarily a sedimentary deposit in previously existing cracks in the opal dirt. Rather, the chemical reaction which ‘creates’ the opal makes the seam from the opal dirt itself where no crack or seam previously existed. Len says this achievement is a ‘world first’, and that viscosity evidently plays a major role in this crucial ion-exchange process. Rapid opals fit with the young timescale Len’s experiments not only provide an explanation of how opals form, but the short timescale of only a matter of years is consistent with the creation framework and can readily account for the field observations of natural opal in its host rocks. Furthermore, this means that his short timescale also applies to the fossilization process. The bones of ‘Eric’ the pliosaur (for example) need not have taken thousands or millions of years to fossilize. The most likely explanation of their preservation via opalization is now therefore the same replacement (ion-exchange) process that Len has so graphically demonstrated in his glass jars, and that takes only months to years.So the evolutionary ‘stories’ of opal formation and fossilization slowly over thousands and millions of years have to be rewritten. Since pliosaurs and other creatures need to be buried catastrophically to ensure their subsequent fossilization, the rock layers hosting the opals and opalized bones are best explained by catastrophic deposition during the global Flood. Chemical processes then took over to form the opals in the rock layers and opalize the bones in the months and years that followed.Today we can admire and enjoy the beauty and fire of these dazzling precious opals and opalized bones. But when we realize, elucidated by research based on creationist presuppositions, that their formation resulted from catastrophic judgment bringing death, we are reminded of our Creator who was judged and died on our behalf to again transform dirt to beauty. Microscopic diamonds confound geologists by Andrew Snelling Tiny diamond grains discovered in high-grade metamorphic rocks (gneisses) from south-western Norway may force geologists to rethink cherished ideas about the Earth’s continental crust and processes. Discovered by an international team of Russian, Norwegian, British and US geoscientists,1 the diamond fragments at only 20–80 micrometres in size are too small to see without a microscope. Yet they have formed within the continental crust where they shouldn’t have!‘This is a spectacular discovery’, says diamond expert Stephen Haggerty of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. 2According to all the geology textbooks, diamonds can only form in the Earth’s mantle at depths of more than 120 km (75 miles), where the exceedingly high pressures and temperatures—40 kbar and 900°C—squeeze carbon into the ultracompact crystal structure of diamond. The diamonds then reach the surface when explosive volcanic eruptions force the molten rock containing them up narrow conduits (pipes) through the crust.However, these Norwegian microdiamonds just do not comply with the textbooks! Whereas they should have been in volcanic mantle rocks, they were found in metamorphic rocks. Originally formed as ancient sedimentary deposits on the Earth’s surface, these layers of sediments are believed to have been compacted and cooked (400–450 million years ago!) when another continent (Laurentia) rammed into what is now Scandinavia (the ancient Baltica). Although such continental collisions (also expected to have occurred in a catastrophic plate tectonics Flood model3) are believed to be capable of metamorphosing crustal rocks, they are considered far too ‘docile’ for making diamonds. According to Dobrzhinetskaya et al.,4 geothermobarometry, textural studies and fluid-inclusion analyses indicate that the high-pressure phase of metamorphism that produced these Norwegian gneisses involved conditions of 17–21 kbar and approximately 630–820°C. However, this is still not nearly enough to mould carbon into diamond, says Haggerty and conventional wisdom.Significantly, this Norwegian discovery is not the first, geologists having already reported finding examples of microdiamonds in metamorphic (crustal) rocks twice before, in 1990 in Kazakhstan5 and in 1992 in eastern China. 6While skeptical researchers questioned those earlier reports, this Norwegian discovery makes it harder for the geoscience community to ignore the obvious conclusion that diamonds may also form in crustal rocks.‘This really nails it’, says Haggerty. According to W. Gary Ernst of Stanford University,‘If these are welldocumented diamonds, I exult. You can’t laugh it off anymore and say it’s one of a kind.’ 7Dobrzhinetskaya et al. are cautious in their report and do not speculate how these crustal rocks could have been subjected to the mantle conditions claimed for diamond formation, yet Dobrzhinetskaya independently tries to explain the presence of these microdiamonds in these Norwegian metamorphic rocks.8 She suggests that the ancient continental collision forced pieces of the crust down to mantle depths temporarily, where carbon in the sedimentary layers then turned into diamonds before the crustal rocks rose back to the surface.While this theory would solve the ‘mystery’ of how the diamonds formed, Monastersky 9 is absolutely right in pointing out that instead it raises another conundrum. Crustal rocks have a much lower density than mantle rocks, so therefore most geologists consider continental rocks too buoyant to be carried down into the mantle. Yet Ernest insists, ‘We don’t think crustal rocks can go down and come bobbing back up, but a few of them must have!’Haggerty, however, suggests that the diamonds might have formed without a trip into the mantle. Industrial researchers, he notes, have learned how to grow extremely thin diamond films at very low pressures. Therefore, because the microdiamonds from Norway, Kazakhstan and China are so tiny, he speculates that they may have formed at pressures found in the crust.‘We either have a major tectonic problem, or we have an entirely new way of making diamonds,’ says Haggerty. 10So should geologists now have to rewrite some basic textbooks as Monastersky concludes? No, not yet, because Haggerty, Ernst, Monastersky, and even Dobrzhinetskaya all overlook one key issue—Dobrzhinetskaya et al.11 admitted that they had not yet identified the microdiamonds in situ in the gneiss (they recovered them from crushed rock), and therefore they had no indisputable evidence to support either a metamorphic or an alluvial origin for the grains. That’s right—there’s still the possibility these micro-diamonds were deposited in the original sediments (by erosion from source rocks) before they were metamorphosed! In any case, the uniformitarian (slow-and-gradual) model of plate tectonics, which involves millions-of-years for continental collisions, is hard pressed to explain how crustal rocks could go down to mantle depths of 120 km and bob back up again. On the other hand, catastrophic plate tectonics during the Flood year 12 with metres per second crustal movements would have inevitably resulted in violent continental collisions, the tremendous forces involved buckling crustal rocks to the extent of ramming some portions down to mantle depths. However, this would be short-lived, for as the crumpled collision zone ‘relaxed’ very soon after the impact, the lower density continental crustal rocks thus rammed into the mantle would rapidly rebound.No wonder geologists are confounded by these microdiamonds! Perhaps the ‘mystery’ surrounding them would be easily solved if they abandoned their uniformitarian presuppositions. Maybe catastrophic plate tectonics during the Flood is the better model for earth history? Warped earth by David Allen Have you been taught that folded rocks were deformed over millions of years by gradual application of heat and pressure? That’s what I was taught at high school.However, geologic formations commonly show clear evidence that the rocks could not have been hard and brittle before they were folded. Soft and plastic Image 3 When I was studying at university, I inspected numerous rock outcrops on geology excursions. At the majority of outcrops where the rocks were folded, lecturers would explain that the rock must have been deformed while the sediment was still unconsolidated and saturated with water. They said this because, although the rocks were obviously severely deformed, there was hardly any fracturing. We all realized that the rock could not have been brittle when it was folded so tightly. It must have been soft and plastic. If the rocks had been hard and solid before they were deformed, they would have fractured, not folded. Image 4 In my work as a geophysicist, I have observed many examples of soft sediment folding, including rocks at Turon River (Images 3–4) and Ulladulla (Image 7) in Australia and at Jaipur in India (See image 8, image 10, image 11). The lecturers also wanted us to carefully examine the minerals and texture of the rock outcrops. They pointed out that there was no evidence that the rocks had been subjected to much heat or pressure. Instead, it was clear that bending had taken place at normal temperatures. Many of the folded layers of rock that we observed were enormous. What could have formed these folds? In most cases, the lecturers could only point to catastrophe. They could not suggest any gradual process that could deform rocks into tight folds under normal temperature conditions without fracturing them. Even the thick strata in Grand Canyon were still soft and plastic when they were deformed. (See Grand Canyon strata show geologic time is imaginary.) Enormous forcesHowever, there are other instances where it is obvious that the folding occurred while the rock was solid. Deformation experiments have shown that such folding is possible under extreme pressure in a short time or under moderate pressure in a long time. Some tightly folded rock layers are so large that they can only be properly observed from the air (Image 6). Massive folds in hard rock over such a huge area had to involve enormous forces that can only be explained by enormous catastrophe. Could continental-scale earth movements during the Flood have produced the great forces needed to fold such large, tight folds quickly? Global catastrophe Many scoff at the thought of the global Flood, claiming that normal climatic events could not cause such an event. They are right! It was not a normal event. In spite of this, some people imagine that must be a local flood. And they only look for evidence for large local floods in the Middle East. However, if they could bring themselves to accept (even if only for the sake of the argument) the immensity of the Flood, they would soon ‘see’ that the geological evidence for global cataclysm is overwhelming. Logical explanation Many creationist geologists believe that the Flood involved rapid movement of the huge plates comprising the crust of the Earth. This explains why so much sediment was still soft when it was deformed. No sooner would floodwaters have deposited great volumes of mud and sand than moving plates would have crumpled and deformed the sediment while it was still saturated. The Flood also explains the colossal forces needed to fold enormous areas of hard rock.The Flood is a simple, logical, and valid explanation for why we find so much rock that has been catastrophically deformed on all the continents. Folded limestone Image 2 Fossil shells In the Peruvian Andes (Ancash Province), limestone has been folded (Image 1) as an oceanic plate pushed against the edge of the South American Plate. Fossilized shells found in the rock (Image 2) were once in the sea. Dinosaur footprints have also been found at this location. Experiments with deforming limestone 1 show that strata such as these could have been folded within the year-long Flood. Tectonic movement during the Flood has pushed these Peruvian strata 5,000m (16,000 ft) above sea level. During this upheaval, rapid erosion by a rushing mixture of water and rock, followed by glacial erosion in the post-Flood Ice Age, would have left the landscape as observed in Image1. Today, the glaciers have receded and erosion has slowed down. Even at the present rate, erosion is occurring much too fast for these mountains to have existed nearly as long as the evolutionary geological timescale suggests.2 Folded mud All the rock in Image 3 is tightly folded—the close-up (Image 4) shows one fold. The minerals in the rock indicate that it has not been heated much, so it must have been folded when the sediment was water-saturated and unconsolidated. The Flood provides a logical explanation of how such large volumes of sediment could have been folded so tightly before they had a chance to consolidate. (Chelseigh Formation, greywacke and shale on the Turon River, west of Sofala, New South Wales, Australia.) Great and small Image 5 Folds of all scales proliferate in the rocks of the Earth—many are so small that they can only be seen under the microscope (Image 5). Others are so large (Image 6) they can only be seen from the air. Image 5 (at 160x magnification) shows severely deformed quartz and muscovite mica (from near Cooma, New South Wales, Australia). Mineralogy of the photomicrograph suggests that in this case the rock was solid when deformed. Folding like this has been reproduced and recorded during experiments in the laboratory, so millions of years are not required.3In contrast, the aerial photo below (Image 6) shows enormous folds near Mt Isa, Queensland, Australia. Rapid plate movement during the Flood would have provided the immense forces needed to compress and fold such great volumes of rock. In this case, the evidence is consistent with some heating of the rock, probably due to the forces involved. Faulting and sliding Not only is there a vast amount of evidence around the world for catastrophic folding of soft, waterlogged sediment, but also for faulting and sliding of huge blocks of material. In Image 7 above, a 4 km 2 block of sediment broke away and slid into this position rapidly.4 Under the front of the block, the sediment is extremely deformed. If this sediment had been laid down over millions of years, it would have consolidated and solidified, making such incredible movement impossible. However, during the global Flood, the frequent movement of large blocks of water-saturated unconsolidated sediment would be anticipated. (Ulladulla Mudstone, Warden Head, Ulladulla, New South Wales, Australia.) ‘Rainbow cake’ mix Image 12 Rainbow-cake mix A vast expanse of catastrophically deformed mudstone north of Jaipur, Rajastan, India (Image 8), was deposited by water and severely deformed before it could solidify into rock. No gradual process taking place over millions of years can explain such large-scale deformation. Other rock at the same location in India (See image 9, image 10, image 11) has been deformed so much that it looks like a rainbow-cake mix (Image 12). The catastrophic global Flood is the event which logically explains how such mixing could have taken place—not small, gradual, everyday events over millions of years. Just as swirls in a rainbow cake were formed quickly before the mix was baked into cake, folds in much of the crust of the Earth were formed quickly in a great watery catastrophe before the rocks were solidified. Mineralogical evidence confirms that such folds could not have formed slowly over millions of years. Sandy surprise Scientifically, it has never been a problem to explain that hard rock can form quickly, given the right conditions. However, the problem is that when most people look at huge sandstone cliffs, for example, they are conditioned in today’s culture to think in terms of millions of years.Creation magazine has given many photographic examples to show that solid rock can form quickly—e.g. a huge ‘frozen’ waterwheel encased in solid limestone in 65 years, 1 fossilised modern fencing wire2 and pliers,3 a sizeable gasfield pipe clogged in months with solid calcite, 4 and huge stalactites in just a few decades, 5 to name just some. Here is one more.The contents of the wheelbarrow all came out of the pool filter in the background—the sand at the bottom had hardened into the sandstone, which has been chiselled into the fragments seen here.Mike Miller of Ohio, USA explains that his father recently opened the drain cock on their ordinary swimming pool sand filter and nothing came out. Upon checking, he found to his surprise that the sand in the lower part of the filter had turned to solid rock since it was put in around five years ago. Mike says, ‘Not soft, crumbly stone, either—hard rock, indistinguishable from “normal” sandstone. My dad spent a long time with a chisel breaking up the stone into the pieces you see in the wheelbarrow [photo 1]’.A close-up of the sandstone fragments. Note the cylindrical imprints where it has conformed to the shape of the plastic tubing inside the bottom of the filter, and the curved surface at bottom right matching the interior curve of the filter canister.Mike says that their pool is fed with underground water with a slightly higher than normal content of iron oxide, which would help the sand to harden into rock. Photo 2 shows a closeup view of the sandstone. A global watery cataclysm was responsible for much geologic work, only a few thousand years ago. Today, most scoff at the flood, preferring instead to believe in millions of years of slow and gradual processes. A worldwide flood would of necessity dissolve a lot of minerals, and deposit huge amounts of sand, as well as other sediments. Given the right chemicals in the water, hardening into the sandstone deposits we see today would take place quickly. Graphic demonstrations of rapid rock formation should remind us to think realistically about the past, unclouded by the fog of fashionable worldviews which place millions of years of death and suffering before sin. Keys to rapid rock formation If you know anyone who thinks rocks and fossils must take thousands or millions of years to form, here's an example to show them they may need to revise their ideas.The photo shows a set of car keys which was found in solid sandstone rock on the Pacific Coast of the United States. The keys are encrusted by rock, and were found on the coast of Oregon. They were given to college lecturer Richard Niessen in California, and are now displayed in the Museum of Creation and Earth History at the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego.The keys, joined to a plastic-topped key chain, are thought to belong to an automobile from the early 1960s. ICR's museum curator, John Rajca, says the rock-encrusted keys show that the commonly accepted idea of slow rock formation is clearly wrong in this case. The rock encasing the keys had to harden rapidly, so rock formation is not necessarily a slow process.Next time you hear someone say that rock formation must take thousands or millions of years, tell them about these keys that were rapidly encased in rock! HOW DID MANY FINE LAYERS OF ROCK FORM Sedimentation Experiments: Nature finally catches up! by Andrew Snelling Figure 1: Experimental multiple lamination of a heterogranular mixture of sediments due to dry flow at a constant rate. Back in 1988 we published in this journal the English translation of a significant paper1 that was originally presented to the French Academy of Sciences in Paris on November 3, 1986 and then published in the Academy’s Proceedings.2 This was followed with our publication of a subsequent paper3 in 1990 that had also been initially presented to the French Academy of Sciences in Paris on February 8, 1988 and published in the Academy’s Proceedings.4The author on both occasions was Guy Berthault, and his important experiments have demonstrated how multiple laminations form spontaneously during sedimentation of heterogranular mixtures of sediments in air, in still water, and in running water (see Figure 1). In subsequent research Berthault has teamed up with Professor Pièrre Julien in the Engineering Research Center of the Civil Engineering Department at Colorado State University, Fort Collins (USA). We published their results in 1994,5 after their research had been published by the Geological Society of France. 6 Their sedimentation experiments are continuing. Figure 2: Fine layering was produced within hours at Mt St Helens on June 12, 1980 by hurricane velocity surging flows from the crater of the volcano. The 25-foot thick (7.6 m), June 12 deposit is exposed in the middle of the cliff. It is overlain by the massive, but thinner, March 19,1982 mudflow deposit, and is underlain by the air-fall debris from the last hours of the May 18, 1980, nine-hour eruption.The significance of this research has been repeatedly pointed out by creationist geologists. On June 12, 1980 a 25 foot (7.6 m) thick stratified pyroclastic layer accumulated within a few hours below the Mt St Helens volcano (Washington, USA) as a result of pyroclastic flow deposits amassed from ground-hugging, fluidised, turbulent slurries of volcanic debris which moved at high velocities off the flank of the volcano when an eruption plume collapsed (see Figure 2).7 Close examination of this layer revealed that it consisted of thin laminae of fine and coarse pumice ash, usually alternating, and sometimes cross-bedded. That such a laminated deposit could form catastrophically has been confirmed by Berthault’s sedimentation experiments and applied to a creationist understanding of the Flood-deposition of thinly laminated shale strata of the Grand Canyon sequence.8 Berthault’s experimental work and its implications have also been featured on videos.9,10Now Nature has finally caught up! That is, the weekly international science journal Nature, arguably the world’s leading scientific publication, has just published and commented upon the results of experiments similar to those performed by Berthault, 11,12 thus finally acknowledging what a creationist researcher has been demonstrating for more than ten years. However, not surprisingly, Berthault’s work is neither mentioned nor referenced in the Nature articles.And what did the Nature authors discover? Makse et al. found that mixtures of grains of different sizes spontaneously segregate in the absence of external perturbations; that is, when such a mixture is simply poured onto a pile, the large grains are more likely to be found near the base, while the small grains are more likely near the top.13 Furthermore, when a granular mixture is poured between two vertical plates, the mixture spontaneously stratifies into alternating layers of small and large grains whenever the large grains have a larger angle of repose than the small grains. Application—the stratification is related to the occurrence of avalanches.Fineberg agrees. 14 Both the stratification and segregation of a mixture of two types of grains can be observed to occur spontaneously as the mixture is poured into a narrow box, the mixture flowing as the slope of the ‘sandpile’ formed steepens. When the angle of repose of the larger grains is greater than that of the smaller grains, the flow causes spontaneous stratification of the medium to occur, and alternating layers composed of large and small particles are formed, with the smaller and ‘smoother’ (lower angle of repose) grains found below the larger and ‘rougher’ grains (there was a beautiful colour photo in Nature). Even within the layers, size segregation of the grains occurs, with the smaller grains tending to be nearer the top of the pile.We are naturally heartened by this ‘high-profile’ confirmation of Berthault’s experimental results, but readers of Nature could have read all about it more than a decade ago in the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal. However, what this also confirms is that creation scientists do undertake original research, in this case, research on sedimentation that is applicable to the catastrophic processes of deposition during the Flood, contrary to the establishment’s uniformitarian (slow-and-gradual) interpretation of the formation of such sedimentary strata. And furthermore, creation scientists not only do original research applicable to Flood geology (even if Nature doesn’t recognise it), but the type of research they do is valid and good enough to be published in peer-reviewed secular scientific journals. Experiments on lamination of sediments by Guy Berthault SEDIMENTOLOGY—Experiments on lamination of sediments, resulting from a periodic graded-bedding subsequent to deposition—a contribution to the explanation of lamination of various sediments and sedimentary rocks. These sedimentation experiments have been conducted in still water with a continuous supply of heterogranular material. A deposit is obtained, giving the illusion of successive beds or laminae. These laminae are the result of a spontaneous, periodic and continuous grading process, which takes place immediately, following the deposition of the heterogranular mixture.The thickness of the laminae appears to be independent of the speed of sedimentation but increases with extreme differences in the size of the particles in the mixture. Where a horizontal current is involved, thin laminated superposed layers developing laterally in the direction of the current, are observed. Introduction Laminae have traditionally been considered by geologists as strata with a thickness of less than 1 cm. Augustin Lombard gives the following definitions: ‘Lamination groups together all the structures characterising sedimentary rocks within a bed or stratum. Beds or laminations are the internal arrangement of strata in lithologically distinct levels.’1 A stratum is a sedimentary unit included between two boundary surfaces. It consists of a deposit of sediments of various structures accumulated during a continuous phase. 2 Regarding its genesis, Lombard writes: ‘The origin of planar-parallel laminae is attributed to currents during deposition.’ 3 ‘Repetitions of graded-bedding in a stratum seems to result from successive pulsations in the flow of the mass of sediment.’4However, Lombard also writes: ‘Kuenen (1966) has reproduced these laminae without any current pulsations. They are formed during decelerations.’ 5 Having read this, I wondered whether the presence of a current was necessary in the formation of laminae, and whether these laminae could not result just as well from a continuous sedimentation in still water. Fundamental Experiments To test this hypothesis, I performed three very simple experiments:1. A mixture was prepared consisting of 25% sand with particles ranging in size between 0.3 mm and 0.4 mm coloured with methylene blue, and 75 % siliceous powder with particles between 20 and 80 microns. Then, during a period of 10 minutes the dry mixture was poured into a 2 litre conical-shaped vessel. Figure 1 shows that an alluvium cone was formed in the vessel, as a result of the mixture having fallen into the vessel at a constant rate.Almost horizontal graded sequences appeared simultaneously at the bottom of the vessel, composed of blue sand underneath and siliceous powder of approximately 2.5 mm thickness on top. A striking parallel can be obtained by a dry flow of mixtures of powders.’6 These experiments show segregation of particles of the same size. 2. 5 kg of the same mixture was poured into the funnel of a screw powder distributor, which provides a continuous flow of the mixture at varying speeds into Figure 1. Laminations resulting from flowing of dry sediment. a 2 litre test tube full of water. 400 g of the mixture was poured into the test tube at a speed of 140 g per hour. A laminated deposit was obtained. The thickness of the laminae was practically constant at about 2.5 mm. A cross-section through the dry deposit showed the laminae. 3. In order to observe the lamination mechanism better, the previous experiment was repeated with the water being coloured with methylene blue. Figure 2 shows that the top part of the resultant deposit is clearer than the rest of the deposit. This top part forms a ring, composed mostly of siliceous powder, into which particles of blue sand can be seen to penetrate. As the ring grows thicker, a thin layer of blue sand appears within it. This constitutes the base of a new lamina. And so it goes on.The genesis of this lamination, therefore, results quite clearly from a segregation of particles of the same size within the deposited mixture. Graded bedding has occurred within the deposit itself, after its sedimentation. There is no superposition of layers. The Effect of Sedimentation Speed Does the speed of sedimentation cause a variation in the thickness of the laminae? Sand calibrated between 0.135 mm and 0.400 mm coloured with blue methylene, and a siliceous powder between 20 and 40 microns were used. 1. Variation in the sedimentation speed of siliceous powder. Figure 2. Laminations resulting from Successively, 50, 100, 200 and 300 cm3 of powder were diluted in a test tube flowing in water. full of water. The sedimentation time increased according to the increasing quantity of powder being diluted. Into each of these dilutions, the same 80 cm3 volume of sand flowed from the distributor during 5 minutes. The thickness of the resulting laminae remained constant at about 2.5 mm. 2. Variation in the sedimentation speed of sand. 40, 80 and 120 cm3 of sand were poured successively for 5 minutes into the same dilution of 200 cm 3 of siliceous powder in 2 litres of water. The thickness of the resulting strata remained constant at about 2.5 mm. 3. Simultaneous variations of the sedimentation speed of sand and siliceous powder. A mixture, composed of 25% sand and 75% siliceous powder, flowed from the distributor into the test tube full of water, at a speed of 140g per hour, then at double and triple this speed. Figure 3 shows that the thickness of the laminae remained constant. The obvious conclusion is that within experimental limits the thickness of laminae is independent of the sedimentation speed. The Effect of Particle Size Do laminae vary in thickness with extreme differences in the size of the particles? 1. Variation of thickness with the size of large particles of sand. 200 cm3 of siliceous powder from 20 to 80 microns diluted in a test tube of water, had poured into it for a period of 5 minutes on each occasion, 100 cm3 of sand, with the size of the larger particles increasing each Figure 3. The thickness of laminae is independent of the speed of time. The thickness of the resulting laminae sedimentation. increased with the widening difference between the size of the particles of sand in each discharge as follows: Size range mm 0.125-0.160 0.200-0.250 0.315-0.400 0.500-0.630 0.630-0.800 0.800-1.000 of sand- Thickness of mm 2 2 2.5 2.7 3 laminations did not form laminations- 2. Variation in thickness due to the sizes of the siliceous powder particles. 100 cm3 of sand with particles between 0.3 mm and 0.4 mm was mixed successively with six portions of 200 cm3 of siliceous powder and sand, whose particles were increased in size each time. The mixture was poured for five minutes each into separate flasks and the laminations were observed. The thickness of the laminae increased with the size of the particles of the fine powder, but not to any great extent as follows: Size range of Thickness of 3. Variation in thickness due to the wide difference in size of the particles of sand. Four measures of sand were poured successively from the distributor. The size of the siliceous powder- laminationssmall particles of sand in each measure remained the same, but the larger particles microns mm were increased in size for each measure. Figure 4 shows that the thickness of the 0-4 2.5 laminae increased as the difference between the size of particles became greater as 20-40 2.5 follows: 63-80 2.5 Size of small Size of large Thickness of sand particles- sand particles-laminations80-100 2.5 microns mm mm 125-160 2.7 4 0.4 5 200-250 2.7 4 0.63 6 4 0.8 8 4 1 10 Three further experiments with larger differences in size (1.25 mm–1.6 mm–2 mm) gave irregular lamination.The obvious conclusion from this second series of experiments is that the thickness of laminae increases with an increase in the difference between the size of the particles in them. Experiments on Natural Laminated Sedimentary Rocks Numerous fluviatile and marine sediments, as well as sedimentary rocks, showing the microstratified aspect are given such names as: laminae, laminites, varves, etc. These types of lamination are attributed to Figure 4. The thickness of laminae is independent of the speed of successive deposits of layers. The question is sedimentation. whether some of these natural laminae can be explained by the mechanism demonstrated above. In this connection the experimental method was applied to the following natural sedimentary rocks found in France. 1. A multicoloured sandstone from Fontainbleau shows lamination of an average of 3 mm thickness. It was crumbled into particles varying from 0.1 to 0.3 mm in size. The particles were placed in the distributor, and fed into the 2 litre test tube full of water at a speed of 50 g per hour. The original lamination was reproduced quite evenly with an almost identical thickness. 2. A diatomite from Auvergne shows lamination (see Figure 5). Reduced to its elementary particles it was calibrated by a cyclone and particles of at least 80 microns were selected. Examination by Figure 5. Sample of layered diatomite. Figure 6. Laminations resulting resedimentation of the diatomite. from the microscope confirmed that the majority of the diatoms were unbroken. The larger particles were coloured with methylene blue and then mixed with the smaller particles.The mixture was fed from the distributor into the test tube of water at three successive speeds of 50, 100 and 150g per hour for identical periods of time. Lamination appeared in the deposit and the thickness did not vary with the sedimentation speed. The original lamination was reproduced with virtually the same thickness (see Figure 6). The answer to the question is in the affirmative, that is, natural laminae can be explained by this demonstrated mechanism. Notwithstanding the case where it can be demonstrated that lamination results from seasonal deposits.7 Incidence of Lateral Current A plate measuring 80 cm by 25 cm by 40 cm was fixed at one end of a flume, just at the water level. It received a horizontal current of water at a slow speed. Coming from the flume through a circulation pump, and at the same time the diatomite particles were falling at a speed of 80 g per hour. The experiment was continuous for 15 days, apart from one interruption. Thin laminated superposed layers expanding laterally in the direction of the current were observed (see Figure 7). They could be distinguished from each other by a gradation of colours, which were clearly due to the different loads of large coloured particles. Conclusions The continuous deposit of a heterogranular sediment in still water was studied.It was noted that the deposited material organised itself immediately after deposition into periodic graded laminae giving the appearance of successive beds. One of the more striking features of these laminae formed in the sediment itself was their regular periodicity.The thickness of the laminae was measured in millimetres. It was independent of the speed of sedimentation and varied according to the extreme difference in the size of the mixed particles.When deposition took Figure 7. Lamination resulting from a lateral water flow. place in a water flow, the lamination phenomenon was also observed. The geometry of lamination was modified by the water flow, but the latter was not the cause of the modification.The periodic graded laminae were similar to the laminae or varves observed in nature which are interpreted as a superposition of seasonal or annual beds. Their origin, however, was quite different, arising from periodic structuring after deposition.The question now is to study a number of laminated or varved formations in relation to this mechanism, particularly looking for physical structuring obtained from experimentation. Experiments on stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures by Pierre Y. Julien, Yongqiang Lan and Guy Berthault Abstract Superposed strata in sedimentary rocks are believed to have been formed by successive layers of sediments deposited periodically with interruptions of sedimentation. This experimental study examines possible stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures under continuous (non-periodic and non-interrupted) sedimentation. The three primary aspects of stratification are considered: lamination, graded-beds, and joints.Experiments on segregation of 11 heterogeneous mixtures of sand-size quartz, limestone and coal demonstrate that through lateral motion of a sand mixture, the fine particles fall between the interstices of the rolling coarse particles. Coarse particles gradually roll on top of fine particles and microscale sorting is obtained. Microscale segregation similar to lamination is observed on plane surfaces, as well as under continuous settling in columns filled with either air or water.The formation of graded-beds is examined in a laboratory flume under steady flow and a continuous supply of heterogeneous sand particles. Under steady uniform flow and plane bed with sediment motion, the coarse particles of the mixture roll on a laminated bed of mostly fine sand particles. In non-uniform flow, the velocity decrease caused by a tailgate induces the formation of a stratum of coarse particles propagating in the downstream direction. On top of this cross-stratified bed, fine particles settle through the moving bed layer of rolling coarse sand particles and form a near horizontally laminated topset stratum of finer particles. Over time, a thick stratum of coarse particles thus progresses downstream between two strata of laminated fine particles, continuously prograding upward and downstream.Laboratory experiments on the desiccation of natural sands also show preferential fracturing, or joints, of crusty deposits at the interface between strata of coarse and fine particles.Rather than successive sedimentary layers, these experiments demonstrate that stratification under a continuous supply of heterogeneous sand particles results from: segregation for lamination, non-uniform flow for graded-beds, and desiccation for joints. Superposed strata are not necessarily identical to successive layers. Introduction As stratification usually describes layering in rocks, a single layer of homogeneous lithology is referred to as a stratum. Stratification has often been associated with intermittent sedimentary layers. Superposed strata in sedimentary rocks are believed to have been formed by successive layers of sediment deposited periodically with interruptions of sedimentation. McKee et al.1 reported on the sedimentary structure, texture and shape of the massive sand deposits developed during the Bijou Creek flood in July 1965. Stratified sand deposits up to 12 feet (3.8 metres) in thickness formed within a few hours. The violent flood deposited superposed thick horizontal strata of fine and coarse sands, characteristic of the upper flow regime with internal layering in the form of microscale lamination. Is stratification resulting from successive intermittent layers in such rapid and quite continuous sedimentary flow? The primary features of interest in the Bijou Creek sand deposits are: -lamination seen as a microscale sorting of coarse and fine particles at a vertical scale not exceeding 10mm; graded-beds or strata of coarse and fine particles of thickness exceeding 10mm; and horizontal joints between sediment deposits. Hjulström29 defined a relationship between velocity and motion of particles of different sizes. Various hypotheses formulated to explain the origin of near-horizontal lamination in unidirectional flow were compiled by Bridge 30 and Cheel and Middleton,31 and are summarized in Table 1. Allen32 stated that many authors have qualitatively recognized the importance of some periodic or quasi-periodic phenomenon, either located in the flow or in the upper- most levels of the bed. Velocity pulses, large eddies and turbulent fluctuations have had a wide appeal.33-41 Table 1. Summary of hypotheses explaining the origin of horizontal lamination. Reference Summary of Hypothesis Kuenen and Menard Velocity pulsations in turbidity current. (1952)2 Kuenen (1953)3 Kuenen (1957)4 Ksiazkiewicz (1952)5 Diluted secondary turbidity currents suspended above bed. Ten Haaf (1956)6 Sorting action of vortices by turbulence in turbidity currents. Hsü(1959)7 Settling and laminar flow of fluidized sediment along bed. 8 Unrug (1959) Settling from tail of turbidity current with non-uniform concentration. Wood and Smith (1959)9 Bouma (1962)10 and Small turbulent eddies. Current velocity pulses with settling or traction. Lombard (1963)11 Moss (1963)12 Grains of similar susceptibility to transport tend to deposit together, that is, spatial and temporal 13 Kuenen (1966) selection of similar grains due to grain interaction under quasi-steady flow condition - the 'likeseek-like' principle. 14 Allen (1964) Pulsating sediment supply due to separate large-scale eddies. Upper regime plane bed. Walker (1965)15 Intermittent supply of mixed sediment to top of viscous sublayer followed by differential settling through; for finer grained laminae. Coarser grained laminae under upper regime plane bed. Sanders (1965)16 Settling and traction during current velocity fluctuation. Not upper regime plane bed. Jopling (1967)17 Attributed laminae to the superposition of longitudinal segregations of bedload grains under aggradation of an upper regime plane bed. Pettijohn (1957)18 Transitory phases or minor chance fluctuations in velocity of depositing current. Pettijohn (1975)19 Middleton (1970)20 Smaller grains filter down between larger ones during flow, thus displacing the larger ones towards the free surface. Smith (1971)21 Migration of very low relief bedforms (diminished ripples and dunes). McBride et al. (1975)22 Frostick and Reid Combined the ideas of Pettijohn, Moss and Kuenen. (1977)23 Bridge (1978)24 Described the possible lamination formation due to the effect of single burst-sweep cycle on a plane bed. Hesse and Chough Suggested that a horizontal lamination formed with multiple burst-sweep events on plane bed. (1980)25 Allen (1984)26 Laminae form due to the shifting distribution of boundary shear stress as large eddies move downstream over a plane bed. Bridge and Best Lamination form by both migration of low-relief bedwaves and the turbulent bursting process. (1988)27 Paola, Wiele and Extremely low amplitude bedforms. Initial deposition from small-scale turbulent fluctuations in Rienhart (1989)28 shear stress followed by sieving out mechanism resulting in a smooth surface process termed glazing. Bridge42 proposed the 'burst-sweep cycle' in the turbulent boundary layers to explain the vertical sorting that defines laminae. Accordingly, bursts would cause upward dispersion of the suspended load throughout the flow; also some of the saltating load would carry coarser grains due to higher shear stress. As bed shear stress decreases, the dispersed particles settle down to form a laminated layer. Allen 43 suggested a model based on the larger coherent structures of the turbulent boundary layers to explain the formation of horizontal laminae under a plane bed in the upper flow regime. Cheel and Middleton44 suggested that the probable mechanism for the formation of FU (fining- upward) and CU (coarsening-upward) laminae was the burst-sweep process. Unrug,45 and Wood and Smith,46 saw parallel lamination as caused by the segregation of the coarser grains into distinct clouds within the flow. Hsü47 attributed lamination to laminar flow at the bed. On the basis of field observations or laboratory experiments, other investigators have explained parallel laminations by the travel of extremely flat symmetrical to strongly asymmetrical bed waves, 48-53 although not always in the context of an upperstage plane bed. Paola et al.,54along with Bridge and Best,55 explained that lamination results from the superposition of two processes:high-frequency erosion and deposition due to turbulence; and migration of low-amplitude bedforms that is neither upper nor lower flow regime. A 'like-seeks-like 'mechanism of grain sorting in the bedload layer was advocated by Moss 56,57 and Kuenen.58 Interestingly, Kuenen59 reported that: 'current pulsations are so numerous that they should produce ten to a hundred times more laminae than are present.' 'the selective concentration is due to the tendency of particles moving along the bottom to join stationary ones of equal weight, density and shape. . . ' He added that 'in spite of extremely uniform discharge without pulsation, lamination developed in nearly all experiments.' Guy et al.60 noted the sorting of coarse and fine sand particles in laboratory flumes. Middleton 61 proposed that grading arose because smaller grains tended to filter down between the larger ones during flow, thus displacing the larger grains toward the free surface. This segregation mechanism is also referred to as 'kinematic sieving' in Allen. 62 A sorting process was also advocated by Frostick and Reid.63 Berthault64,65found that the thickness of laminae in still water increased as the difference between the size of particles became greater, and the laminar thickness also increased with the flow velocity of running water.The fundamental study reported herein focuses on laboratory experiments addressing three key issues in sediment stratification:-lamination (thinner than 10mm) resulting from segregation of heterogeneous sand mixtures; graded-beds (thicker than 10mm) of heterogeneous sand mixtures that may result from steady non-uniform flow and continuous settling; andhorizontal joints at the interface between strata.The use of sand mixtures with coarse and fine particles of different colours ensures a better visualization of the sediment sorting, besides providing an assessment of the distribution of different particle sizes. This article summarizes several laboratory reports by Julien and Chen 66,67 and Julien and Lan68-70 on recent laboratory experiments carried out in the Hydraulic Laboratory of the Engineering Research Centre at Colorado State University. Experiments On Segregation And Lamination Laboratory experiments on segregation of sand size mixtures of quartz, limestone and coal were carried out to examine how clearly various mixtures of particles of different sizes, density and shape can separate into thin layers of coarse and fine particles not exceeding a few millimetres in thickness:under horizontal motion; and through settling in air and water. Table 2.Characteristics of sands tested Angle of Angle of Particle diammeter Sand ColourDensity repose inrepose inAngularity (mm) air water g/cm3 (degrees)(degrees) D10 D25 D50 D75 D90 B2040 black 2.70 39.5 38 angular 0.380.480.570.670.76 B3060 black 2.70 37 36 angular 0.140.200.330.550.62 ERC#1 white 2.45 35 32 rounded 0.080.11 0.130.150.18 ERC#2 white 2.65 37 34 rounded 0.720.901.201.501.90 ERC#3 white 2.65 37.5 35 rounded 0.480.550.630.730.82 ERC#4 white 2.65 ---0.090.130.160.190.29 ERC#5 beige 2.65 42.5 35 rounded 0.150.290.550.97-Limestone#1 white 2.65 --rounded -- 0.310.390.47-Limestone#2 white 2.65 37 34 rounded -- 0.760.911.00-Coal#1 black 1.30 --angular -- 0.260.410.57-Coal#2 black 1.30 40 40 very -- -- 0.25-- -- angular Coal#3 black 1.30 --angular -- -- 0.66-- -Coal#4 black 1.30 --angular -- -- 1.24-- -(a) Sediment Mixtures Thirteen different sand-size materials have been used in the experiments. For each material the particle size distribution, mass density, angle of repose, angularity and colour are summarized in Table 2. Note that D 10, D25, D50, D75 and D90 represent the particle size for which 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 90%, respectively, of the particles are finer. The measured angle of repose increases as the subjective (angular vs. rounded) microscopic observation of angularity increases. Both parameters indicate that ERC #1, ERC #2, ERC #3, ERC #5, limestone #1 and limestone #2 are rounded, while coal #1, coal #3, coal #4, B2040 and B3060 are angular. Equal weights of materials of different sizes and colours were mixed to form a total of 11 mixtures listed in Table 3. Table 3. Horizontal segregation of sand mixtures. # Mixture* Content** Observation A ERC #1 and Clear segregation. Coarse black particles on top of fine white particles B2040 (see Figure 1). B ERC #3 and No apparent segregation. B2040 C ERC #1 and Clear segregation. Coarse black particles on top of fine white particles. B3060 D ERC #1 and Clear segregation. Coarse black particles on top of fine white particles. coal #1 E ERC #3 and No clear segregation of particles. coal #3 F limestone #1 Clear segregation of particles. and B3060 G limestone #2 Clear segregation. Fine black particles on top of coarse white particles. and coal #1 H ERC #2 and No clear segregation is observed. coal #1 I limestone #1 Clear segregation. Fine black particles on top of coarse limestone and coal #2 particles. J limestone #1 Clear segregation. Coarse black particles on top of limestone particles. and B2040 K B3060 and Clear segregation. Coarse white particles on top of fine black particles. ERC #3 * Mixtures are comprised of equal weight of each material. ** Mass density ρ, particle diameter D, different , same = , comparable (for example D2 = D1 same particle diameter, ρ2 ρ1different density) (b) Experiments on Segregation Figure 1a. Clear segregation of mixture ERC #1 and B2040, from above. Figure 1b. Clear segregation of mixture ERC #1 and B2040, from underneath. Simple experiments were conducted to investigate possible segregation of sediment particles on a transparent horizontal plexiglas plate 30 x 40 cm2. A small volume (not exceeding 10cm3) of a given homogeneous sand mixture was poured onto the plate, which was then gently agitated manually for a few minutes in the horizontal plane of the Plexiglas plate. Pictures were then taken above and below the plate to examine whether segregation occurs. The same procedure was repeated for each sand mixture. Typical experimental results, shown in Figure 1, demonstrate how easy it is to segregate these two types of particles, with the finer white particles (ERC #1) underneath (see Figure la), and the coarser black particles (B2040) on top (see Figure 1b).The experimental results for the segregation of 12 different mixtures scrutinized by Julien and Lan 71 are summarized in Table 3. The pattern of particle segregation generally includes three types:no segregation; fine particles on top of coarse particles; and coarse particles on top of fine particles (see Figure 1). Segregation of particles always takes place if the two types of particles in the mixture have different sizes or densities. The particle segregation diagram in Figure 2 illustrates the three types of particle segregation according to particle diameter D50 and mass density ρ of the data from Table 3. Figure 2. Particle separation diagram. The most fundamental mechanism explaining the segregation of heterogeneous mixtures of constant mass density starts from a uniform mixture of coarse and fine particles, as sketched in Figure 3. Only the lateral motion of the mixture in any direction is necessary to induce segregation. During lateral motion of the sand mixture in Figure 3a, the fine particles fall through the interstices between the coarse particles and reach the bottom of the moving layer, while the coarse particles start rolling on top of the fine particles (see Figure 3b). After a certain time, the fine particles stabilize at the bottom of the moving layer while the coarse particles remain mobile on top (see Figure 3c). In order to obtain segregation with particles of the same mass density, it is important that the fine particles be sufficiently small to fall between the interstices of the coarse particles, and also the coarse particles must be able to roll on top of the small ones. Particles of equivalent sizes and different densities also segregate with lighter particles on top of heavier particles. Figure 3. Sketch of the segregation process with constant particle mass density, before (a), during (b), and after (c) motion. Segregation is possible without bedforms and without turbulence; in that regard the segregation process is very different from the 'glazing' process suggested by Paola et al.72 Middleton73 and Allen74 also debated whether the dispersive shear stress arising from interparticle collisions exerts a significant influence on segregation. Given that the dispersive stress is proportional to the square of the rate of deformation, we repeated our experiments under extremely low rates of deformation without interparticle impact, thus negligible dispersive stress. The similar patterns that developed demonstrate that the segregation process results from the displacement of smaller grains between the coarser grains, rather than from high speed inertial impact between particles. (c) Experiments on Lamination Figure 4. Example of clear lamination in air (mixture #C). The objective of these experiments in a settling column was to examine possible repetitive segregation, or lamination, of various heterogeneous sand mixtures settling in air and in water. The visualization, of the repetitive segregation under continuous settling of these mixtures falling into a column filled with air or water, is possible through the Plexiglas sidewalls of a square, cylindrical settling column 10cm x 10cm x 84cm (see Figure 4). A valve was installed at both ends of the cylinder to supply or drain water during and/or after experiments. Photographs were taken from the sides of the column, and the sorting characteristics of various mixtures with different densities, sizes and shapes were documented. A homogeneous mixture was poured at a constant rate (see Table 4) into the cone at the top of the cylinder. The valve controlling the settling rate was then opened to let the mixture settle directly near the centre of the stationary cylinder.During most experiments in air, the splashing of particles after impact was significant, owing to high fall velocities of the particles. The saltating distance of particles reached 5cm from the point of impact. In many instances, no laminae formed when rolling of one type of particles on the other was not obvious. Splashing was reduced by raising the base height of the settling column. Clear repetitive segregation, or lamination, was shown in at least two experiments.In such, cases as mixture #C, black particles rolled on top of white particles before landsliding, resulting in clear lamination with thickness less than 0.5cm.The experimental results for each often different mixtures of quartz, limestone and coal are summarized in Table 4, for both runs in air and in water, respectively. Generally speaking, mixtures forming laminae in air often form laminae in water. However, cases such as mixtures #0 and #1 do not form laminae in water because coal particles settle very slowly in water. When the cylinder was slightly inclined at an angle of approximately 5°, the experiment with mixture #C highlights the importance of the rolling distance of the moving layers. Lamination becomes clearer as the rolling distance increases. The laminae thickness, however, remains unaffected by the inclination angle of the cylinder. Table 4. Settling lamination in air and water Mixture Characteristic In Air Settling RateLamination In Water Settling RateLamination B B2040 and ERC #3 cm3/s) 2.05 not clear (cm3/s) 1.02 none C ERC #1 and B3060 9.14 clear 9.11 not clear D ERC #1 and coal #1 7.00 clear 9.0 none E ERC #3 and coal #3 4.01 not clear 0.80 clear F limestone #1 & B3060 9.00 none 0.84 not clear G limestone #2 & coal #1 5.20 none 1.05 none H ERC #2 and coal #1 9.00 none 0.75 none I limestone #1 & coal #2 3.44 not clear 1.30 none J limestone #1 & B2040 1.62 not clear 0.76 clear L limestone #2 & B3060 9.00 none 0.90 none These experiments on lamination, summarized in Table 4, support the following conclusions: Laminae can develop in either: mixtures of the same density but different particle size—mixture #C; mixtures of the same size but different particle density—mixture #E; or mixtures of different particle density and different particle size—mixture #D. Laminae can be produced in both air and water. In air, splashing of the particles becomes predominant as the mixture gets coarser due to higher fall velocity. Splashing is greatly reduced in water, although the turbulence induced by the settling of coarser particles enhances suspension of finer particles. The settling of such mixtures becomes more uniform in that no laminae can be found because the segregation mechanism does not take place. Under a continuous supply of sediment, lamination is found to be essentially the result of the mechanical interaction between particles of different size, shape and density. The segregation process of heterogeneous sand mixtures under lateral motion is the primary cause of lamination (see Figure 3). Segregation results from the rolling of one particle over the other, and lamination is possible without fluid turbulence and without the migration of low amplitude bedforms. Superposed laminae cannot be identical to discontinuous sedimentation into successive layers. Experiments On Graded-Beds Laboratory experiments on graded-beds were conducted to determine whether stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures is possible under steady flow and a continuous supply of sand particles. As opposed to segregation and lamination where sorting of particles occurs at a scale not exceeding a few millimetres, the graded-beds experiments determine whether graded-beds of coarse and fine sands at a scale exceeding 10mm are possible. The flow conditions examined in the laboratory flume are - that is, upper regime plane bed-flow conditions similar to those of Bijou Creek during the 1965 flood. (a) Experimental Procedure Figure 5. Small recirculating flume. Laboratory experiments on graded-beds were carried out in a tilting Plexiglas flume (0.15m wide, 0.15m deep, and 2.40m long) (see Figure 5). The flume recirculates both water and sediment in order to provide a continuous supply of heterogeneous sand particles under steady flow conditions during the course of each experiment. Particular design consideration of the headbox and the entrance profile of the flume ensured complete sediment mixing and steady inflow of sediment.Four types of sands identified in Table 1 as ERC #2, ERC #4, B2040 and B3060 were selected to prepare two sand mixtures identified as SM2 (equal weights of B2040 and ERC #4), and SM3 (equal weights of B3060 and ERC #2). These mixtures have been used by Julien and Chen 75 and Julien and Lan.76 Table 5. Summary of graded-bed measurements. Step Discharge Flow depthAverage velocityUpDownH-Lam* Froude no.Delta thickness Q (cm3/s) h (cm) Vm (cm/s) stream velocitystream velocity(cm) Fr (cm) Vu (cm/s) Vd (cm/s) Run: SM2A (Horizontal) D50 = 0.28mm SM2A-1 2650 2.9 57.5 53.2 33.2 0.27 0.99 1.9 SM2A-2 3470 3.9 57.4 47.6 40.0 0.8 0.59 0.8 SM2A-3 3949 4.0 63.6 50.0 46.3 1.1 0.64 0.4 SM2A-4 4480 4.1 70.4 54.5 52.5 1.2 0.74 0.2 Run: SM2D (Horizontal) D50 = 0.28mm SM2D-1 2750 3.4 52.1 46.7 SM2D-2 4026 4.0 64.9 57.5 Run: SM2C (Positive slope S = +0.005) D50 = 0.28mm SM2C-1 2778 3.7 48.4 42.0 SM2C-2 3470 3.8 58.9 50.0 SM2C-3 4007 4.5 57.4 50.0 SM2C-4 4428 4.4 64.9 53.8 Run: SM2B (Adverse slope S = -0.005) D50 = 0.28mm SM2B-1 3334 4.0 53.7 45.7 SM2B-2 3601 4.1 56.6 50.0 SM2B-3 3644 4.0 58.7 50.0 SM2B-4 3988 4.1 62.7 52.5 Run: SM3A (Horizontal) D50 = 0.62mm SM3A-1 3558 3.9 58.8 50.0 SM3A-2 3850 3.9 63.6 49.6 SM3A-3 4304 4.4 63.1 49.6 SM3A-4 4939 4.4 70.8 54.9 26.2 37.6 0.4 0.5 0.81 1.07 2.9 2.3 35.5 41.4 45.3 50.0 0.6 0.7 0.7 0.9 0.65 0.93 0.75 0.98 0.8 0.9 0.5 0.4 36.4 41.5 42.7 42.1 0.7 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.73 0.80 0.88 0.98 1.2 0.9 0.8 1.2 44.0 45.1 42.0 51.4 0.7 1.1 1.2 1.3 0.90 1.06 0.92 1.14 0.8 0.5 1.0 0.4 *Horizontally laminated deposit thickness. Prior to each experiment, the flume slope was set (horizontal, positive, or adverse slope). The flow rate was controlled by a gate valve and measured by a Venturi orifice. The flow of water and sediment first ran freely near critical flow conditions, without downstream gate control until reaching the equilibrium plane bed with sediment transport. Starting from equilibrium plane conditions, the deposition of sand in the flume in non-uniform flow was induced by inserting a first tailgate, 0.15m wide and 0.02m high, at the downstream end of the flume. The water depth and the thickening sediment deposits were measured through the transparent sidewall of the flume. Local velocity measurements upstream and downstream of the delta were taken using an Ultrasonic Doppler Velocimeter Model UDV-H9, with an accuracy of +0.003 m/sec or 2% of reading, whichever was greater. Measurements of discharge, surface velocity and depth were taken and compiled, and the progression of the deltaic sediment deposits was recorded (see Table 5). The new deposit reached the downstream end of the flume about 20 to 30 minutes after inserting the tailgate, and new equilibrium conditions were then obtained. After completing the measurements, the second gate was inserted to form a second deposit and the documentation procedure was repeated. Fig 6a. Schematic formation of graded-beds. Fig 6b. Time sequence of deposit formation for t1 < t2 < t3. (b) Experimental Results This experimental procedure clearly demonstrated the formation of stratified graded-beds. A schematic description of the formation of graded-beds is sketched on Figure 6. Under initial steady uniform flow conditions and a continuous supply of heterogeneous sand-size particles, coarse particles roll on a bed of fine sand particles. The plane bed laminated deposit is comprised mostly of fine sand particles. The insertion of a single tailgate induces first the formation of a deltaic stratum of coarse black particles which propagates in the downstream direction. On the delta, fine particles cover the topset slope, while coarse particles roll on a laminated bed of fine particles. Coarse particles settle on the foreset slope of the delta, which progresses in the downstream direction (see Figure 7). On the top of the delta, the fine white particles in the moving layer of rolling black particles deposit on the topset deposit of fine white particles. The thickness of the laminated topset deposit gradually increases until the delta foreset reaches the downstream end of the flume. Typical cross-sectional and longitudinal views of the deposit after a single tailgate has been inserted clearly illustrate the stratified nature of the deposit of coarse black particles between two laminated deposits of finer white particles (see Figure 8). Figure 7a. Example of graded-beds with first tailgate. Figure 7b. Example of graded-beds with second tailgate. Elaborate descriptions of the deposits for each run (4 sets with mixture SM2 identified as SM2A to SM2D, and one set with mixture SM3 noted as SM3A) are found in Julien and Chen.77 Flume bed slopes are given in Table 5 for each set of runs. The horizontally laminated (H-Lam) layer thickness was examined in terms of depth-averaged velocities upstream V u and downstream VD at the tip of the delta in Table 5. It was found that for the runs SM2A, V u varies slightly, although VD and HLam significantly increase with discharge. At a comparable discharge, the runs SM2D showed an expected increase in delta thickness with gate height. With positive slope, runs SM2C, the results were similar to those with horizontal slope (SM2A), except that the thickness of deposits was less sensitive to changes in discharge. Under adverse slopes, runs SM2B, the thickness variability with discharge was also less significant. Figure 8a. Typical cross-sectional view of deposit. Figure 8b. Typical longitudinal view of deposit (flow from right to left) These results primarily show that the delta thickness increases as VD decreases, while V u remains fairly constant (Vu ~ 50 cm/s). The effect of slope shows that the delta and H-Lam thicknesses vary with discharge for horizontal slope. Results are uncertain for both positive and adverse slopes.In summary, the velocity change in the downstream direction induces selective settling of particles of different sizes, thus forming graded-beds which develop in the downstream direction. These observations of graded-bed formation highlight the simultaneous development of topset and foreset deposits (see Figures 6 and 7). A laminated stratum of fine particles forms on top and at the base of a cross-stratified foreset stratum of coarse particles. The time sequence of the formation of this stratified deposit shows that sets of laminae develop vertically upward and propagate downstream as the cross-stratified bed of coarse particles progresses in the downstream direction. At a microscopic scale on the surface of the deposit, the coarse particles roll on a bed of fine particles in a manner very similar to the segregation process shown in Figure 3 and described in the first part of this experimental program. The experiments demonstrate that stratified deposits can form in steady non-uniform flow under a continuous supply of fine and coarse sediment particles. Experiments On Joints From Desiccation The purpose of laboratory experiments on horizontal stratification joints was to examine, through desiccation, the possible appearance of vertical cracks and horizontal planes of preferential fracturing. The experiments focused on depositional and drying characteristics of the Bijou Creek natural sand in a small recirculating flume. This study was limited to deposits under steady flow and continuous supply of natural sand over a plane bed without bedforms.78 (a) Experimental Procedure The sediment used in this experiment was the natural sand from the surface of the main channel bed of Bijou Creek near Hoyt, Colorado. The sample was taken near the locality III in the investigation of McKee et al.79 Prior to the experiments, this natural sand was sieved to remove pebbles and organic material. The particle size ranged from fine to very coarse sand (D10 = 0.34mm, D50 = 0.75mm, and D90 = 1.65mm), and the silt and clay content (passing the sieve #230) is only 0.1 percent of the sediment. The sediment size distribution was similar to that reported by McKee et al.80The procedure used was similar to that of the flume experiments discussed in the previous section. The graded-beds left in the flume after the experiment were exposed to solar lights for seven days until complete desiccation o the deposit. (b) Experimental Results Figure 9. Horizontal fracturing of the Bijou Creek sand. No vertical cracks were found in the stratified deposit after seven days under solar lights, which may be attributed to the low silt and clay content (less than 1% ) of the hard crusted deposit. The horizontal planes, or joints, between the crusted finer sands and the coarser sands separated easily as shown in Figure 9. These joints separating particles of different sizes constitute preferential plane for the propagation of fractures in dried sediment deposits. These experiments simply support previous observations that joints can result from desiccation and not necessarily from periods without sediment settling. Conclusions This fundamental study demonstrates the usefulness of laboratory experiments in the analysis of stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures. Upper flow regime conditions similar to the Bijou Creek flood can be reproduced in the laboratory, and clear stratification of heterogeneous mixtures is evidenced by using coarse and fine sand grains of different colours.Lamination essentially results from the mechanical segregation of heterogeneous particles in a moving layer. Lamination is possible without turbulence and without the migration of low amplitude bedforms. Through lateral movement of particles of constant mass density, finer particles fall within the interstices of rolling coarser particles. Coarse particles then roll on top of fines and microscale segregation of particles is then obtained. The degree of segregation depends on particle size distribution, density, and possibly angularity of heterogeneous sand mixtures (see Figure 2). Repetitive segregation is also possible in settling columns where lamination is clearly observed both in air and water. Sufficient space, or rolling distance, is required for clear lamination to develop in moving layers of heterogeneous particles. Particles of comparable size but different densities segregate similarly, with heavier particles falling between lighter particles.The graded-bed experiments clearly demonstrate the simultaneous formation of stratified deposits under steady flow conditions and a continuous supply of heterogeneous particles. The deposition process involves the formation of a stratum of coarse particles between laminated deposits of fine particles as a result of velocity changes in non-uniform flow. The time sequence of the deposit formation shows that sets of laminae develop vertically upward and progress in the downstream direction. At a microscopic scale, at the surface of the deposit, coarse particles roll on a deposit of fine particles as a result of particle segregation.Desiccation experiments on the Bijou Creek sand deposits in laboratory flumes indicate preferential fracturing of the crusty deposit along horizontal planes, or stratification joints, separating graded-beds of coarse and fine particles. On the other hand, no vertical cracks were observed in the experiments, which may be explained by the low clay content of the Bijou Creek sand.In summary, these experiments demonstrate that stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures can result from: segregation for lamination, nonuniform flow for graded-beds, and desiccation for joints. Therefore, superposed strata are not necessarily identical to successive sedimentary layers. Green River Blues by Paul Garner The Green River Formation of Wyoming, USA, is familiar to geologists not only for its well-preserved fossils but also because it has come to the forefront of debate on the age of the earth. Critics of creationism have frequently appealed to the Green River Formation as irrefutable evidence for a multi-million-year-old earth. 1,2,3The reason is that the deposit is said to consist of several million thin layers of shale, each of which is said to represent a single season‘s deposition in an ancient lake (the coarser layers in the summer, and the finer layers in the winter). Each summer/winter pair of layers—called varves —would thus represent a single year. Most geologists claim that this formation alone must have taken several million years to be laid down. Old-earth geologist (and professing evangelical) Dr Davis Young put it like this: ‘There are more than a million vertically superimposed varve pairs in some parts of the Green River Formation. These varve deposits are almost certainly fossil lake-bottom sediments. If so, each pair of sediment layers represents an annual deposit … The total number of varve pairs indicates that the lakes existed for a few million years.’4 Obviously, this is a serious challenge to those who believe in a young age for the earth.However, the critics leave out some vital information that sheds light on the origin of ‘varves’. As long ago as 1961, creationists were pointing out features of the Green River Formation that were difficult to reconcile with the conventional varve interpretation. 5 For instance, wellpreserved fossils are abundant and widespread throughout the sediments. According to two conventional geologists: ‘ … fossil catfish are distributed in the Green River basin over an area of 16,000 km 2 … The catfish range in length from 11 to 24 cm, with a mean of 18 cm. Preservation is excellent. In some specimens, even the skin and other soft parts, including the adipose fin, are well preserved.’6 Another evolutionist stated: This should tell us that the Green River Formation is no ordinary lake deposit! Modern-day lakes do not provide the conditions needed for the preservation of abundant fossil fish and birds.Experiments by scientists from the Chicago Natural History Museum have shown that fish carcasses lowered on to the muddy bottom of a marsh decay quite rapidly, even in oxygen-poor conditions. In these experiments, fish were placed in wire cages to protect them from scavengers, yet after only six-and-a-half days all the flesh had decayed and even the bones had become disconnected.8 The Presbyornis fossils are even more problematic. Birds have hollow bones that tend not to preserve well in the fossil record. How were these bird bones protected from scavenging and decay for thousands of years until a sufficient number of the fine annual layers had built up to bury them? ‘Enormous concentrations’ of bird bones are a clear indication that something is seriously wrong with the idea of slow accumulation. Instead, such fossils support the notion of rapid burial.Creationist suspicions about the validity of the varve interpretation were confirmed in a study by two geologists published in 1988.9 Near Kemmerer in Wyoming the Green River Formation contains two volcanic ash (tuff) layers, each about two to three centimetres thick.A volcanic ash layer is an example of what geologists call an ‘event horizon’, because it is laid down essentially instantaneously by a single event, in this case a volcanic eruption. The two ash layers are separated by between 8.3 and 22.6 centimetres of shale layers.If the standard interpretation is correct, then the number of shale layers between the ash layers should be the same throughout the Green River basin, since the number of years between the two eruptions would be the same.However, the geologists found that the number of shale layers between the ash beds varied from 1160 to 1568, with the number of layers increasing by up to 35% from the basin centre to the basin margin! The investigators concluded that this was inconsistent with the idea of seasonal ‘varve’ deposition in a stagnant lake.So how were the great thicknesses of finely laminated shale in the Green River Formation laid down? Creationist geologists need to investigate the issue more closely, but there seems to be great potential for developing a catastrophic model for the origin of these sediments. There is a large body of experimental and observational data that shows that varve-like sediments can build up very rapidly under catastrophic conditions.10,11,12,13,14 For instance, in 1960 Hurricane Donna struck the coast of southern Florida and deposited a blanket of thinly-laminated lime-mud six inches thick. 15 Another example comes from a Swiss lake, in which up to five pairs of layers were found to build up in a single year, deposited by rapid underflows of turbid water.16Given the right conditions, thinly-laminated muddy sediments can and do form by rapid sedimentation. Contrary to claims by old-earth proponents, long periods of time are not demanded. by David Catchpoole After the island of Surtsey was born of a huge undersea volcanic eruption off Iceland in 1963,1 geologists were astonished at what they found.As one wrote: ‘On Surtsey, only a few months sufficed for a landscape to be created which was so varied and mature that it was almost beyond belief.’2There were wide sandy beaches, gravel banks, impressive cliffs, soft undulating land, faultscarps, gullies and channels and ‘boulders worn by the surf (see picture left), some of which were almost round, on an abrasion platform cut into the cliff.’ 2 And all of this despite the ‘extreme youth’3 of the island!The geologists’ surprise is understandable, given the modern thinking that young Surtsey’s ‘varied and mature’ features ought to have needed long periods of time—millions of years—to form. But such ideas are a relatively modern phenomenon, a legacy of uniformitarian (long-age) theories gaining popular acceptance in the decades just before Darwin.4 Prior to that, great scientists understood the earth was young (around 6,000 years old) and had been dramatically re-shaped by upheavals associated with the global Flood (around 4,500 years ago). However, in contrast, anyone with a millions-of-years starting point will be ‘astonished’ when viewing Surtsey.And, according to a January 2006 article in New Scientist, Surtsey continues to surprise: ‘The island has excited geographers, who marvel that canyons, gullies and other land features that typically take tens of thousands or millions of years to form were created in less than a decade.’ 5And biologists, too, have been surprised. ‘From the first, the speed, ingenuity and sheer unpredictability of nature’s colonisation of Surtsey wrong-footed them.’ For example, it was not the expected lichens and mosses which were the ‘early invaders’, but flowering plants.Researchers clambering ashore in springtime of 1965 ‘were greeted on the high-tide line by the green shoots and pretty white flower of a sea rocket, its roots sunk into the ash and in full bloom.’ Lyme grass, sea sandwort, cotton grass and ferns soon followed. It was not until 1967 that mosses arrived, ‘and lichens only limped aboard in 1970’.Why would anyone have expected mosses and lichens to be the first colonizers? Is it because the evolutionary history of our planet proposes mosses and lichens as the first greenery to colonize the earth as it cooled from its alleged molten beginning?. There’s no reason to expect that mosses and lichens would be the first to colonize newly-exposed terrain.In contrast, on Surtsey the evolutionary paradigm lacked any predictive value: ‘There was no complex evolutionary adaptation to the surroundings nor even a replication of ecosystems on neighbouring islands. What came, came.’5What came, came. And come it did, to the great surprise of evolutionary biologists, who, despite the lessons they should have learned from the recolonization of Mt St Helens (USA) following its eruption in 1980,6 again greatly underestimated the innate resilience of the creation to re-seed denuded areas. It seems that at Surtsey insects were the first to arrive. Just as the first helicopter crews to land in the Mt St Helens disaster zone reported that flies had preceded them, the first people to set foot on Surtsey in early 1964 were ‘welcomed’ by a fly on the shore. And, as at Mt St Helens, other aerial arrivals included the spiders ‘ballooning’ through the atmosphere on silken threads.Other insects came to Surtsey by sea, riding on tussocks of grass. Some mites washed up on a floating gatepost.Birds began nesting on Surtsey in 1970, producing chicks just three years after the lava stopped flowing. These early residents were seabirds such as fulmars and black guillemots, building nests of pebbles, and keeping to the cliffs. But in the summer of 1985, a pair of lesser black-backed gulls arrived and constructed a nest of plant materials on the lava flats. They returned the following year with others, and there is now a permanent gull colony of more than 300 pairs.The birds have contributed to Surtsey’s ‘greening’. Snow buntings brought the seeds of bog rosemary from Britain in their gizzards. Combined with bird excreta, seeds grow rapidly—there is now a ‘bright green oasis’ spreading from the gull colony. Geese now graze the island’s vegetation. The cycle continues. The plants support insects which attract birds that bring more plants. Recent arrivals include willow bushes and puffins (see right). According to the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, ‘we now have a fully functioning ecosystem on Surtsey.’ The lessons of Surtsey Sceptics try to counter creationists by claiming that the creation account of history can’t be true, e.g. by arguing that the earth’s geological features needed millions of years, and that biological recovery from the Flood would be impossible within the short timeframe. But Surtsey demonstrates that it is the sceptics who are wrong. It also gives a fascinating insight into how we got the (postFlood) distribution of plants and animals we see in the world today. ‘What came, came.’ If only the sceptics could learn the lessons of Surtsey while there’s still time. For Surtsey is eroding by about a hectare (over two acres) a year. In 1967, when the eruptions stopped, Surtsey’s surface area was 2.7 square kilometres. It’s now only half that size. While the hard basaltic core that forms the island’s 154-metre summit should prove more resilient, geologist Sveinn Jakobsson of the Surtsey Research Society estimates that Surtsey’s ash plains will be totally washed away within a century or so. And there’s a lesson in that, too—fast erosion means the world is young.7 Surtsey, the young island that ‘looks old’ by Carl Wieland The new island of Surtsey builds through continuing eruptions. Great minds of the past had no difficulty with the concept of a young earth shaped and reshaped by catastrophic forces, especially the upheavals associated with the Flood. Today, we have been so thoroughly saturated with the ‘slow and gradual’ philosophy that when we look at vast cliffs, landscapes and boulders we tend to immediately associate them with very long ages.The pictures in this article are of Surtsey, an island which was born in only days from a huge undersea volcanic eruption off Iceland in the North Atlantic in 1963. It shows features which most people would think take much, much longer to form.Of course, there never has been any logical (as opposed to psychological) barrier to the idea that large forces can do enormous amounts of geological work in a short time. 1The following quote is from the official Icelandic geologist Sigurdur Thorarinsson (Sigurður Þórarinsson, 1912–1983) writing in 1964:‘An Icelander who has studied geology and geomorphology at foreign universities is later taught by experience in his own homeland that the time scale he had been trained to attach to geological developments is misleading when assessments are made of the forces—constructive and destructive—which have molded and are still molding the face of Iceland. What elsewhere may take thousands of years may be accomplished here in one century. All the same he is amazed whenever he comes to Surtsey, because the same development may take a few weeks or even days here. An explosion of cinders and ash rains down on the island and surrounding areas. ‘On Surtsey, only a few months sufficed for a landscape to be created which was so varied and mature that it was almost beyond belief. During the summer of 1964 and the following winter we not only had a lava dome with a glowing lava lake in a summit crater and red-hot lava flows rushing down the slopes, increasing the height of the dome and transforming the configuration of the island from one day to another. Here we could also see wide sandy beaches and precipitous crags lashed by the breakers of the sea. There were gravel banks and lagoons, impressive cliffs … There were hollows, glens and soft undulating land. There were fractures and faultscarps, channels and screes … You might come to a beach covered with flowing lava on its way to the sea with white balls of smoke rising high up in the air. Three weeks later you might come back to the same place and be literally confounded by what met your eye. Now, there were precipitous lava cliffs of considerable height, and below them you would see boulders worn by the surf, some of which were almost round, on an abrasion platform cut into the cliff, and further out there was a sandy beach where you could walk at low tide without getting wet.’2In a later, more popular account in National Geographic, Sigurdur Thorarinsson3 wrote: ‘ … in one week’s time we witness changes that elsewhere might take decades or even centuries … Despite the extreme youth of the growing island, we now encounter a landscape so varied that it is almost beyond belief.’4 Note the repeated incredulity in the author’s tone, as the observations of the real world conflict with deeply instilled dogma. If you didn’t know otherwise, how long would you think Surtsey’s rounded basalt boulders, shown above, would take to form? Hundreds, maybe thousands, of years of rolling in the surf? ‘Surtsey reality’ shows that even much harder rock would have had ample time, in the thousands of post-Flood years, to exhibit all the erosional features we see today—especially considering that in the early stages of its formation, rock may still be softer and less consolidated. Rivers, rocks and … Shakespeare By Emil Silvestru Photo 1: Granite walls of Kettle River Gorge, British Columbia—polished only in the bottom 3 metres. Click here to view larger In the naturalistic (deep-time–based) interpretation of landscapes, rivers have cut their valleys over very long periods of time (millions of years). The rate at which they deepen their valleys is measured in millimetres per year in the fastest cases. When canyons and gorges are cut in hard rock, the erosion rate is much lower, and this is why the finer sediment (like sand) will inevitably polish the bedrock exposed in the riverbed and walls. As the gorge is supposed to deepen over millions of years, most of the walls should be polished from top to bottom. Even when subsequent slope breakdown and other erosional processes reshape the walls, traces of the polished sections should be left here and there at various heights, all the way to the top of the gorge.The Kettle River Gorge near Hope, British Columbia, is cut in massive, compact granite. The gorge represents a tourist attraction because of the old railroad that runs through it, built between 1913 and 1916 by the engineer Andrew McCulloch. A great admirer of Shakespeare, McCulloch named many of the tunnels he had excavated along this railroad after Master Will’s characters. The ones in this gorge are called ‘Othello Tunnels’.There is one interesting feature anyone can see as they walk along the old railroad track, very close to the river: though the walls in places reach well over 50 meters in height, the maximum height at which polished granite can be seen is never more than 3 meters above the water (photo 1). Well, that’s not what we would expect after millions of years of river erosion, but it makes perfect sense if the gorge was cut by a sudden catastrophe involving large volumes of water gushing down from the Cascades towards the Pacific Ocean. In the time since the catastrophe, sediment in the flowing river has only polished the bottom of the gorge, where we see the river flowing today.Was that Flood though? I don’t think so. As we travel east across the mountains in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, there are clear indications at various locations that large and very deep lakes once existed there. This is because we can see, in most cases, massive sediment accumulations, the tops of which often appear as horizontal surfaces in the middle of rugged landscapes (photo 2). These lakes probably formed as the ice sheet that covered nearly half of North America during the Ice Age was melting. Rounded water-transported gravel incorporated in volcanic ash (photo 3) suggests that volcanic eruptions underneath the ice sheet melted the ice, possibly caused sudden flooding. The end of the Ice Age in these parts of the world is known to have triggered massive floods like Lake Missoula flood that have shaped and reshaped the landscape a few thousand years after theFlood reshaped the entire planet. Photo 3: Rounded water-worn gravel and sand (with rare fragments of plants and coal) incorporated in volcanic ash (volcanic agglomerate) near Summerland, British Columbia. Click here to view larger Photo 2: Ancient lake shores and sediments seen from Highway 97c, west of Pennask Pass, British Columbia. The story that won’t be told The planned Lake Missoula flood interpretive pathway by Michael J. Oard 9 December 2003 Published: 16 January 2007 (GMT+10) The Lake Missoula flood occurred at the peak of the Ice Age when a volume of water about 2,220 cubic kilometers (540 cubic miles), three times the volume of Lake Erie or one-half the volume of Lake Michigan, burst through its ice dam in northern Idaho and swept through eastern Washington into northern Oregon and out into the Pacific Ocean. 1 The water at the ice dam in northern Idaho was 600 m (2000 ft) high and upstream covered what is now the city of Missoula, Montana, to a depth of 300 m (1000 ft). Shorelines from this ice age lake are commonly seen in the valleys of western Montana. It is believed this giant lake emptied in two days, rushing 120 m (400 ft) deep over the present locations of Spokane, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. It sped at up to 100 kph (60 mph) through tight spots in eastern Washington and 80 mph through the Columbia Gorge between Washington and Oregon. It rapidly carved out the distinctive landscape known as the Channel Scablands, including the majestic canyon known as Grand Coulee. Geologists believe that it is about time that a marked trail commemorating the flood’s Figure 1. Shorelines of glacial Lake Missoula along the eastern hills of the Little Bitterroot Valley, 75 miles northwest of Missoula, Montana. path and explaining its significance needs to be set up from western Montana into northwest Oregon. 2 Just like with the path of the expedition of famous US explorers Lewis and Clark, and that of pioneers who followed the Oregon Trail, scientists plan to set up signs and interpretive centers highlighting important features along the 600-mile flood path. With the proposed help of the National Park Service, these memorials will be placed mostly along major highways, which would draw large crowds. The interpretive signs likely will tell the usual story of how J Harlan Bretz first noticed the strange landforms of eastern Washington and how he postulated a flood of enormous magnitude. While pointing out the abundance of features supporting the Lake Missoula flood, the story will continue with the fact that geologists of the day did not believe Bretz, who was finally vindicated with field research. The signs are sure to mention that geologists now believe there were well over 50 floods over a period greater than 2,500 years at the peak of the last ice age, some 14,000 years ago. This will only be part of the story. They will not tell the public all the assumptions and problems associated with their dates. They likely will not let the public in on the dispute over the number of floods, and that some uniformitarian geologists advocate only one large Lake Missoula flood. 3 From field research over 10 years, I have found the evidence substantial for just one gigantic Lake Missoula flood, possibly followed by a few minor floods.4,5,1 The geologists will surely whitewash the scientific persecution that Bretz endured for 40 years. Critics of Bretz went on to dream up many alternative, but outrageous, theories to explain Bretz’s flood features. Most of his detractors never bothered to check the data in the field of the Pacific Northwest, and worse, those who did manage to examine the landforms in eastern Washington explained away the very features obviously supporting a gigantic ice age flood. It showcases the extreme bias towards the Flood which blinds their eyes, even to this day, despite growing objective evidence that the Flood really occurred. 1I also do not expect the flood pathway stories to tell that the flood eroded, in several days, 50 cubic miles of basalt and silt that resulted in deep vertical-walled coulees with flat bottoms. Grand Coulee, up to 50 miles long and 900 feet deep, likely was excavated very quickly by receding waterfalls. Geologists would expect such canyons to have been carved in millions of years by present-day streams.It is surely doubtful the signs will reveal that the flood rhythmites, repeating layers of sand and silt over 100 feet thick, formed in side canyons in several days. Sediments like these rhythmites would normally be assumed to have been laid down in hundreds of thousand, if not millions of years.The flood overtopped a ridge north of the Snake River, rapidly cutting a narrow canyon 500 feet deep. The modern Palouse River that used to flow west into the Columbia River before the flood now takes a 90 degree left-hand turn south and flows Figure 2. Palouse Falls within Palouse through the canyon carved by the flood. This is called a water gap in Canyon, southeast Washington. Palouse which a river or stream flows through a barrier instead of flowing around Canyon was cut through about 500 feet of it. If a geologist did not know about the Lake Missoula Flood, he would basalt lava in several days when the Lake have suggested one of three main speculations on the formation of water Missoula flood overtopped a ridge. gaps. But it was formed in the Lake Missoula flood. The Lake Missoula flood provides an analog for the thousand or more rivers over the earth that now flow through mountain barriers, sometimes through gaps much deeper than Grand Canyon. The river should have gone around the barrier, if the slow processes over millions of years model were true, but these water gaps through transverse barriers can be cut rapidly during the Flood.6 Tuluman–a test of time Strolling along the sandy beaches of Tuluman Island (photo below), with its impressive cliffs in the background, is an eye-opener to all who have been brought up on ‘slow and gradual’ thinking about rock formations.The layering in some of the cliff faces would be enough to make most people immediately assume ‘millions of years.’ However, neither these cliffs, nor the sandy beaches, nor the pebbles and boulders on the foreshore came from the usually-assumed long ages of geological processes. In fact, when the photo here was taken (between 1963 and 1968), the whole island was less than eight years old!Tuluman Island lies south of Lou Island (between it and Baluan Island), which is about 30 km (19 miles) south of the east end of Manus Island. All these are in Papua New Guinea’s Admiralty Islands group, north of Australia. Just like Surtsey Island in the North Atlantic off Iceland,1 Tuluman also formed suddenly and catastrophically, from a volcanic eruption in 1960–61.The information and photos (available in the magazine) were provided by Lester Hawkes, an Australian who was an Adventist missionary at the time. When he visited the locality in 1963, the island was in two distinct parts, one sandy, the other a small rocky outcrop, on either side of the still active volcano. The photo shows the ‘white water’ caused by rising gases as the boat sails between the two sections.Lester says, ‘The sea water was so hot here, that we had to move through quickly, without stopping, to prevent the boat engine (cooled by seawater) from overheating. Not too many people have had the opportunity to sail a boat through the crater of an active volcano.’Even then, shortly after its birth, Tuluman Island clearly looked ‘old’ to those who were unaware of its catastrophic history. It is useful in helping people more tangibly grasp how various geological features can form in a short time, given the sorts of cataclysmic forces (both hydraulic/sedimentary and volcanic) associated with the worldwide Flood. PostscriptIt would be interesting to photograph aspects of the island now that some thirty years have passed since the photo shown here was taken. It is likely that the island would look even more geologically ‘mature’ than shown here, and it would be interesting to check on the extent of biological colonization. This might help us understand how the world recovered after the Flood. Readers possibly able to help in this matter please contact us. Niagara Falls One of the world’s greatest natural attractions has some profound lessons about the age of things. by Larry Pierce We live near Niagara Falls—one of the must see sights in the world. Whenever we pick up guests from Toronto airport, one of them usually asks, ‘Don’t you live near Niagara Falls?’ My wife and I know all too well what the next question will be! We have seen the Falls so many times with guests, that we feel we know them intimately.Aside from the beauty and grandeur of the Falls, very few of the millions of visitors realise that they are looking at one of the major excuses for abandoning the young age chronology.1In the mid-1800s the views of a lawyerturned-geologist, Charles Lyell, influenced the scientific community to accept the idea that the earth had been shaped by ‘slow and gradual’ processes over countless millions of years. What Lyell saw In 1841, the Falls were much harder to reach than they are today. Late that year, Lyell visited the area and did his research to determine the approximate age of the gorge that was excavated by the Niagara River.2 No one disputes what Lyell saw; you can go there today and see essentially the same thing. Charles Lyell He noted that the gorge cut through an elevated tableland and extended about 11 kilometres (seven miles or 35,000 feet) from the Falls down to Queenston. 3 He observed that the walls of the gorge, 60–90 metres (200–300 feet) high, were basically composed of two layers: limestone on top, and shale beneath. He reasoned that the water and spray had scoured away the soft shale, leaving the overhanging ledge of hard limestone, which helped protect the shale from the full force of the falling water.Lyell was told that large chunks of limestone would regularly break off and fall into the gorge. He could see how cracks in the limestone would fill with water. As the water froze in winter it expanded, weakening the limestone, and causing spectacular sights when large chunks broke loose, crashing into the gorge. Lyell wrote, ‘[T]he sudden descent of huge fragments in 1818 and 1828 is said to have shaken the adjacent country like an earthquake.’ 4 Once they broke off, they exposed the shale to renewed rapid erosion.Lyell also discovered that in 1829, a long-time resident told a Mr Blackwell, the son of an eminent geologist, that the Falls had receded about 45 metres (150 feet) during the 40 years he had lived there—more than one metre (three feet) a year.2,5 Reading the headlines—not the report When Lyell returned to England, he reported that he had scientifically determined that the Niagara Gorge was 35,000 years old. Few people actually read the report that he published in a revised edition of his book, Principles of Geology. Even fewer had any knowledge of Niagara Falls in those days—fewer still had seen it. Since Lyell was a respected English gentleman, most people blindly accepted his estimate. They readily understood how water erodes rock, and this made Lyell’s report all the more believable.Overall, rather than adopting a ‘wait and see’ attitude, the Church capitulated to these long ages, even though they contradicted the Bible. This was tragic, because Lyell’s conclusions were based on a number of logical fallacies. However, the damage was done, and increasingly people began to doubt the creation model , assuming its chronology was not reliable in the light of what Lyell had claimed.Indeed it was an early edition of Lyell’s book that greatly influenced Darwin, when he read it on his famous voyage on HMS Beagle. By 1859 when Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species was published, Lyell’s arguments promoting a vast age of the earth, and undermining confidence in young age chronology, had greatly helped prepare the way for evolution’s acceptance. Fudging the results What Lyell wrote in Principles of Geology about what he saw on his trip to Niagara Falls was sufficient to satisfy the curiosity of most readers. But what he omitted would have undermined his age estimate to any alert reader. The old adage of ‘never let the facts spoil a good theory’ seems to apply here.Lyell ignored the reports from Mr Blackwell that residents had observed the Falls recede by more than one metre (three feet) a year. At that rate the gorge would be less than 12,000 years old, which was in the ballpark of the young age chronology, given the uncertainties in the estimates. That was not old enough for Lyell, who was looking to promote his slow-and-gradual geological theories. So he chose to disregard the data and conducted his own investigation of the residents.A panoramic 1872 woodcut of Niagara Gorge looking south from Lake Ontario to the Falls and Lake Erie in the distance.Lyell does not explain how he did it, but strangely, he arrived at a reduced rate of 0.3 metres (one foot) a year. This ‘conjecture’, as he called it, much better suited his purpose. Since the gorge was 35,000 feet long, he concluded that it must be 35,000 years old! 2 This estimate further undermined people’s confidence in the young age chronology. And Lyell’s conclusion was wrong. Later analysis of eyewitness reports from 1842 to 1927 confirmed the high rate of erosion—1.2 to 1.5 metres (four to five feet) a year.6 The residents of Lyell’s day had been conservative! This rate places an upper limit of 7,000 to 9,000 years for the gorge. However, we now know the gorge eroded even faster than this, so this age is still too high . Assumptions in dating method Unlike historical dating, which depends on direct observation, all ‘scientific’ dating methods rely on assumptions about what happened in the past. Without such assumptions, no age can be calculated. No matter how reasonable these assumptions may seem, we can never be certain they are true unless we have eyewitnesses for the entire time period in question.We know that the assumptions Lyell made were wrong, because he ended up with a greatly inflated age that did not agree with the creation model. Indeed, his exaggerated 35,000-year age has long been abandoned, even in the geological literature, which now quotes 12,000 years for the age of the gorge. But even this age is not based on the best estimates for the erosion rate of the Niagara River. These would still give an age that was ‘too young’. Rather, the 12,000 years is based on radiocarbon dating of a piece of wood from St David’s Gorge. Readers of Creation will already know how inaccurate radiometric dating is!7 Radiocarbon dates are too old because the past effects of the Flood on the earth’s carbon balance are ignored.8 When these effects are properly included, the radiocarbon age agrees with the young age model. Interestingly, rather than supporting Lyell’s concept of an old earth, Niagara Gorge provides wonderful consistency with the young age time-scale. When all the factors that affect erosion are considered, the calculated age agrees quite nicely with the gorge forming since the ice cover retreated about 3,800 years ago, after the post-Flood Ice Age.9 HOW TO PETRIFIED MAN-MADE OBJECTS SUPPORT THE YOUNG AGE TIMESCALE Fascinating fossil fence-wire Photo 1: The roll of fencing wire in solid rock, shortly after it was found. Photo 2 (inset): The very hard surface close up, showing encased seashells. The circular object in photo 1, about 70 cm (2.3 feet) in diameter, was found at Eighty Mile Beach in the north of Western Australia by Amy Lewis, the 11-year-old daughter of the local caravan park owners, Col and Jo Lewis. Exposed at low tide, the object was extremely hard 1 and heavy—about 75 kg (165 pounds). On examination, it was obvious even before cutting it open that a roll of modern-day fencing wire had become ‘petrified’, completely encased in solid rock. Photo 2 shows the outside surface close up, complete with ‘fossil’ seashells. Photos 3 and 4 show this wire-containing rock in cross and longitudinal sections. Photo 3: A longitudinal cut surface, clearly showing the lengths of wire. Photo 4 (inset): The surface of where the specimen fractured, showing the circular cross-sections of the wire. Click here for larger view. The rock is a hard, dense, calcareous sandstone. The wire is ordinary ‘Number 8’ fencing wire of the type used at nearby Wallal Downs station between 1920 and 1970.2 Mr Lewis recalls seeing one old wing of fence running into the sea in this spot in the 1970s. The standard practice in the area was that at the perceived end of its life (about 10 years on the coast) fencing wire was rolled into coils like this and discarded, sometimes onto the beach or into the sea. It is clear that sand, shells and shellgrit accumulated around the wire. Then iron oxide compounds from the rusting wire acted to chemically bind this sandy shellgrit into solid rock around the wire. All of this happened in a few decades, not millions of years. Unfortunately, the average person is still conditioned into thinking ‘millions of years’ when considering how rocks and fossils form. But as we’ve said many times with many examples—given the right conditions, rocks and fossils will form in a very short time. The clock in the rock Fascinating Facts We have all been so thoroughly soaked in the 'long-age' thinking of our culture that most people assume that it invariably takes millions of years for sediments (like mud or sand) to harden into rock. In reality, though, all it takes is an appropriate mix of ingredients – concrete is an obvious example. The item shown in the photograph here is a striking example of the fact that rock can form quickly. It shows part of the mechanism of a manmade clock encased in solid rock, along with seashells. Obviously, the clock was not made millions of years ago! This 'clock rock' was found in 1975 by Dolores Testerman, just a short way south of the South Jetty at Westport, Washington, USA. There have been many shipwrecks and boats sunk in the area.... An astonishingly fast growth of solid rock in a man-made pipe The photo below shows something that is startling to those who, conditioned by the dominant long-age belief of our culture, instinctively feel that such things must take many thousands, if not millions of years. The specimen, sent by Mr John Heffner, is the cross-section of a metal pipe from a gas field. Inside the pipe, one can clearly see solid rock which has grown in rings from the outside inwards until it left only about a two cm (3/4") diameter opening. It is a section of the flowline (a pipe at the surface) fed by the Sonat Minerals 16-1 natural gas well, in Lousiana, USA. The well was drilled into the Austin Chalk formation in January, 1997, then shut until all the new production facilities and piping at the surface were constructed. It started producing in March 1997.The flow from the well, which then went through this pipe at the surface, consisted of natural gas, condensate and salt water from the host rock layer. This lasted for only three months before problems became apparent. In June, 1997, the well was shut and this flowline pipe was inspected. What they found was the massive amount of ‘scale’ that you see here, which had almost completely choked the flow. Attempts to remove this buildup with pressurized water and mechanical methods were unsuccessful, and therefore the flowline was replaced.The deposit that has formed inside the pipe consists of completely hard and dense rock. Its A cross-section of a gas field pipe. The appearance is similar to that of the laminated (layered) flowstone deposits, metal of the pipe casing is clearly derived from dissolved limestone or chalk, which one finds in caves. A stalactite, distinct from the layered rock which for example, sometimes has concentric rings in cross-section. Such rock consists has formed inside it, and has mostly of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), known as the mineral calcite.Chemical drastically narrowed the flow area. analysis of the rock by the Petrolite Corporation of St Louis, Missouri, confirmed Ordinary measures failed to clear the that it was around 84% calcium carbonate. 1Seeing such solid, layered rock rock, which is hard and firmly adhering forming in only three months shows that long time-spans are not necessary. It is to the metal, so the whole pipe was just one of the many examples we have featured in Creation which defy various removed. common long-age beliefs. Note According to detailed information supplied by C. Henry, one of the workers on the field, the flow through this pipe in those three months would have averaged, each day, around 65,000 m 3 (2.3 million cubic feet) of natural gas, 53 m 3 (335 barrels) of condensate (oil) and 752 m3 (4700 barrels) of salt water. The pressure (having been reduced via a choke) was around 8.3 MPa (1200 psi), at a flow temperature of around 118°C (245°F). Return to text. Petrified waterwheel Tourists who visit Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia are astonished at the sight of this waterwheel which has become entombed in solid rock in less than 65 years. Close-ups of the waterwheel show remarkable concretions have formed in little more than 60 years. Natural formations whose ages are not known may lead some to believe they have taken thousands or even millions of years to form. Evolutionary indoctrination has left most people with a false idea of the what 'old' really is in the natural world. But why should it be surprising that the precipitation of minerals from flowing water can do this sort of thing in what is actually a fairly long period of time, with water dripping night and day? This makes people instinctively think of geological events such as petrifaction, fossilization and flowstone formation, for instance, in terms of many millions of years.Given the right chemical environment, the thousands of years since the Flood are actually a vast amount of time adequate to explain the sorts of geological features we have grown up to believe speak of millions of years. WHAT IS CATASTROPHIC PLATE TECTONICS Probing the earth’s deep places Interview with plate tectonics1 expert Dr John Baumgardner by Carl Wieland and Dr Don Batten John Baumgardner (B.S, M.S., Ph.D (UCLA)) is a geophysicist employed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. His work involves detailed computer modeling of the structure and processes of the earth's interior, as well as a variety of other fluid dynamics phenomena. [Creation magazine]: Dr Baumgardner, some say that because of continental drift (the idea that the continents have broken apart and moved thousands of miles) one has to believe in ‘millions of years’. [John Baumgardner:] Well, I believe there is now overwhelming evidence in favour of continental break-up and large-scale plate tectonic activity. The acceptance of these concepts is an amazing example of a scientific revolution, which occurred roughly between 1960 and 1970. However, this revolution did not go far enough, because the earth science community neglected and suppressed the evidence for catastrophism—large-scale, rapid change—throughout the geological record. So the timescale the uniformitarian scientists today are using is dramatically too long. The strong weight of evidence is that there was a massive catastrophe, corresponding to the Flood, which involved large and rapid continental movements. My conclusion is that the only mechanism capable of producing that scale of catastrophe and not wrecking the planet in the process had to be internal to the earth. [CM]: A 1993 New Scientist article spoke highly of your 3-D supercomputer model of plate tectonics.2 [JB]: There are to my knowledge three other computer codes for modeling the earth’s mantle and so on, in the world. These other three use a mathematical method not so well suited for the modern parallel supercomputers. The one I developed uses the finite element technique and performs very well on the new, very large supercomputers. So, many of my colleagues are recognizing it as the most capable code in the world.Last year NASA funded this effort as one of the nine grand challenge projects for the next three years in their High Performance Computing and Communication initiative, and are supporting two post-doctoral researchers to collaborate with me to improve it, and apply it to study the earth.This code is comparable to what are called general circulation models for the atmosphere and oceans, which are some of the largest codes in the world in terms of how much machine power they consume. It’s got lots of physics in it to model the details of the mechanical behaviour of the silicate rock inside the earth. My present focus is to make the representation of the tectonic plates even more realistic. So the code is in an ongoing state of development, but it’s come a long way in the last 15 years. After wikipedia.org [CM]: We understand you’ve shown that as these floating blocks of rock push down into the material below, things get hotter, so the ‘slipperyness’ increases and there’s a runaway effect. The faster they sink the hotter they get, so the faster they can sink. [JB]: Yes—rock that represents the ocean floor is colder, and therefore denser than the rock below it and so can sink into the earth’s interior. And the properties of the rock inside the earth, especially at the high temperatures that exist there, make it possible for the colder rock from the earth’s surface to peel away and sink in a runaway manner down through the mantle—very rapidly. [CM]: So this ‘happens’ on your computer model all by itself, from the laws of science—over a short timescale, not millions of years? [JB]: That’s correct. Exactly how long is something I’m working to refine. But it seems that once this sinking of the pre-Flood ocean floor (in a conveyor-belt-like fashion down into the earth, pulling things apart behind it) starts, it is not a slow process spanning millions of years—it’s almost certain that it runs to completion and ‘recycles’ all of the existing floor in a few weeks or months. [CM]: You’re part of a team of top creation scientists 3 which is developing a model of catastrophic plate tectonics based on this mechanism, which believes the continents broke up (from a single landmass) during, not after the Flood as some have proposed. [JB]: Yes. There is compelling evidence from the fossil-bearing sediments on the continents that the breakup occurred during the time these sediments were being deposited. We are convinced that this ‘continental sprint’ as it’s been called, was during the time of the Flood, and part of the mechanism for it. [CM]: We published a careful exposé of the claims made by a Ron Wyatt, and more recently by one Jonathan Gray, concerning an alleged ‘Ark site’—an almond-shaped formation in Eastern Turkey. In trying to attack our article, they often quote statements from you supporting this possibly being the Ark site. This was before your research at the site caused you to definitely conclude this could not be the Ark. They say you now oppose their claims for fear of losing your job. [JB]: Ron’s claims here are just as bogus as his claims about that site. Far from hiding my creationism, I’m well known for it (especially through letters in the local newspaper) in this scientific community, which has more Ph.D.s per capita than any other place in the U.S. My employer and my colleagues know exactly where I stand. [CM]: You gave a poster presentation on this ‘runaway rapid continental drift’ mechanism at the American Geophysical Union meeting in 1994, so at least some of the 6,000 scientists there would have seen it. What was the feedback? [JB]: Many people were interested in the numerical techniques I used for such a calculation, because it’s a significant computational challenge. Almost no one seemed to appreciate the implications of it. Actually, this concept of ‘runaway subduction’ [rapid sinking of the ‘plates’ as described earlier] has been in the literature for over 30 years. It was picked up in the geophysical community in the early 1970s, but for some reason the interest disappeared. People in my field are not ignorant of this possibility, it’s just not seriously explored. [CM]: Why do you think that is? [JB]: Well, there’s no real motivation to pursue it. Some toyed with the idea that such runaway effects might have been involved in recent volcanism in the south- western US But in their framework, they’re not really looking for worldwide effects. [CM]: So their framework of thinking is really like blinkers, preventing a full consideration of all the relevant evidence? [JB]: That’s correct, exactly. The same kind of uniformitarian ‘glasses’ prevent them from giving much attention to the evidence for catastrophism in the sedimentary record. Such basic philosophical biases profoundly affect the way science approaches problems and weighs the evidence. So it’s not simply ‘facts speaking for themselves’—the framework one starts from can and does profoundly affect the conclusions that are drawn. [CM]: Dr Baumgardner, thank you very much. Photo by Russell Humphreys Seafloor ‘zebra-stripes’ don’t mean slow and gradual. The mid-ocean ‘ridges’ are undersea mountain chains with volcanoes at the boundary between two ‘plates’ of the earth’s outer shell. It is believed that here, molten magma from below can well up as the plates move apart, making new oceanic crust—a process called ‘seafloor spreading’. As the new crust cools down, it ‘freezes’ within it the direction of the earth’s magnetic field at that time. When instruments measuring magnetism are towed (on the ocean surface) across these ridges, they detect bands of alternating magnetic direction, like a ‘zebra-stripe’ pattern, with each side of the ridge mirroring the other. This is interpreted to mean that as new seafloor had gradually formed on each side of the ridge, the earth’s magnetism had slowly reversed many times, over millions of years. However, DR Baumgardner says this pattern does not mean the spreading was slow. He says, ‘From an estimate of the viscosity of the outer core, where the currents associated with the earth’s magnetism exist, there is no reason why the magnetic field can’t reverse rapidly. Moreover, there is field evidence that it has reversed rapidly, within weeks.’4 In addition, drilling the sea floor has shown that, regardless of the overall direction of the magnetism detected from the surface, the magnetic direction within a drill core frequently varies widely. 5 This is less consistent with slow spreading than with a rapid welling up of new magma during a period of rapid reversals; the magma in contact with the surface will reflect the direction at that time, but by the time the deeper magma cools a few weeks later, the direction has switched again—and so on for deeper levels. The Wilson cycle: a serious problem for Catastrophic Plate Tectonics by Carl Froede Jr Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) claims support from the existing evidence for Uniformitarian Plate Tectonics (UPT). However, details of CPT theory appear to be inconsistent with several key tenets of UPT theory. One major point of divergence is the Wilson cycle. Baumgardner proposed that a ‘Pangean’ supercontinent was pulled apart at the initiation of the Flood by gravity-induced subduction of the 50 to 100 km thick ‘Paleozoic’ pre-Flood oceanic floor. Freshly extruded, hot, thin, oceanic floor rapidly formed at spreading ridges between the new continents. Continental motion was toward the subduction zone. It is not apparent how the hot and thin oceanic floor could cool rapidly enough to allow subduction to occur later during the Flood, thus pulling the continents back in the opposite direction as required by a Wilson cycle. One wellknown example of a Wilson cycle comes from UPT evidence of the Iapetus and Atlantic Ocean basins. CPT appears incapable of supporting a single Wilson cycle using the same UPT evidence. Such discrepancies between UPT and CPT suggest a need for caution and further clarification before CPT can gain acceptance. Figure 1. A diagram showing the pre-Flood ‘Pangean’ supercontinent breaking apart. Advocates of CPT have proposed that the continents moved across the globe toward subduction zones during the Flood. This was accomplished by the gravity-induced subduction of the 50 to 100 km thick ‘Paleozoic’ pre-Flood oceanic floor. This is one-half of the UPT Wilson cycle.Although Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) relies on Uniformitarian Plate Tectonic (UPT) evidence, it does not consistently follow its tenets.1 This fact was recently made clear in a forum on CPT held between John Baumgardner and Michael Oard in Journal of Creation.2,3 I applaud Baumgardner for his efforts to explain some of the details of CPT theory; however, his interpretation appears to be inconsistent with much of the UPT dataset that he uses for its support.The Wilson cycle is a key concept in UPT theory and should play an important role in CPT.4 The recognized succession of tectonic events associated with a Wilson cycle begins with continental intraplate rifting and the effusion of flood basalts. Hypothesized convection currents originating from close to the outer core, circulate within the mantle and serve to break the continent apart along the newly formed rift margin. Purportedly, at some later period of time the continents return together (not necessarily at the same location) by subduction.Ultimately, these crustal collisions create mountain ranges. According to UPT theory, the continental margin surrounding the North Atlantic Ocean Basin is believed to reflect possibly two Wilson cycles. The first Wilson cycle created the historical Iapetus Ocean basin, which later closed. Later, rifting of the continent resulted in the opening of the modern Atlantic oceanic basin. However, Baumgardner’s explanation of CPT does not appear to provide sufficient opportunity for even one Wilson cycle in support of either the Iapetus or the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, with regard to the evidence used to support a Wilson cycle, it would appear that UPT and CPT are not mutually inclusive5. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics From its earliest proposal, proponents of CPT have claimed that its support comes from the existing UPT dataset.4,6 Baumgardner has reiterated this claim in his recent discussions supporting CPT.7–10 Wilson cycles are used to explain the motion of the continents over time and are believed to be supported by UPT datasets derived from paleomagnetism (e.g., polarity and paleo-wandering paths), paleontology, and tectonics. Thus, this same evidence should be available to support Wilson cycles in CPT. No Wilson cycles in CPT Figure 2. A diagram showing the continents returning together by subduction in an opposite direction. This process completes a single Wilson cycle. CPT does not appear capable of explaining how continental drift could pull the continents back together again using the newly-formed hot and thin oceanic floor, which would lack either the rigidity or weight to allow an opposing subduction zone to form.Baumgardner stated that the ‘Paleozoic’ pre-Flood oceanic floor was subducted with the onset of the Flood, pulling apart the formerly unified landmass. 11 Subduction in this setting, especially considering that the oceanic floor is 50–100 km thick,12 would move the continents in one direction, and only for the distance equal to the original pre-Flood oceanic basin.Once the pre-Flood oceanic floor was subducted, continental movement should have ceased. New oceanic floor would have formed at spreading ridges and moved laterally, forming the new oceanic basins between the spreading continents. The cooling of the newly formed oceanic floor would be by heat transfer at the point of its extrusion at the spreading ridge.11,13 In this scenario, nothing other than possibly the top few meters of newly formed oceanic floor would cool below the boiling point of seawater. All of the subsurface heat from the newly created oceanic floor could have raised ocean temperatures considerably, perhaps even to the boiling point.14,15 Iapetus and Atlantic oceanic basins do not fit within CPT Advocates of UPT have proposed that the Iapetus oceanic basin was a precursor to the modern Atlantic. It opened in the Precambrian (600 to 550 Ma) and closed in the mid-Silurian (420 Ma) with the collision of the preexisting continents. 16 In the late-Triassic Period (~180 Ma), the Pangean supercontinent separated and spread apart forming the modern Atlantic Ocean basin. In order to support the concept of the Wilson cycle as it relates to the Iapetus and subsequent Atlantic Ocean, it would appear that CPT would have to proceed in the following manner:The pre-Flood Pangean supercontinent would break apart at the onset of the Flood. The individual continents would separate with the subduction of the 50 to 100 km thick pre-Flood ‘Paleozoic’ oceanic floor, forming the Iapetus Ocean (Figure 1).The thin, hot, and freshly extruded oceanic floor that filled the space following the movement of the continents would have to rapidly cool, break apart along an opposing margin, and then subduct, pulling the continents back toward their original position. This would accomplish the reunification of separated continents and close the Iapetus Ocean (Figure 2).The rapid cooling of the last-formed hot oceanic floor created during the reunification of the continents would again break apart and subduction would once more begin pulling the continents apart for the final time, forming the Atlantic Ocean basin (Figure 1).The steam jet model 11,17 as postulated by the advocates of CPT, would truly need to be efficient to cool the twice-formed oceanic floor during the Flood. A credible explanation needs to be provided, demonstrating how the Iapetus and Atlantic oceanic basins are possible within the constraints of the CPT model, or why this aspect of UPT is invalid. Conclusion CPT derives much support from UPT evidence. The Wilson cycle is a key component of UPT. Baumgardner’s recent defense of CPT reveals aserious problem with the Wilson cycle concept, once the original pre-Flood ‘Paleozoic’ oceanic floor was supposedly subducted.Baumgardner has suggested that the weight of the original 50 to 100 km thick pre-Flood oceanic floor would simply have pulled it into the mantle once gravity-induced subduction began. This would appear to be a one-way process as the newly created oceanic floor, only a few meters thick, could not provide the lateral force necessary to initiate subduction in an opposing direction. Neither would it have the necessary lateral strength to pull an adjoining portion of continental crust along with it.Without the capability to move the continents first in one direction and later another as required by the Wilson cycle concept, CPT appears to lack a means to support this concept in UPT theory. For this reason, serious questions remain as to the applicability of UPT evidence to CPT. Those questions could be answered by providing an explanation using the Iapetus/Atlantic oceanic basins as an example. Forum on catastrophic plate tectonics by editors of Journal of Creation We publish here six articles that address catastrophic plate tectonics as a framework for the young Earth history. The topic of ‘continental drift’ is one of the most-asked questions on Creation/evolution issue. ‘Have the continents really moved apart? How could this relate to the creation`s account of history? Could it have had something to do with the Flood?’ 1In 1994,2 six creationist scientists answered ‘Yes’ to these questions. They agreed that the continents really have moved apart during the Flood. And they moved quickly over months, not slowly over millions of years. The details of their answer were presented in papers at the International Conference on Creationism, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.3–5 This catastrophic-platetectonics model is regarded by many as the most highly developed creationist model of the global Flood.However, a number of creationist geologists are sceptical of the assumptions of plate tectonics and have published papers and monographs expressing their concerns.6 In view of the significance of geology to a creationists understanding of Earth history, we believe it is important that these differences be explored in a forum.This forum, therefore, focuses on the three papers presented at the 1994 International Conference on Creationism. The participants are John Baumgardner and Michael Oard, who represent the ‘for’ and ‘against’ position respectively. Both have published extensively on creation geology. Each has drawn on the advice of others with the aim of making their contribution representative of the different views. Those who assisted are acknowledged at the end of the last contribution of each author.The forum proceeded in three stages. First, each author prepared a paper setting out his case, either ‘for’ or ‘against’. The first submissions were exchanged and then each author prepared a response. The second submissions were exchanged and each author then prepared his third and final submission.We publish all the articles in this issue of TJ. Although the ‘for’ position is presented first, it is important to realise that the ‘for’ and ‘against’ positions for each of the first, second and third submissions were prepared simultaneously.Over the years, creationists have developed a number of models of the worldwide Flood. Secular geologists also have developed different models for how they think geological history took place. Forty years ago, hardly any geologists believed in continental drift. Now, almost all geologists do. Geology is important because all models of Earth history depend upon it.The fact that creationist scientists have different views on this topic should be seen as positive. After all, the Earth is immense and our data are very limited in space and time. creationists should not be surprised if some questions are still open. The important thing is that the issues are being worked through. This is science at its best—exploring different options with an open mind. That is why we always stress that creationists should never put their faith in one particular scientific model, whether it is geological, biological or astronomical. Models change as ideas change and as people come and go. We hope you enjoy the forum and that it helps you appreciate something of the mammoth job of reconstructing a geological history of the Earth. Forum contents: ‘For’ First contribution Rebuttal Conclusion ‘Against’ Catastrophic plate tectonics: the geophysical Is catastrophic plate tectonics part of Earth history? context of the Flood by Michael J. Oard by John R. Baumgardner Dealing carefully with by John R. Baumgardner the data Does the catastrophic plate tectonics model assume too much uniformitarianism? by Michael J. Oard A constructive quest by John R. Baumgardner for truth Dealing carefully by Michael J. Oard with the data DAILY ARTICLES ‘Flat gaps’ in sedimentary rock layers challenge long geologic ages by Ariel A. Roth ‘Flat gaps’, generally known as paraconformities, are contacts within sedimentary sequences where layers of sediment representing many millions of years are said to be missing. Flat gaps are remarkably flat and the sedimentary layers either side of the gap are parallel and relatively thin compared with their enormous geographical extent. Over the alleged long periods of time indicated by the gap, erosion is expected to remove vast depths of sediment and produce a highly irregular land surface. Such evidence of erosion, however, is not found. Flat gaps are common throughout the geologic column and around the world. They are very difficult to explain within the long-age uniformitarian paradigm and severely challenge the concept of millions of years. On the other hand, flat gaps provide strong evidence for a young earth and are easily explained within the paradigm of the global Flood. Wikipedia/Andrew Spencer The standard geologic time scale assigns millions to billions of years for the age of various sedimentary rock layers found in the crust of our earth. However, between these layers there are often subtle horizons that are interpreted to represent a break in the sequence of strata where sediments representing millions of years of deposition are absent. These subtle gaps severely conflict with the millions of years proposed by most geologists for the slow deposition of the sedimentary record. Rather, they suggest that the sedimentary layers formed rapidly as would be expected by deposition during the worldwide Flood. Expected erosion missing The process of erosion is significant for understanding these gaps, and an outstanding feature of erosion is the highly irregular topography it usually creates as streams and rivers keep cutting deeper gullies, canyons, and valleys into the landscape. Even Australia, which tends to be very flat, has a lot of irregular topography in many areas. Erosion tends to produce highly irregular surfaces over most of our continents.These gaps, between, and sometimes within the sedimentary rock layers, challenge the putative long geologic ages because the expected irregular erosion is missing. You must keep two things in mind about these intriguing peculiarities. First, there is a major gap in the layers because sedimentary rock layers that should be there are missing at these localities; secondly the layers below and above the gap are parallel and flat. To put it simply we are talking about flat gaps.Geologists who believe in long geologic ages call these flat gaps paraconformities. If there is a little evidence of erosion, but the layers are still parallel to each other, they may use the term disconformity, and sometimes the term nonsequence is also used, but the terminology is ill defined. The term unconformity is rarely used for these gaps because it is a general term for all kinds of gaps in the rock record. Keep in mind that not all gaps in the sedimentary layers are flat, but a significant number are, and these widespread flat gaps pose a serious problem for the long geologic ages. Layers are missing At these gaps, a part of the standard geologic column that is found elsewhere is missing. The layers and their expected fossils are absent because they were never laid down at that locality. The dark layer at the right in figure 1, designated as “Distant layer … ”, represents a layer missing to the left of the illustration. Geologists use the standard order of the rocks and fossils in the geologic column to determine if there is a gap and what parts are missing. They assign the same length of time for the gap as the time they assume was required to deposit the missing parts.The magnitude of the time involved is significant and can range from millions to hundreds of millions of years. This time is considered necessary for the slow deposition of the layers of the geologic column in other parts of the earth. The flat gaps are quite difficult to identify because often there is nothing there to indicate a gap. Sometimes just a line may be visible. Only by carefully comparing the order of the rock types and their contained fossil assemblages with other regions is a gap established. Figure 1. Diagrammatic cross section through sedimentary layers illustrating a flat gap or paraconformity. The paraconformity is the thin dark line in the middle of the diagram. Note the darker grey layer designated “Distant layer … ” to the right that was laid down before the overlayer. Uniformitarian geologists assume that it would have taken a very long time to deposit the “Distant layer … ”, and the length of that time determines the duration of the gap between the underlayer and the overlayer. If it is assumed that it took 20 Ma to deposit the “Distant layer … ”, the gap is assumed to represent 20 Ma. The irregular white line in the underlayer illustrates the erosion that would be expected during such a long time, but the irregular erosion is essentially absent. Erosion should produce irregular surfaces The problem these flat gaps pose for the long geologic ages is the lack of erosion of the underlayer. Over the many millions of years postulated for these gaps, you would expect pronounced irregular erosion as illustrated in figure 1 by the irregular pale line. The gaps should not be flat. In fact, according to average erosion rates, many or all of the underlying layers should be gone. The existence of flat gaps therefore indicates that the millions of years postulated for these gaps never occurred. 1 These flat gaps are so common that they pretty much challenge the validity of the whole geologic time scale.How much erosion should we expect at these gaps? Rates of erosion can be determined by measuring the amount of sediment a river carries each year into the ocean and comparing that to the size of the river’s basin. This has been done many times for all the major rivers of the world. The average of a dozen studies in the geologic literature2indicates that our continents are being eroded away at a rate of about 60 mm per thousand years.It is estimated that current agricultural practices have doubled erosion rates, so prior rates would have averaged around 30 mm per thousand years, or 30 m per million years. This may seem slow, but when extended over an assumed 2.5 Ga age for the continents, this means that our continents could have been eroded to sea level over 100 times, but they are still here, suggesting that they are much younger. Renewal of the continental material from below, as proposed by geologists who believe in very long ages, does not seem to be a valid explanation for the presence of continents and mountain ranges. Many layers assumed to be very old are still on the continents, indicating that the geologic column has not been completely eroded even once. An example near Grand Canyon In figure 2 the sedimentary rock layers are represented according to the standard geologic time scale, but not especially their thickness, although time and thickness tend to be related. The standard geologic time is given in the second column in millions of years (Ma). The time assumed for the actual rock layers that are present is represented by the thickness of the white layers. The length of time missing in the putative gaps is shown by the thickness of the dark layers between the white layers. These white layers represent the various rock formations that actually lie directly on top of each other in the field. Note that, in general, the tops of the white layers represent the underlayer of the paraconformities, Figure 2. Representation of the vertical section through the sedimentary layers in eastern Utah assuming the standard geologic time scale. The assumed ages are provided in the second column from the left in units of millions of years (Ma). The white labeled layers are the rock layers that exist in the region, which actually lie directly on top of each other with essentially flat gaps between. The dark layers represent the gaps, and the thicker they are, the longer their assumed duration. The dashed and solid lines (black arrows) are examples of the present irregular eroded surface of the land in the region. Note the dramatic contrast between the irregular surface of the present landscape and the flat surfaces of the rock layers in the past (the white layers). The region represented is 133 km across, while the total thickness of the rock layers (white) is 3.5 km. Vertical exaggeration is about 14 times. 9Figure 2 is not a hypothetical example but represents a section in Utah, across 133 km that lies northeast of the world famous Grand Canyon. Superimposed on that diagram are a dashed line and a solid line (black arrows) that are two examples of the current eroded surface (topography) of the region. The dashed line is along an interstate highway and represents some of the flattest topography of the region. The solid line is the topography found further south.Notice the striking contrast between the flat pattern of the layers (especially the tops of the white layers), compared to the eroded highly irregular topography of the present surface of the region. This contrast illustrates the problem these gaps pose for the long geologic ages. If the many millions of years illustrated by the thickness of the black layers had actually occurred the configuration of the white layers should be highly irregular. They should be similar to the present topography of the region (solid and dashed lines). Because the white layers are so flat it means the millions of years suggested for the geologic column never occurred and that the layers were laid down one on top of each other without the postulated time intervals between. Furthermore, if geologic time is missing in one locality it is missing around the whole earth. Gaps are not obvious Sometimes paraconformities are so inconspicuous that they can be difficult to locate in the rock record. Famed paleontologist Norman Newell comments: “A puzzling characteristic of the erathem boundaries and of other major stratigraphic boundaries [boundaries between differing fossil assemblages] is the general lack of physical evidence of subaerial exposure. Traces of deep leaching, scour, channeling, and residual gravels tend to be lacking, even when the underlying rocks are cherty limestones … these boundaries are paraconformities that are identifiable only by paleontological [fossil] evidence.”3 The inconspicuous nature of paraconformities can be seen in the examples of flat gaps shown in figures 3–11. The arrows point to the gap and the putative duration of the gap is indicated in millions of years (Ma). The legends give further information about expected erosion. Figure 3. Valley of the Colorado River viewed from Dead Horse Point in Utah. The arrows point to two gaps (paraconformities) of about 10 and 20 Ma each. Some 300 m and 600 m of erosion respectively could be expected in these timeframes. The canyon is 600 m deep. At the upper arrow the Middle Triassic is missing, while at the lower arrow part of the top of the Permian is missing. Figure 4. Another view of the same 10 Ma gap seen in figure 3, however this is over 300 km to the southwest near Hurricane, Utah. The lower 20 Ma gap of figure 3 is also present here but lies just a little below the surface. For instance, at the lower arrow of figure 5 of Grand Canyon there is an assumed gap of more than 100 Ma, because there both the Ordovician and Silurian periods and more of the geologic column are missing. According to average rates of erosion we would expect a 3 km depth of erosion during that time. Yet Stanley Beus, a geologist who has studied this area carefully, comments about the contact at that gap in the type area of the overlying formation, stating: “Here the unconformity [i.e. the gap or paraconformity], even though representing more than 100 million years may be difficult to locate.”4 At the 14 Ma gap in the region of the tip of the middle arrow in figure 5 geologist Ronald Blakey comments: “Contrary to the implications of McKee’s work, the location of the boundary between the Manakacha and Wescogami Formations can be difficult to determine both from a distance and from close range.”5 Figure 6. A major gap found in northeast Arizona between the Figure 5. Three gaps in the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Triassic Chinle Formation and the overlying Pliocene Expected erosion is 180 m, 420 m and 3,000 m. The canyon Bidahochi Formation. The Jurassic, Cretaceous and most of is about 1,600 m deep. All of the Ordovician and Silurian andthe Tertiary “periods” are missing. The gap is in a soft slope at more are missing at the lower gap. In spite of their long the tip of the arrows. The paraconformity lies as a straight line duration, the exact positions of the lower two gaps are often between the very tips of the two arrows. The Bidahochi is a hard to locate; nevertheless, the general parallel arrangementlittle lighter grey than the underlying Chinle. This contact is not of the layers above and below indicate little or no erosion. always as flat as illustrated here, but variations are minor compared to the average 5,700 m of vertical erosion expected during the 190 Ma gap. Another geologist, T.H. Van Andel, commenting about a gap in rock layers in Venezuela, states: “I was much influenced early in my career by the recognition that two thin coal seams in Venezuela, separated by a foot of gray clay, and deposited in a costal swamp were respectively of Lower Paleocene and upper Eocene age. The outcrops were excellent, but even the closest inspection failed to turn up the precise position of that 15 Myr gap.”6 It does not appear that the proposed millions of years ever occurred. Figure 7. View in northeast Utah, north of the town of Vernal. The Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation lies just above the tip of the arrow; below the tip is the multilayered Jurassic Morrison Formation. Between is a 20 Ma gap of mostly Lower Cretaceous time. The light scarp in the hill above the arrow is the Cretaceous Dakota Formation. Gaps are semi-continent wide As you study the figure legends, you should note that we are not talking about local situations. Many of these flat gaps spread over semicontinent wide regions. Often they lie between layers that are geographically widespread and remarkably thin relative to their lateral extent. The immensity of the layers is completely out of the range of current depositional patterns of sediments on our continents. Their relative thinness and lateral continuity is evidence of the flatness of the area over which they were spread, reflecting the lack of erosion of the underlayer. For instance, the Cretaceous Dakota Formation that is identified in figures 7 and 8 averages only about 30 m in thickness, but it is spread over some 800,000 km 2 in the western United States. We seem to be dealing with a geologic past that was very different from the present. It is the kind of past that you would expect from the catastrophic activity of the Flood. One geologist, who does not endorse that Flood, notes: “The accumulation of the present stratigraphic record [sedimentary rocks] in many cases involves processes that have not been, or cannot be observed in modern environments … there are the extreme events … with magnitudes so large and devastating that they have not, and probably could not, be observed scientifically.”7 Figure 8. The same gap as in Figure 7, only here the missing layers represent around 40 Ma because the Cedar Mountain Formation is also missing. The Cretaceous Dakota Formation lies directly over the Jurassic Morrison Formation. The tip of the arrow is between the two. This is in western New Mexico, 600 km south from the locality of the same gap in Figure 7. This contact between the Dakota and Morrison Formations can be followed for 200 km from west to east in New Mexico. The top of the Morrison Formation had to remain extremely flat for 40 Ma in order to accommodate the thin Dakota Formation, which is spread for many thousands of square kilometers immediately above it. The average erosion expected in 40 Ma is 1,200 m, which indicates that the 40 Ma is invalid. Figure 9. View of the Morcles Nappe in the valley of the Rhone in Switzerland. The 45 Ma gap (probably more) is at the bottom of the slightly darker layer you can follow across the figure from the tip of the arrow. Here much of the Upper Cretaceous and Paleocene are missing. Due to the recumbent folding of the Morcles Nappe, the layers at this locality are in reverse order but the contact is still flat. Some common questions 1. Could these just represent very flat depositional areas of the earth? There are very flat depositional areas of the earth such as lake bottoms and the abyssal plains of the oceans, but these are both areas where over time sediments continuously accumulate, and there are no gaps there. 2. Could these flat areas just be locations where there is no erosion or deposition? Not unless we can suspend the world weather over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of the earth’s surface for many millions of years. Over the surface of our continents, during the long ages postulated, if you don’t have erosion, you should have deposition. 3. Can erosion be flat? This idea was postulated a century ago and was called the Davis cycle of erosion, but it has now been largely abandoned due to lack of any current widespread examples of flat erosion on the surface of our continents. 4. Could these gaps have been protected part of the time by overlying layers? Yes, but when you remove the overlying layers, erosion would leave an irregular topography unless the underlayer was very hard, and that is hardly ever the case at these gaps. Figure 10. View of a gap (“disconformity”10) in the layers of the Sydney Basin just north of the town of Clifton, NSW, Australia. Based on estimates from geologic map information, the gap is about 6 Ma11 and here lies just above the black Bulli Coal seam and a very thin shale cover sometimes found over it. The peculiarity of this gap is that it lies above a widespread 3 m coal seam. This is very unusual because it raises questions about how and when the coal was formed. One would expect 180 m of erosion of the softer coal seam and much more, during 6 Ma. Minor erosion is reported at this contact. 5. Is there evidence of weathering over time at these gaps?Usually not.8 Where weathering is reported the features can represent transport of material interpreted to be weathered, or changes occurring after the overlayer was deposited (diagenesis). However, over the very long time postulated for the gaps, all should be irregularly eroded away, not just weathered. 6. Is there any evidence of erosion at these gaps? Yes, sometimes a little is seen, but it is insignificant compared to what would be expected on average during the long periods proposed for the gaps. Furthermore, during the worldwide Flood, some erosion is expected anyway. 7. Could erosion rates have been slower in the past? Possibly a little, but it does not appear that the general weather pattern of the past was dramatically different from the present. Fossil plants and animals that require a rich supply of moisture are generally well represented in the fossil record. However, in the context of our present rates of erosion, you would have to essentially completely eliminate the earth’s weather, at least over major regions of the earth, during these long gaps in order to preserve the flatness we find. 8. If the gaps were under water, would this not protect them from erosion? No. Much erosion, such as that of our continental shelves, is caused by underwater currents in both shallow and deep water. Figure 11. Palo Duro Canyon in northern Texas exposes a flat gap between the Pliocene Ogallala Formation at the top resting on the Triassic Trujillo Formation. At the tip of the top arrow, the Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene are missing. At the tip of the lower arrow, the Lower and Middle Triassic are missing between the Late Triassic Tecovas Formation that lies above and the Permian Quartermaster Formation below. On an average, on the basis of standard geologic time, one would expect some 6,000 m, and 480 m of erosion at these flat gaps. Conclusion Paraconformities, or flat gaps, pose a serious problem for the concept of long geologic ages. On the surface of our restless earth, during the period of the gap with the proposed millions of years of weathering, tectonic activity, and drifting of continents, you have either deposition or erosion of the sedimentary layers. If there is deposition there is no gap because the layers just keep building up. If there is erosion the contact surface (underlayer) should be highly irregular, and not flat. The flatness of the gaps indicates little time has occurred at the gaps.The flat gaps, with their incredibly widespread sedimentary layers just above and below, severely challenge the many millions of years proposed for the standard geologic time scale. The complete absence of the deep erosion expected at these gaps over their alleged long ages is very difficult to explain within the long-age uniformitarian paradigm. On the other hand, flat gaps are easily explained when interpreted within the worldwide Flood framework, which deposited most of the sedimentary record of the earth. Fast-forming ‘Fly geyser’ by Jonathan O’Brien In Nevada, there is an unusual water feature known as Fly Geyser, so-named as it is found at Fly Ranch, near the town of Gerlach, Washoe County. In the 1960s, a drill hole previously bored into a natural, underground source of water began gushing heated water up at the ground surface, creating a geothermal hot spring. Rock minerals began depositing, and have now formed an oddly-shaped formation 3.7 metres (12 feet) high. 1It’s become something of a tourist feature.2The formation at Fly Geyser is composed of travertine and siliceous sinter. Travertine is a type of limestone rock, often associated with supposed long ages of formation. It is a historically-important building stone, used to build the outer wall of the Colosseum in Rome, for instance, and still widely used today. Interestingly, this same type of rock readily ‘precipitated’3 out of the flowing spring water at Nevada in modern times to form the sizable Fly Geyser feature within a few decades.This curious deposit shows that it doesn’t take millions of years for limestone rock to form, contrary to what I was told as a small boy, when visiting some famous caves in Australia. The guide said the big stalactites, stalagmites, and other amazing cave ornamentation formed over millions of years, however, I have since discovered that millions of years are not needed. All that is needed are the right chemical conditions.4During the global Flood, the conditions would have allowed much faster deposition of enormous quantities of limestone, formed from minerals deriving from below the surface of the earth. Huge deposits of limestone were formed, in some cases hundreds of metres deep and covering thousands of square kilometres.5 Fly Geyser gives a tiny insight into how these formations would have been deposited very rapidly, within months. Volcanoes shaped our planet Fiery catastrophe greater in the past by Tas Walker Swirling clouds of ash and dust belched high above the Andes, disrupting air traffic and settling over the landscape. The sudden eruption of the Puyehue volcano in Chile in June 2011 demonstrated the power of untamed energy beneath the earth. Volcanic eruptions can devastate the countryside with burning lava, deadly ash and destructive mud. In fact, volcanoes are to blame for many of the world’s worst natural disasters.But volcanoes also have their good points. Some of the most beautiful mountains are volcanoes, such as Mount Fuji in Japan. Also, the ash deposited by volcanoes forms fertile soil, outstanding for agriculture.Right now at least 20 volcanoes are erupting around the globe,1 concentrated on the boundaries between the earth’s crustal plates. The Pacific plate has so many volcanoes around its edge that it has been called the ‘Ring of Fire’. Deadly fire clouds During a volcanic eruption, clouds of superheated gas and broken rock, called tephra, can surge down the flanks and blast across the countryside. Dubbed ‘pyroclastic flows’, 2 these ash clouds are so hot that they glow red in the dark. 3They skim the ground with the speed of a jetliner, destroying everything in their path. The Ring of fire surrounding the Pacific On 8 May 1902, Mount Pelêe erupted on the island of Martinique in the Caribbean, producing a pyroclastic flow. Within minutes, the deadly cloud engulfed the nearby town of St Pierre, killing almost the entire population of some 30,000 people. American volcano lessons Mount St Helens volcano in Washington State, north-west USA, would be one of the most studied volcanoes on earth. On 18 May 1980, at 8:32 am, a surge of magma deep underground triggered an avalanche on the mountainside. Like a cork popped from a bottle of soda, the pressure inside the mountain unleashed the deadliest and costliest volcanic disaster in the history of the US: 57 lives were lost.One remarkable effect of the Mount St Helens eruptions is that geologists are now more accepting of catastrophic geologic processes. Previously they were wedded to the idea that geological features formed slowly over millions of years. But their ideas changed after they saw that thick beds of ash, deposited in less than an hour, displayed fine laminations. That proved that long periods of time are not essential for fine layers to form. Some of the large canyons in the area, now containing small streams, did not take ages to erode but were carved by catastrophic mudflows in less than a day. Rocky surfaces with grooves and striations were not chiselled by glaciers, but scraped by rock blasted along the ground.Radioactive dating of rock that formed since the 1980 eruption gave ‘ages’ of hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, showing that the fundamental assumptions behind radioactive-dating were wrong.4 Mount St Helens ejected 1 km³ (0.24 cubic miles) of ash and dust from its vent, yet that was a small eruption compared with the ejecta from volcanoes of the distant past. For example, the ash deposited by the post-Flood 5 Huckleberry Ridge eruption in Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, was 2,500 times greater than for Mount St Helens.Volcanic activity on the earth has been tapering off from a time in the past when eruptions were much greater.6 During the Flood, water not only rained from the heavens but also burst from underground. These fractures and upheavals in the earth’s crust caused great volcanic activity. It was many hundreds of years after the Flood ended before the earth settled down.Sometimes, after a huge volume of magma erupts from a volcano, the overlying ground will collapse into the empty magma chamber to form a caldera. This is a circular depression on the surface of the earth that has a flat floor and steep walls. After its collapse, more lava is often forced up through cracks around the rim.Calderas can range in diameter from a few kilometres to more than 50 kilometres. Water often fills the depression to form a lake, as with beautiful Lake Rotorua in New Zealand, created by a volcanic explosion after the Flood.7 Huge eruptions in the past During the Flood some volcanic eruptions covered enormous areas, such as the Columbia River Basalt Group in northwestern USA. Here, as many as 300 individual lava flows engulfed some 163,000 km² (63,000 sq. miles) of the countryside to a depth of more than 1.8 km (1.1 miles). 8 The lava gushing from the earth was so hot and runny that it flowed across the landscape for vast distances. The flood waters were still around when the eruptions took place, and they deposited sediment, as well as wood (now petrified) and gravel, between some of the lava flows. The individual flows followed each other so quickly that there was not much erosion between them. But when the lava finally stopped, as the waters of the Flood receded into the ocean they eroded deep valleys into the basalt complex.8 Some of the Large Igneous Province of the world These enormous volcanic deposits have been called ‘Large Igneous Provinces’ (or LIPs). Contrasting with today’s volcanoes, LIPs are usually found within the earth’s plates instead of along their edges. Because LIPs are so much larger 9 than the volcanoes we see today, long-age geologists are puzzled. What could have produced the titanic volume of magma, and how was so much lava erupted so quickly? They suggest that mantle plumes, large upward movements of hot rock from deep in the earth, were responsible. But the puzzle remains. What caused the plumes? We do not see plumes of this magnitude beneath volcanoes today. However, enormous volcanic eruptions like this are to be expected from the Flood catastrophe, which impacted the deep interior of the earth.10Next time we see a volcano in the news spraying fountains of red-hot lava into the air and blackening the sky, we should be thankful that these eruptions are small compared to the mammoth eruptions during the Flood. That was the greatest catastrophe of water and fire this world has ever seen. Shapes made by different lavas Molten rock, while it is inside the earth, is called magma, but once it erupts onto the surface is called lava. Rocks that harden from magma are called plutonic (after the Greek god of the underworld, Pluto), and usually have large crystals, while rocks hardening from lava are calledvolcanic, and usually have very fine crystals. The composition of the magma depends on the source rock and how much of it melted.Magma that is rich in magnesium and iron is described as mafic. It is highly fluid (thin, runny) and gushes out of fissures in the ground at over 1,000 °C. This lava solidifies into a black rock called basalt (if the magma cools inside the earth, it forms gabbro). Like a fountain, basaltic eruptions in Hawaii and Iceland spray red-hot lava into the air, which then flows in glowing red streams into nearby valleys or the ocean. These eruptions are placid and predictable, and popular as tourist attractions. The lava forms large, flat cones called shield volcanoes. Magma with less iron and magnesium is less fluid, and can solidify into a grey rock called diorite. If this type of magma becomes lava, it will solidify into andesite. Eruptions can be violent and build steep cones. Andesite was named after the Andes Mountains in South America which mostly have andesitic composition.With even less iron and magnesium the magma is thick and tacky. It is called felsic magma because it is rich in elements that produce feldspar and silica minerals. Felsic magma can erupt explosively or ooze like toothpaste to form a blob. The lava solidifies into a yellow, pink or pale-grey rock called rhyolite (the plutonic equivalent is granite). Mt St Helens erupted into a lava dome of dacite, between andesite and rhyolite in composition. Oceans of water deep inside the earth What do they mean? by Tas Walker Published: 4 October 2014 (GMT+10) Figure 1. Schematic section of the Earth’s interior, showing upper mantle, transition zone, lower mantle and core. The crust of the earth, continental and oceanic, is not visible at this scale. (From Fellman, ref. 5.) Notice that, contrary to some news reports, the transition zone is not near the core. News reports of “oceans of water locked 400 miles inside Earth”1 have caught people’s imagination, arousing mental pictures of water slopping around in vast underground reservoirs. One report said “Massive ‘ocean’ discovered towards Earth’s core.”2 Not so vivid was the title of the relevant paper in the journal Science—“Dehydration melting at the top of the lower mantle.”3This is not a new discovery. Scientists have been speculating for decades that the earth’s transition zone holds abundant water within the mantle, in a mineral called Ringwoodite (see box below).4,5The transition zone extends from 410 to 660 km below the surface—the upper mantle sits above it, and the lower below (figure 1).Paper coauthor Steve Jacobsen6 has been experimenting for years in his laboratory with ringwoodite (figure 2), the mineral considered to be the most abundant in the lower transition zone. He has been able to synthesize the blue, sapphire-like mineral by reacting, at highpressure, the mineral olivine with water. Olivine is green, and abundant in the earth’s upper mantle.Concerning ringwoodite, Jacobsen said, “It’s rock with water along the boundaries between the grains, almost as if they’re sweating.” At the depth of the transition zone, the pressure and temperature are suited to release the water from the ringwoodite.The other piece of the story was supplied by Brandon Schmandt.7 By analysing seismic waves from hundreds of earthquakes and thousands of seismic recorders, he concluded there are vast pockets of magma (molten rock) beneath the North American continent at the base of the transition zone.8Based on these findings, the researchers suggested that the water in the ringwoodite in the transition zone had been forced out, and the rock partly melted. Jacobsen said, “Once the water is released, much of it may become trapped there in the transition zone.”References to oceans of water under the earth raised questions in some people’s minds: is this water connected to the Flood? It is possible that there is a connection, but there are many questions that would need to be answered. And we must remember that descriptions of magma oceans and their mineral composition are based on circumstantial evidence.Linking water in the mantle to the Flood has been proposed before. Alex Williams in the article Drowned from below9 suggested that water from minerals in the earth’s mantle may have been the source for some of the water of the Flood. How that would work would depend on where Flood rocks begin within the geological record, and that is still debated among creation geologists.In an article in Journal of Creation, geologist Max Hunter advocated that the pre-Flood boundary is towards the base of the earth’s transition zone (See Pre-Flood boundary).10 He proposed that decompression of the mantle initiated mantle melting, magma generation, and the release of volatiles, including copious volumes of water, which came to the surface during the Flood. It would also mean that the Flood was an enormous planetary cataclysm. Figure 2. Crystals of blue ringwoodite synthesized from olivine in Steve Jacobson’s laboratory. (Photo: Steve Jacobsen12) One way the water could be released from the mantle is for the rocks to undergo a change in mineral structure during the Flood. Such changes in ringwoodite could release water, and this would rise through the mantle with the magma and be expelled onto the surface through volcanic eruptions. There is much evidence for abundant volcanic eruptions during the Flood. 11 Stephen Jacobsen also suggested that water from ringwoodite ended up in the oceans, but he envisages it taking millions of years. He said of his research, "It’s good evidence the Earth’s water came from within."In summary, the claims of vast quantities of water within the mantle in the transition zone are entirely plausible, but we must keep in mind that they are based oninterpretations of indirect evidence. It is feasible that such quantities of water represent the remains of a major planetary differentiation that occurred during the global Flood cataclysm, but there are questions and issues that would require further investigation. A diamond from Juína, Brazil, found to contain a tiny inclusion of ringwoodite. (Image by Richard Siemens-University of Alberta) Mantle mineral ringwoodite found in diamond In March 2014 journal Nature reported a diamond from Brazil that contained a small speck of the mineral ringwoodite. 13 The significance of the find stems from the idea that diamonds are blasted explosively from deep inside the earth to the surface in vertical volcanic tubes called kimberlite pipes (this would have been early during the catastrophe of the Flood). The explosive eruptions ‘sample’ the rocks in the mantle and enclosed the ringwoodite inclusion in the diamond.Based on theoretical calculations it has long been speculated that ringwoodite exists in the mantle. Scientists have been able to make ringwoodite in the laboratory by combining the mineral olivine with water under high temperatures and pressures. The mineral has also been found in meteorites. However, the ringwoodite in this diamond is the first time that the mineral from the mantle has been found in on the surface.Ringwoodite contains 1.5% water, not in the form of a liquid but as hydroxide ions (particles with a negative charge consisting of one oxygen and one hydrogen atom). Lead author of the Nature paper, Graham Pearson, a geochemist at the University of Alberta in Canada said, “It’s actually the confirmation that there is a very, very large amount of water that’s trapped in a really distinct layer in the deep Earth.” Parícutin A Mountain in a Year by Jonathan O’Brien IN 1943, a Mexican farmer was working in a field with his wife and son when he was astonished to see a small fissure suddenly open up in the ground in front of him. The trio were then rocked by a thunderous roar which shook the trees. The soil around the fissure bulged upwards 2 metres (6½ feet), the crack gaped wide open, and ash began blasting out. An horrific wailing or whistling sound commenced, building in intensity, and the air was quickly filled with dark ‘smoke’ and acrid vapours smelling of rotting eggs (hydrogen sulfide H2S). It was as if the end of the world had begun. A volcano begins The farmer’s name was Dionisio Pulido, and he had just witnessed, with his wife Paula, the birth of a completely new volcano. The volcano came to be known as Parícutin, after his village. Within hours of Dionisio’s narrow escape, a dark ‘scoria’2 cone began rising ominously from the field, and in a week it had grown to 100 metres (over 300 feet) high. Lava started to flow soon afterwards, and in a month the volcano was a major feature that could be seen from far away. It continued to grow bigger still, and the villages of Parícutin and San Juan Parangaricutiro were destroyed.No one was killed directly by the lava flows or hot ash but three people died after being hit by lightning caused by the pyroclastic ash clouds. Thousands of farm animals perished. The size and impact of the new volcano was so great that the people and animals from the villages and farms all around had to be permanently moved to a new locality. Mount Parícutin In modern times, there have been many eruptions of pre-existing, once-dormant volcanoes, but Dionisio’s mountain is especially notable because its very beginning had eyewitnesses. It was also the first time that scientists were able to observe the complete lifecycle of a volcano. Parícutin reached the height of 336 metres (1,100 feet) in the first year, and when it ceased erupting in 1952 it had grown to be 424 metres (1,390 feet) high above the plain (elevation (i.e. above sea level) is 2,800 m (9,186 ft)). It is now considered to be extinct. 3 What began as a tiny crack in the ground, right before the eyes of an amazed farmer, is today a major geographical feature called one of the seven natural wonders of the world, and attracting tourists and climbers from far and wide. Millions of years not needed Most of the world’s major geologic features did not have human witnesses to their formation. 4 Uniformitarian scientists have inferred what happened in the past in the light of their long-age philosophy. They assert that most geological features took many thousands or millions of years to form. Yet we know from actual eyewitness testimony that Mount Parícutin took only 9 years to form, from beginning to extinction, with most of its growth having occurred in the first year. With much larger forces at work in the earth’s crust, as occurred during the terrible year of the global Flood, even the largest geographical features we see in the world today would have formed in months, weeks or even days. Parícutin has a cone shape and is called a Strombolian volcano. Volcanoes that formed during the Flood, 4,500 years ago, would have been planed flat by the rising waters. Those that erupted late in the Flood would have been severely eroded, with the exception of their solid neck, by the receding floodwaters. For instance the Glass House Mountains north of Brisbane, Australia, are the remnant necks of volcanoes that erupted late in the Flood. 5So if we see volcanoes today with cones intact, such as Mount Fuji, Japan, we know that they formed in the post-Flood era. Three early arguments for deep time—part I: time needed to erode valleys by John K. Reed Recent historical studies have identified and clarified original geological arguments for deep time. These were developed between 1750 and 1850 by leading naturalists. One of the three primary arguments was that valley erosion would require more time than allowed in the young age narrative. Current knowledge shows significant empirical and logical flaws in that argument, minimizing its value as evidence and illustrating that anti-creationists bias and an early form of positivism caused early naturalists to misunderstand the nature of the question. This suggests that the idea of prehistory functioned as an axiom, and was not an empirical conclusion flowing from geological data. The transition from belief in a young to old earth marked a fundamental change in Western culture. Mortenson 1called it “the great turning point” in the church, marking the rise of secularism at the expense of orthodoxy. For nearly two centuries, the ‘secular fortress’ of prehistory was protected by a distorted history of geology—primarily the myth that geology came into being by the efforts of Hutton, Playfair, and Lyell. As the tale goes, they braved reactionary theologians and defeated them with dispassionate scientific evidence. But even many secular historians now flee that old tale. 2One consequence of this origin-of-geology mythology is today’s widespread ignorance of the pedigree of deep time—an idea popular in the salons of Paris in the mid-1700s. Not only were the intellectuals of that time,3 often referred to as ‘savants’, confident that the earth was old long before Hutton or Lyell published, but most individuals working in the emerging sciences of the earth were not English. Continental savants were geology’s pioneers. In fact, the term ‘geology’ was coined by the Swiss naturalist, Jean André de Luc (1727–1817). These continental savants argued for an old earth from three primary lines of evidence: (1) valley erosion, (2) volcanism, and (3) the sedimentary record.4Geology as we understand it today is anachronistic to the sciences of the earth of the 1700s, which were divided into three broad categories: natural history, natural philosophy, and geotheory (figure 1). None of these correlate exactly to any modern disciplinary niche. (1) Natural History. “description and classification of the diversity of terrestrial things” (Rudwick, ref. 2, 2005, p. 59). (a) mineralogy The collection, identification, and classification of specimens of minerals, rocks, and fossils; knowledge distributed by exact pictures The study of the major features of Earth’s surface, primarily through fieldwork, such as mountains, rivers and volcanoes, with an emphasis on pictures and maps. The study of the structure of Earth’s crust; emphasizing cross sections to depict the third dimension and closely associated with mining. It was developed most strongly in German mining schools. (b) geography physical (c) geognosy (2) Natural Philosophy ‘earth physics’ The causal explanation via natural laws of terrestrial phenomena described by the sub-disciplines of natural history, and consciously distinct from the description and classification of those endeavors. (3) Geotheory ‘Theory of the Earth’ A high-level theory or system of Earth as a whole, derived from unifying the causal explanations of earth physics into a coherent whole. The goal was to discover the one overarching cause of Earth’s phenomena, just as Newton had done for the cosmos with gravity. Figure 1. Sciences of the earth during the eighteenth century as described by Rudwick. Note the absence of familiar boundaries between geology, biology, physics, and chemistry, which were not recognized at the time. (From Reed and Klevberg, ref. 5.) Today, we use the term ‘natural history’ to denote the biohistorical and geohistorical path of the planet. During the 1700s, it was a descriptive discipline. Natural philosophy was concerned with the causal explanation of the features described by natural history, and it has been combined with the descriptive emphasis of natural history in today’s earth sciences. Geotheory was the high level integration of existing knowledge of phenomena and speculation about their causes. Hutton’s title, Theory of the Earth, was ubiquitous and diagnostic of that genre.5Much of the historical material cited herein is from the works of Dr M.J.S. Rudwick, especially his recent two volumes on the development of geohistory. Rudwick is one of the foremost historians of geology and has done much to clear away secularist myths shrouding the origin and development of that science. Both volumes are encyclopedic in their scope and depth, and provide a new benchmark for historians of science. He also provides detailed documentation and bibliographies for any interested in greater depth of study. The argument from the erosion of valleys Geography has influenced society from its inception. Valleys were significant geographic features affecting agriculture, travel, and communication. It is no surprise, then, that they would be of interest to natural historians in the 1700s. One significant question was whether all valleys were formed by streams or whether some preceded their fluvial features. In accordance with natural philosophy, causal explanations were sought, but valleys remained enigmatic: “A case that belonged more specifically to physical geography was the vexed question of the causal origin of valleys. Valleys were observed to be of many forms. A few could plausibly be attributed to erosion by the streams that flowed in them, but most could not … .”6 Figure 2. U-shaped glacial alpine valleys, similar to this example from Banff, Alberta, were difficult to explain by fluvial erosion. Geographers noted the tremendous variation in size, configuration, elevation, and setting. A specific problem for European savants was the difference between Ushaped (figure 2) and Vshaped valleys. The latter often appeared to have been formed by the streams or rivers of their watersheds, but by the scientific method of the day the former could not: “If the latter [V-shaped valleys] were attributed to erosion by the stream, the same agency could hardly be invoked to explain the former [U-shaped valleys]: by the principles of natural philosophy enunciated by the great Newton himself, like causes should have like effects.” 7Two schools of thought (figure 3) debated the origin of valleys during the late 1700s and early 1800s—gradualists and catastrophists. But even the catastrophists who argued for a geologically rapid formation of valleys did not do so within the framework of young age history, but instead within that of a secular catastrophism on an old earth. Gradualists attributed all valleys to fluvial erosion over long periods of time. Catastrophists attributed some valleys, especially the U-shaped ones, to rapid erosion by catastrophic ‘diluvial’ currents, typically from megatsunamis, or to catastrophic ‘aqueous currents’ associated with past ‘revolutions’. GRADUALISTS CATASTROPHISTS Charles Lyell (1797–1875) Insisted that an actualistic method demanded a gradualist system. Studied the valleys of Auvergne; agreed with Scrope, Desmarest, and Montlosier. Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) Saw catastrophic break between modern and ancient worlds; from the latest periodic ‘revolution’, based on fossil evidence. George P. Scrope (1797–1876) Famous for insisting that erosion was explained by time alone. Extensive study of Auvergne; river valleys were slow, uniform process of erosion. Déodat de Dolomieu (1750–1801) Thought valleys had been eroded by a relatively recent mega-tsunami, similar to that seen after the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. Nicolas Desmarest (1752–1813) Early investigator of valleys of Auvergne. Valleys formed by slow, gradual erosion over long time, along with episodic eruptions. Leopold von Buch (1774–1853) Studied valleys in Alps. Thought alpine valleys had been eroded by a ‘large aqueous event’ that included mudflows. Jean-Louis Soulavie (1752–1813) Studied valleys in Vivarais. Estimated valleys were 6 million years old based on time needed to round pebbles. William Buckland (1784–1856) Advocated ‘diluvial’ theory that was similar to Cuvier’s. Studied valleys at Auvergne and thought they supported his idea at a recent ‘deluge’. Francois de Montlosier (1755–1838) Amateur naturalist with estates in Auvergne. Supported Desmarest’s view of long, slow, gradual erosion. Figure 3. Key figures in the early debates over the origin of valleys. Though the catastrophists were not arguing for geomorphic evidence of the Flood, their ‘revolutions’ were based on the premise that the scale of past processes could have been greater than that observed in the present. Secular naturalists often invoked ancient catastrophes with little regard for young history, and early ‘diluvial’ proposals for valleys were typically regarded as one of many such events in the history of an old earth. Figure 4. The Auvergne Region of France was a prominent field area for early naturalists, thanks to its volcanic terrane and eroded river valleys. “To attribute these features to some kind of natural ‘deluge’, usually in the form of a megatsunami, was a generally acceptable feature of the practice of earth physics, and was not necessarily linked to any religious agenda.”8Modern confusion between secular catastrophism and the young history springs from the later tactic of early uniformitarians, who attempted to tar their secular catastrophist opponents with the brush of ‘scriptural geology’—a position rejected by both groups, often with much hostility.Lyell was not the only or the first naturalist to conflate gradualism and actualism. Others used the same argument, assuming a uniformity of rate to argue for the prehistorical origin of eroded valleys. Soulavie, Desmarest, Montlosier, Scrope, and Lyell all applied the same reasoning. Many of the theories of valley formation were derived from fieldwork examining the river valleys of Auvergne (figure 4), a favorite field location for early geologists. They extrapolated both process and rate from their observations, discovering the need for a lengthy timescale: “River valleys were … likewise invoked as evidence to suggest that the traditional short timescale was inadequate … it seemed possible that at least some valleys could be attributed to erosion by the streams that still flowed in them. On a summer’s day a stream might look to be too placid to do anything of the kind, but after a winter storm the swirling water might be seen to be scouring its banks and carrying away mud, pebbles, and even boulders. In principle, such erosion could have carved out a whole valley, though it would have had to be continued for an almost inconceivably long time.”9 An early explorer of the region was Nicholas Desmarest (1725–1815), who believed the eroded valleys of Auvergne demonstrated a lengthy prehistory. He was a noted expert for the region and his map (figure 5), published in 1771, served as a guide for many later savants visiting the region. He was convinced early on that the area’s geologic past was far more remote than humanity: Figure 5. Map of Auvergne region by Nicolas Desmarest (1771) showing volcanic features and eroded river valleys. “But his [Desmarest’s] history referred to times far earlier than even the oldest human records. He stressed that his epochs had ‘nothing or almost nothing in common’ with those of [human] historians … . Even the most recent of the volcanoes in Auvergne had, he believed, become extinct long before the earliest human records in the region; human history could be tacked on at the end of his geohistory, but there was no overlap between them (except in the sense that the slow erosion of the valleys was still continuing as it had done in the distant past).”10 Note the gradualist approach of Desmarest predated Lyell by more than fifty years. Desmarest’s geohistorical outlook was shared by Francois-Dominique de Montlosier (1755– 1838), another French naturalist who studied the Auvergne volcanics and valleys, and who also agreed that the valleys cut into the volcanic flows demanded long periods of time operating at present-day rates.Another early example of the gradualist erosion school was the French naturalist Jean-Louis GiraudSoulavie (1752–1813): “ … Soulavie … cited the case of the remote part of Vivarais where he had earlier served as a parish priest. On the floors of some of the valleys there were unmistakable lava flows, which had been eroded into small gorges since their eruption. Soulavie claimed that he could ‘calculate the time’ required for this erosion, and hence the age of the eruptions. He estimated that it would take ‘several centuries or thousands of years’ just for angular fragments of the hard volcanic rock to become by attrition the smooth rounded pebbles found in the river beds further downstream; privately he estimated from this that some six million years must have elapsed since the lavas were erupted. Yet these were some of the most recent of the volcanic rocks in the area.”11 Soulavie’s estimates were quasi-scientific: he looked for a natural chronometer, but did not scientifically investigate the question to supply experimental evidence in support of his assertion.On the other side of the argument (figure 3) were men like the French naturalist Déodat de Dolomieu (1750–1801). Dolomieu agreed with de Luc and Cuvier that there was a fundamental break between the modern world and the ancient, with a boundary set by a ‘deluge’, which Dolomieu saw as a mega-tsunami, similar to, but on a larger scale than that generated by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. In any case, he thought these kinds of catastrophes occurred throughout deep time, and he was comfortable speculating that the most recent might be somehow linked to the Flood. Therefore, he tied the geomorphic features to human history. Being only a few millennia old, valleys must then have been eroded by singular high-energy events.Leopold von Buch (1774–1853) was interested in geomorphic features of the Alps, which included many large, U-shaped valleys. He was convinced that stream erosion could not have created the morphology he saw at such a large scale. He was also interested in the associated erratic blocks, and to account for both he posited large ‘aqueous events’, which included mudflows to transport the erratics, some of which were the size of a house.Erosion by catastrophic events was also advocated by William Buckland (1784– 1856), who was heavily influenced by Cuvier. Buckland had seen the alpine valleys and similar features in England, but like many of the gradualists, he also examined the classic outcrops at Auvergne. Unlike gradualist savants, he concluded that the Auvergne outcrops supported his ‘diluvial’ theory: “In the summer of 1820 … Buckland made a second Continental tour with Greenough … he and his companions gave the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne first priority … . Buckland had already been primed for this classic and contentious ground by his younger Oxford colleague Charles Giles Brindle Daubeny (1795–1867), who had toured the area the previous summer … . He knew of Montlosier’s classic work on Auvergne and had, for example, gone to see for himself the famous case in which the [River] Siole had been diverted by a ‘modern’ lava flow. But he was not convinced by Montlosier’s … claims that the main valleys had been eroded gradually by the streams that still flow in them. Instead he had adopted something like Dolomieu’s alternative, inferring that a sudden episode of violent valley erosion had been interposed between the ancient flows and the modern ones. Not surprisingly, in the wake of Buckland’s inaugural lecture, Daubeny identified that erosive event as ‘the Mosaic deluge’. When Buckland himself reached Auvergne and saw the volcanoes and valleys for himself, he added them at once to his tally of diluvial evidence, judging them ‘the finest thing by far in Europe’. He incorporated them subsequently into his lectures, distinguishing the older and newer lavas as ‘antediluvial’ and ‘postdiluvian’; since he believed that the latter had not been eroded at all since their eruption, they counted as evidence that ‘modern Causes [i.e. the present streams] will not make Vallies’ [sic].”12 Note here the incredible underestimation of the hydraulic and tectonic nature of the Flood. After his visit to Auvergne, Buckland followed up on that work by applying his theory to other valleys: “Buckland’s fieldwork the following summer … gave him an opportunity to collect evidence for the diluvial erosion of valleys on the south coast of England. The fine coastal cliffs of east Devon and Dorset showed unambiguously that the valleys running down to the sea had been excavated through almost horizontal formations; at least in these cases valleys were evidently not the result of any crustal disturbance. However that still left open the question whether they had been eroded swiftly by a violent diluvial current or very slowly by the small streams that still flowed in them.” 13 By the 1820s, the catastrophist view of valleys appeared to have gained the upper hand, supported by such luminaries as von Buch, Cuvier and Buckland: “ … however, the pendulum had swung the other way. As Fitton noted in his review of Buckland’s work, almost all wellinformed geologists … had now concluded that the observable process of fluvial erosion was not adequate to the account for ‘valleys of denudation’. Certainly the small narrow valleys of V-shaped profiles that many existing streams were observably continuing to excavate bore little resemblance to the most striking kinds of valley topography, particularly the huge deep valleys, common in mountain regions, that had a broad U-shaped profile.”14 However, the gradualist school was ready to make a comeback, primarily through the work of two English geologists in the late 1820s—George Poulett Scrope (1797–1876) and Charles Lyell (1797–1875). Once again, a pilgrimage to Auvergne to examine the volcanoes and valleys would be a crucial factor in the theorizing of both men: “Scrope argued forcefully that the observable actual cause of fluvial erosion was quite adequate to account for even the deepest valleys; and that the occasional eruption of lavas in central France was a happy accident that had preserved many successive phases in an otherwise steady and uninterrupted process. The moral was clear: ‘surely it is incumbent on us to pause before we attribute similar excavations in other lofty tracts of country, in which, from the absence of recent volcanos, evidence of this nature is wanting, to the occurrence of unexampled and unattested catastrophes, of a purely hypothetical nature!’ A diluvial explanation of valleys was, he argued, certainly inapplicable to the Massif Central; and at the very least this undermined claims (such as Buckland’s) for the general or universal validity of the theory.”15 Figure 6. Illustration in Scrope (ref.16) showing an eroded river valley in basalt flows near the town of Jaujac in the Ardéche region of France (from www.volcanism.wordpress.com). Scrope’s influence was expanded significantly by the 1827 publication of a book on the volcanics of Auvergne, 16 which included many detailed and compelling landscape drawings of the area (figure 6). He provided men who could not travel with a sense of the locales, which, when combined with his detailed descriptions, swayed many to the speculative theories embedded in those descriptions.So we can see that the origin of valleys was debated extensively between 1750 and 1850 by gradualists and diluvialists. Both schools failed to provide a comprehensive explanation because there was not one single causal mechanism for all valleys. Although fluvial erosion could account for some valleys, others, such as the large Ushaped alpine valleys required another cause. By 1850, glacial erosion was widely accepted as the mechanism for their erosion. However, the paradigm of gradualism had been so thoroughly integrated into geology that the unique Ice Age was said to be simply one of many, probably caused by global climate change. Both schools proclaimed adherence to the actual cause method associated with Newtonian physics, but catastrophists insisted that method was flexible enough to accommodate high-energy events as well as low-energy processes, a position recaptured by modern neocatastrophism. Discussion There are many lessons that can be drawn from the history of the debate over the origin of valleys; three will be examined here: (1) the relative roles of data and belief, (2) valley formation from a modern perspective, and (3) confusion over the method and nature of the emerging historical geology. Evidence vs faith Although the time supposedly needed to explain the erosion of valleys was used to argue for an extended prehistory, another lesson leaps out of this historical summary—an inability on the part of researchers to distinguish their theories from their observations. Skilled scientists drew very different conclusions from the same data. No better illustration of the driving role of presuppositional bias could be had. In every case recorded by Rudwick, theorists were compelled by their preexisting commitment to either a gradualist or catastrophic paradigm to interpret data in that fashion. Buckland went to Auvergne expecting to see evidence of his ‘deluge’ and Scrope expected to see evidence for vast lengths of time. They both saw the same physical evidence—often the same outcrops—and derived wildly divergent explanations for their origin.Furthermore, it is hard to see valley erosion as evidence for prehistory, since it seems clear that there was a preexisting belief in deep time by both gradualists and catastrophists. The latter were not arguing that rapid valley erosion proved a young earth; they were arguing that the valleys were recent features on an old earth! All of them had decided to ignore as history in favor of their new ‘science’. In many cases, freedom from the young history brought a justification for an even greater freedom from the constraints of ethics. It was no accident that the atheism of the French Revolution was in the center of events during this time. Rudwick called their belief a ‘perspective’: “There is no good historical evidence that any of the leading savants, in any part of Europe, were constrained in their theorizing by a shortage of ‘deep time’. They just took the new perspective in their stride and allowed for the possibility of vast spans of time—literally inconceivable in human terms—in the earth’s remote past.”17 A related problem was that of sample bias, driven by ignorance of large parts of the world. Naturalists working between 1750 and 1850 thought they traveled widely, and they did … within the confines of Western Europe. Their ‘grand tour’ generally took in France, Switzerland, and Italy. That is a small data set compared to the vast variety of valleys we know today. Clearly, streams and rivers erode channels and small valleys, and just as clearly, that is not the causal explanation of many valleys. Another aspect of this sample bias was on the theoretical end; these men were as limited by their ignorance of modern hydraulic and sedimentological principles18 as they were by examples outside their experience, some of which would falsify their arguments completely.19 Formation of valleys The term ‘valley’ is a generic term, defined as: “(a) Any low-lying land bordered by higher ground; esp. an elongate, relatively large, gently-sloping depression of the Earth’s surface, commonly situated between two mountains or between ranges of hills or mountains, and often containing a stream with an outlet. It is usually developed by stream erosion, but may be formed by faulting. (b) A broad area of generally flat land extending inland for a considerable distance, drained or watered by a large river and its tributaries; a river basin … .”20 Valleys can be formed by a variety of causes, including erosion, folding, and faulting. Valleys come in a variety of scales and their causes probably vary with scale. One of the legacies of gradualism is the attempt to apply observed processes to features of much different scale. For example, Grand Canyon is commonly explained by river erosion in the same way that a small stream valley would be because that mode of explanation fits both the gradualist template and the actualist method. However, as Oard21 showed, none of the various fluvial explanations satisfy field data. His explanation22 illustrates how scale can affect the cause; there is a vast difference between erosion by the present Colorado River and erosion by channelized currents of the retreating waters of the Flood.These problems are manifested when we evaluate the actual arguments made by the early naturalists for vast ages. The first was the rate of erosion as seen in modern-day streams. Since most streams are underfit, in that they are much smaller than the valleys they flow in, an assumption of constant rates demands a long time. But energetic currents erode much more quickly, as modern examples of flooding have shown. Also, valleys formed by erosion have been observed to occur rapidly by a variety of causes; catastrophic flooding and lahars seen at Mount St. Helens; wind, like that of the ‘Dust Bowl’ of the 1930s creating gullies; various modes of erosion associated with glaciation; and runoff and groundwater sapping seen at Providence Canyon, Georgia,23 among others. The second ‘proof’ of old age was Soulavie’s estimate of thousands of years to round pebbles and the inference that the rest of the valley features would require far longer. This is falsified by observations at Surtsey;24 by the time constraints of rounding of clasts during the Glacial Lake Missoula flood and at similar meltwater floods like those at Rio Santa Cruz; 25 and by the time constraints of rounding rapidly transported and deposited gravel beds in the northern Rocky Mountains, Arizona, and Alaska. 26–29 If experimental evidence is desired, then we need look no further than the practice of tumbling semi-precious stones, which, given the right conditions, can take less than one month (in a relatively low-energy setting).The third line of evidence for vast age was the supposed time for emplacement of basalt flows in Auvergne that eroded into modern valleys. But the actualistic method of the early savants has failed them in retrospect. Volcanic eruptions and basalt flows occur at widely varying rates; constraints on ancient flows inferred from physical properties show even greater flow volumes at surprisingly rapid rates. Desmarest, Soulavie, Scrope and other early geologists did not understand the mechanics of volcanism and the chemistry of magmas sufficiently to support their speculations. Today we understand that time is not the primary factor in the rate of basalt volcanism.Thus, the primary arguments for the vast length of time required by erosion are all falsified. The singular example of the Columbia River Plateau is sufficient to contradict all three. Its basalt flows were most likely emplaced in a very short time; some individual flows taking as little as a few hours, 30 similar to the calculated rates of the flows at Midcontinent Rift System.31 After the Columbia River basalts were emplaced, the Glacial Lake Missoula flood scoured giant canyons and other interesting features deep into the basalt, also in a matter of hours. 32 During that event, eroded basalt clasts were rounded during transport toward the Pacific Ocean and deposited in giant gravel bars along the way. This forensic reconstruction contradicts the ideas of the gradualist savants (figure 3), among them Charles Lyell. Forensic natural history and its method As seen above, the mistakes of the early savants flowed from their view of natural history. Deep time was not something to be tested; its presumed reality was a faith construct looking for actual evidence. Gould 33 criticized Lyell for conflating method and system in his gradualist view of geology, but the same criticism could be leveled against any of his gradualist predecessors in figure 3. They all defended their static rate estimates by claiming they were observing the principle of actual causes, which they derived from Newton’s ‘true cause’ method for physics.However, physics and natural history are not one and the same. Their differences are significant and foundational; the position of these early savants was tantamount to the positivism that remained popular through the 19th century. Confusion about method and system remained a poisonous effect of Lyell’s synthesis, and remnants still infect the earth sciences. That confusion is illustrated in the semantic knots created by secular geologists34 and underlying conceptual contradictions between the nature of science and the worldview of Naturalism.35Natural history is a mixed question, blending science in a forensic manner to augment testimonial evidence. Often these scientific tests are to assess the feasibility of past events. That is not the same thing as proving their reality. Theologian Robert L. Dabney noted this problem and identified the logical error: “Thus, many geologists, seeing that sedimentary action by water now produces some stratified rocks, claim that they are entitled, by the similarity of effects, to ascribe all stratified rocks to sedimentary action. This, they say, is but a fair application of the axiom that ‘like causes produce like effects’, which is the very corner-stone of all inductive science. But the real proposition they employ is the converse of this: that like effects imply like causes.”36 Early geologists thought they could apply the method of Newtonian physics to natural history. Instead of respecting the chasm between the different objects of study—timeless universal principles vs unique unobserved past events—the savants ignored it. Their disregard for the inherent weaknesses of their method was exacerbated by their ignorance of many of the potential parameters affecting the phenomena. The degree to which their theory drove their conclusions is illustrated by the fact that neither gradualists nor catastrophists even considered a glacial origin for the large U-shaped alpine valleys until the mid-1800s. By 1850, geologists recognized that many of these valleys had been carved by glaciers much larger than those seen at present. Catastrophists had been right that streams were not an adequate causal explanation, but their enthusiasm for ‘diluvial’ currents and mega-tsunamis had blinded them to evidence suggesting an ice age.The myopic fixation on valleys also blinded many to the larger topic of geomorphology. Many landforms present similar problems to secular geologists; they are not easily explained by existing causes, even operating at increased rates. Oard 37 has shown that many of these features, which have puzzled secular geologists for more than a century, are readily explained by the retreating stage of the Flood, in its two-stage sheet flow and channelized flow sequence. The dramatic misapprehension of the true nature of the Flood continues to stand as a roadblock to its use in geological explanation: “Valleys and erratics looked as if they were of rather recent origin. So it is not surprising that they were widely attributed to the most drastic physical event of which there was some human record, namely the Flood or the ‘Deluge’. A century earlier, this kind of ‘diluvial’ explanation had often been used, for example by Steno, and later by the London naturalist John Woodward to account for all the Secondary rock masses; but by Saussure’s time its application was far more specific, and confined to what seemed to be this relatively recent event. Like Buckland and other ‘diluvialists’ of his time, the minimization of the Flood was the first step on the road to its dismissal. Conclusion An extended prehuman prehistory, so foreign to Western thinking prior to the 18th century, claimed the minds of intellectuals in the 18th century and the educated public in the 19th century. It has since become so ingrained into the collective consciousness that people who question it are considered anti-intellectual and worthy of persecution.42 But what compelled Western intellectuals to cast off centuries of established historical tradition in favor of a speculative prehistory? Clearly, the subjective bias of the emerging secular worldview played a larger role than most would admit. The remainder was the physical evidence. How did it prove so convincing to naturalists of that day? The initial evidence was from the erosion of valleys, volcanic eruption rates, and the thickness of the sedimentary rock record. In the case of valley formation, it is clear that no compelling evidence was presented to demonstrate deep time; in fact, the application of the actualistic method to the Columbia River Plateau falsifies all of the original arguments from eruption rates, erosion rates, and rounding rates. Early intellectuals overestimated their objectivity, starting down the dead-end path to positivism in their confidence that the association of ‘science’ with their work ensured its objectivity. Déodat de Dolomieu grasped what was happening, but his insightful analysis was rejected by his peers: “In other words, Dolomieu argued that the prejudices of those who had their own agenda for opposing traditional theism were what led them to argue for a vast antiquity for the continents as land areas … . Here was a striking reversal of stereotypical roles: Dolomieu claimed that it was the critics of religion who were blinkered by prejudice, not the believers; it was the skeptics who indulged in irresponsible speculation.”43 The argument for an old earth from valley erosion fails to meet minimum standards of evidence. Thus, one of the three significant ‘proofs’ for an old earth in the latter half of the 1700s is falsified. If it can be shown that similar arguments from volcanic eruptions and sedimentary rocks were likewise unconvincing, then the acceptance of deep time in the late 1700s would be shown to have been an error. More importantly, the failure of earth scientists to ever re-examine deep time suggests that later ‘proofs’ were circular, since the assumption of prehistory became an ingrained foundation of natural history—a presupposition—as these later lines of evidence were developed. Rather than proving prehistory, it appears that the early savants simply presumed it was true because it freed them to speculate outside the bounds of divine revelation. Three early arguments for deep time—part II: volcanism by John K. Reed Well before 1800, European intellectuals embraced an old age prehistory. One of the three major arguments advanced to support this prehistory was the time needed to construct Vesuvius, Etna, and other volcanic terrains, relative to the size of observed eruptions. Proponents of this argument assumed a constant rate of volcanism through time and extrapolated from small eruptions that were not representative of global volcanic activity. They also were unaware of examples demonstrating much higher rates of volcanism in the past. Although modern geologists acknowledge these shortcomings, they do not appear to grasp their evidentiary impact. If modern examples and those from the rock record support rapid rates of volcanism, contrary to the vast prehistory of Enlightenment imagination, then the original argument is invalid. Thus, since prehistory was never later questioned, it must either be an assumption or the product of circular reasoning. Figure 1. The rediscovery of Pompeii in 1738 stirred interest in volcanoes. Mount Etna in Sicily and Mount Vesuvius near Naples were the two largest, most accessible active volcanoes in Europe and the subjects of intense interest by naturalists of the late 1700s. The inactive volcanic cones, flows, and beds of Auvergne were the primary locale for naturalists interested in volcanics from the mid1700s through the early 1800s. Evidentiary logic demands that a conclusion be abandoned if its original evidence is invalid. New arguments can be made for the same proposition, but if the original faulty conclusion is assumed in that argument, then the reasoning becomes circular. Like a courtroom appeal of an old case, the first verdict is set aside and the case is retried. Deep time was affirmed initially based on faulty evidence, and was never subsequently ‘retried’. Once early naturalists claimed to have proven prehistory, they never looked back. New evidence was added after the fact, but no-one ever seriously attempted to reassess the original conclusion. Thus, deep time—the foundation for secular natural history—is either a faith tenet or the product of circular reasoning. Radiometric dating, magnetostratigraphy, biostratigraphy, and similar modern methods were never used to evaluate deep time, but only to ‘confirm’ what everyone already ‘knew’.The original argument for an old Earth, and subsequent rejection of the young age , included three primary lines of evidence offered during the second half of the 1700s. These included the time needed for valley formation, for the construction of volcanoes, and for the accumulation of the sedimentary record. 1 The argument from valley erosion is invalid.2 If the same is true of the arguments from volcanism and the sedimentary record, then it is not unreasonable for us to conclude that prehistory was an axiom flowing from anti-creation bias.This paper will address the second argument—the time demanded by the gradual accumulation of lava and ash. Using rates observed at eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna, 18th century naturalists argued for lengthy periods of time to build those mountains and to create larger volcanic terrains, like Auvergne and Campi Flegrei.A few preliminary clarifications are needed. First, there was no great struggle between secular naturalists and the church. Even self-described creation intellectuals that defended the Flood were convinced Earth was old. Second, our present conception of geology is anachronistic to the late 1700s. Though ‘geology’ was introduced as a term in 1778, it had a different meaning. Earth sciences included three categories: natural history, natural philosophy, and geotheory.3 Studies of volcanoes fell under natural history and natural philosophy. Broader speculation was the role of geotheory—an attempt to explain Earth as Newton had the secrets of light and gravity. The works of Buffon and Hutton4 were examples of geotheory. The argument from volcanoes Eighteenth century savants5 argued that the young age timescale was untenable because more time was needed to produce volcanoes, valleys, and strata. During the latter 1700s, volcanoes were intensely studied by naturalists; their grand tour included Vesuvius and Etna (figure 1). The volcanic region of Auvergne, in southern France, also became a prime field site. They believed that “Volcanoes provided some of the best evidence for such natural rates, and the most intensely discussed.”6The argument was simple; savants compared the volume of observed eruptions to the size of large volcanoes— Etna reaches 3,350 m (10,991 ft). They then concluded that the volcanoes must be much older than the young age chronology: “Although the eruptions [of Etna and Vesuvius] were irregular and notoriously unpredictable, the records did give savants a rough sense of the rate at which those great volcanic cones might have accumulated, and hence of their overall age.”6 A survey of some of the leading naturalists studying volcanoes and volcanic terrains at this time illustrates a remarkable bias towards an old Earth that was brought to the evidence. In other words, I will argue that these naturalists had already decided that Earth was ancient, and that this position drove their study of physical phenomena. Hamilton Figure 2. Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803) Sir William Douglas Hamilton (1730–1803) was the British ambassador to the Spanish Court of Naples from 1764 to 1800. An avid naturalist, he studied Mt Vesuvius7 and the surrounding area, ascending the mountain 65 times. He published many articles and a book,8 which established him as a leading expert.9 Vesuvius is a composite volcano built on the caldera of the Mount Somma volcano, reaching 1,281 m (4,203 ft), with a base roughly 9 km (5.6 miles) across. 10 It is thought to be 17,000–24,000 years old, and is famous for the AD 79 eruption that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. Considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, it has erupted frequently, though irregularly, throughout recorded human history, exhibiting both Strombolian and Plinian eruptions.11Hamilton’s work was primarily natural history—the description and classification of what he observed. But he also drew geohistorical and causal conclusions about what he saw: “For example, Hamilton became convinced that Vesuvius, and indeed the Campi Phlegraei [fields of fire] as a whole, had been an active volcanic region long before recorded history. The flooded crater on the island of Nisida, for example, offered a peaceful scene that was surely far removed in time from the ancient eruption that had formed it. Closer to the present, and vividly linking the human timescale to Nature’s, were the buildings of Pompeii, buried eighteen centuries earlier in the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius, and being excavated in Hamilton’s time to the great excitement of savants and the wider educated public throughout Europe. For Hamilton found that they were standing on volcanic rock, proving conclusively that Vesuvius must have had still earlier prehistoric eruptions.”12 Hamilton noted early in his volume: “ … Mount VESUVIUS … and Mount ETNA … were as evidently formed by a series of eruptions or Volcanick [ sic] explosions, in the long course of revolving ages … .”13 Figure 3. Vesuvius erupting, December 1760– January 1761. From Hamilton (1776, plates X and XII), from Meyer-Roux (2010). Since Hamilton adduced a great age for Vesuvius, it is clear that he rejected the young history. In Rudwick’s14 discussion, there is never any indication that he considered the merits of the young chronology. Expecting deep time, he saw it by extrapolating eruptions he observed across time. His flawed logic and bias is seen in his hasty conclusion that the presence of volcanic rocks beneath Pompeii disproved the creation model.Hamilton was also familiar with Mt Etna in eastern Sicily which was “not only the largest active volcano in Europe but also the most fully documented volcano anywhere in the world.”15 As expected, he arrived at the same conclusion: “ … we may conceive the great age of this respectable Volcano.”16 “But as Sir William Hamilton had noted … some of the minor cones of volcanic ash on the flanks of Etna, and the lavas that had flowed from them, appeared to be much older than any human records, suggesting an unimaginable antiquity for the huge volcano as a whole.”15 This Enlightenment bias was widespread: “Hamilton’s compatriot Patrick Brydone had gleefully trumpeted abroad the quandary in which the local naturalist (and priest) Giuseppe Recupero had found himself at that time, since any vast antiquity seemed incompatible with the traditional short timescale for the earth that was still taken for granted by Recupero’s bishop, though not by savants. However, decades later, when Recupero’s book on Etna was published at last, worries about the earth’s timescale were much less of a problem, even in benighted Sicily … [emphasis added].”15 Brydone was no objective empiricist; his attitude was clearly anti-creation. Evidence from Etna was not carefully considered; deep time was simply taken for granted (using the gradualist assumption that long predated Lyell). Brydone had no way of knowing how old the volcano was. His bias was shown in his attack on naturalist/priest Giuseppe Recupero (1720–1778). Note the admission that an extended timescale was ‘taken for granted’ by savants, and Rudwick’s own bias is seen in his characterization of Sicily as ‘benighted’.Ironically, it was Recupero who offered actual empirical evidence to support the longer time-scale: “Recupero told him [Brydone] that a well dug recently on Jaci … on the lower slopes of Etna had penetrated no fewer than seven successive lavas, each with an upper surface weathered into a fossil soil. Anyone familiar with volcanoes knew how very slowly any lava surface became weathered enough even to begin to support vegetation; the flow of 1669, for example, was still almost completely barren after a century … . With the benefit of that local knowledge, Recupero estimated that it would probably take more than two thousand years to generate a substantial soil on any surface of lava. So his well section along—a miniscule fraction of the pile of lavas comprising Etna—implies an antiquity of at least 14,000 years, more than enough to knock the bottom out of the traditional short timescale for the whole world.”17 Sir William Hamilton was the acknowledged expert on the volcanoes of southern Italy and Sicily, although local naturalists such as Recupero were more familiar with their home turf. Hamilton argued for an old Earth from these active volcanoes, but that case was also being argued from study of the extinct volcanic terrain in the region of Auvergne. It became a crucial field area, influencing Scrope, Buckland, Murchison, and Lyell. Desmarest Figure 4. Nicolas Desmarest, a physical geographer who investigated the volcanoes of Auvergne in Southern France in the mid 1700s. Rudwick called Nicolas Desmarest (figure 4) “one of the most distinguished physical geographers of his generation”.18 He made his mark in 1751, when he published an article arguing for an ancient connection between England and France. In 1763, he surveyed the volcanoes of Auvergne, noting the similarity between their basalt and that of the Devil’s Causeway in Ireland (figure 5), which he had seen in Susanna Drury’s (1739) painting published in the Encyclopédie in 1765. Desmarest set off to study the `area with cartographic engineer Francois Pasumot (1733– 1804).Auvergne had come to the attention of naturalists through the mapping of Jean-Étienne Guettard (1715–1786), who published the Atlas Minéralogique in 1780. He “ … had startled savants … when he reported that there were volcanoes in Auvergne so fresh that they looked as if they were merely dormant and might still menace the region; but he had not studied the lava flows and cratered cones in any detail … .”19 Desmarest was hooked: “Desmarest had shown no previous interest in volcanoes, but on seeing those in Auvergne with his own eyes he made them the focus of his research … .”19 While Pasumot continued mapping and collaborated in the geological field work, 20 Desmarest travelled to Italy in 1765, and saw Vesuvius, which had erupted in 1764. “Desmarest had embarked on travels that greatly enlarged his experience of physical geography … . But an even more decisive experience, when they reached Naples, was that Desmarest saw Vesuvius for himself. It was the only active volcano he ever visited, but it gave him a crucial point of reference for all his later studies on extinct volcanoes.”19 Figure 5. Engraving of Susanna Drury’s 1739 painting of the Devil’s Causeway in Ireland, showing columnar or ‘prismatic’ basalt.Desmarest was initially interested in the origin of basalt. Based on the Drury drawing, and his work in Auvergne, Desmarest concluded that the prismatic basalt was a volcanic rock.21 It occurred in Auvergne as discontinuous beds capping hills and also as more recent flows in the valleys. These could be traced back to their cones. Desmarest published a paper on basalt in 1771, which earned him election as a member of theAcadémie des Sciences in Paris, even though his ideas about the mechanisms of eruptions showed profound misunderstandings of the physics and chemistry of volcanism.22 In 1774 he published his final report on Auvergne for the Académie. 23 It included a preliminary map (figure 6), which he continued to refine; it was finally finished in 1823 by his son, Anselm-Gaëtan Desmarest (1784–1838). However, his ideas regarding the origin and mechanisms of eruptions and basalt showed a profound misunderstanding of the physics and chemistry of volcanism. 24Desmarest avoided geotheory, restricting his work to the historical reconstruction to Auvergne’s volcanoes. He deduced three distinct epochs. Like his fellow savants, Desmarest was committed to prehistory: “The historical sciences of his time gave Desmarest powerful analogical resources for reconstructing a reliable geohistory. But his history referred to times far earlier than even the oldest human records. He stressed that his epochs had ‘nothing or almost nothing in common’ with those of historians, and that he would not be dealing at all with the ‘known or suspected times’ of human history. Even the most recent of the volcanoes in Auvergne had, he believed, become extinct long before the earliest human records in the region; human history could be tacked on at the end of his geohistory, but there was no overlap between them.”25 Desmarest’s map influenced naturalists for decades; when Lyell and Murchison visited Auvergne in 1828, they used it to find the best exposures. Soulavie Jean-Louis Soulavie (1752–1813) was a French priest and amateur naturalist. He served the parish in Antraigues, near the volcanic exposures in Vivarais. His rapid rise to prominence in Paris from a rural clerical background showed Soulavie to be a brilliant naturalist. Soulavie sought a three-dimensional understanding of the strata 26 to deduce six epochs based on lithological correlations. For example, he noted that a prismatic basalt flow overlaid a gravel conglomerate with basalt pebbles. The flow was one epoch, the deposition of the gravel, another, and the basalt clasts in the gravel indicated a previous volcanic epoch. Figure 6. Part of Nicolas Desmarest’s map of Auvergne, showing details of volcanic cones, flows, and eroded topography. Soulavie moved to Paris in 1780 and published an article on his research the same year.27 He began to make a name for himself, expanding his work into a multivolume work, Natural History of Southern France (1780–1784). Soulavie insisted that the strata could provide the basis for a true geohistory: “Soulavie planned to turn his threedimensional and structural study into geohistory, for he claimed that the pile of ‘six superposed formations [couches]’ that he had mapped were ‘the products of six separate and distinct epochs.’ He claimed this ‘ancient history of the terrestrial globe’, unlike speculative geotheoretical systems, could be founded on ‘an unquestionable principle, amenable to the most rigorous mathematical demonstration.’”28 Soulavie’s work, which Rudwick noted had ‘the highest credentials’,29 was remarkably prescient to modern stratigraphy, complete with two fundamental errors. First, he assumed the distinct rock bodies represented distinct periods of time, and second, he attributed vast eons to those periods by virtue of a pre-Lyellian gradualism. “As with superposition, he could not assume that the idea of geohistory was familiar, and indeed he stressed its novelty: he explained how, after making ‘a large collection of facts’ about the present state of things, ‘one can unravel nature’s past epochs, and it was only in our own time that naturalists have conceived the idea of doing so.’”30 It is interesting to note his distortion of young age chronology. He styled himself as ‘nature’s erudite historian’ and talked of the ‘annals of the physical world’, a likely reference to Ussher’s work of the past century. In other words, he saw the key to interpreting the rocks was to determine their chronology and from that build a natural history in the modern sense; a history of course that preceded humans and extended far back beyond their historical records. Epoch 6 eruption of more recent volcanoes; time overlapped human history Epoch 5 eruption of volcanics in eroded valleys Epoch 4 erosion of valleys through earlier strata Epoch 3 emplacement of sheet basalt capping plateaus Epoch 2 deposition of fossiliferous limestone in global receding ocean (“standard theory”) Epoch 1 formation of underlying granites Figure 7. Epochs of Vivarais region based on work of Jean-Louis Soulavie (1780). Montlosier Soulavie’s interest in both volcanism and geohistory was mirrored by the work of Francois-Dominique de Reynaud de Montlosier (1755–1838), a landowner in Auvergne and amateur naturalist. His 1789 book, Volcans d’Auvergne, was overtly geohistorical:31 “From that moment [of Buffon’s Nature’s Epochs], the history of the earth has started to become interesting. Erudition has appropriated nature’s archives; savants have come from all parts into the provinces to interrogate its [nature’s] monuments and to search its memoirs; and so geology has become a major science, to which mineralogy, assaying, and chemistry have had the honor to be subordinate [brackets in original].”32 Following Desmarest, Montlosier divided the volcanics into the recent cones and flows in the valleys and ancient eroded flows capping plateaus and hills. Like Desmarest, he used the current rate of erosion to estimate their age. A good observer, he noted the historical significance of a stream that had been redirected by a recent flow, carving a new valley and leaving a ponded lake behind the lava dam in the old valley. Though other geologists would use that two-fold division to argue for a deluge separating the two, Montlosier saw it as a continuous process (erosion) interrupted by sporadic eruptions. He referred to prehistory as an ‘infinity of ages’. Montlosier remained in Auvergne, and later became a valuable local resource for Scrope in the early 1820s and for Murchison and Lyell in 1828. Scrope Auvergne would serve as a stepping stone to Lyell’s synthesis. He travelled there with Murchison in 1828, but both had been drawn to the region by the earlier publications of a fellow of the Geological Society, George Poulett Scrope (1797–1876). Scrope was wealthy and could finance his interest in geology. Educated by Sedgwick, Scrope toured Italy and Sicily while still in school. After seeing Etna, Vesuvius, and Vulcano, he made the study of volcanoes his life work. After graduating, he married and took his new wife on the grand tour, visiting the Massif Central in France before continuing to Italy, where he saw the 1822 eruption of Vesuvius. As a result, “Scrope—at the age of twenty-six—probably had greater first-hand knowledge of volcanoes, active and extinct, than any other geologist in Britain.”33 Bucking the trend against geotheory, Scrope published a book in 1825 that proclaimed that volcanic studies would lead to a new theory of the earth—one that presaged Lyell: “Scrope’s book was notable for its trenchant insistence on the explanatory value of actual causes. With Buckland’s geological ‘deluge’ as his obvious if covert target, Scrope criticized those who speculated about ‘what might be rather than what is’, and who invoked catastrophes without having first exhausted the explanatory potential of what they saw around them. He even alleged that such theorizing was harmful, on the grounds that it ‘stops further enquiry’ by discouraging the search for observable causes that might in fact be adequate. Instead, he urged that these causes be studied minutely, applying them to the evidence of the deep past with ‘the most liberal allowances for all possible variations and an unlimited series of ages’. There was to be no shortage of deep time in Scrope’s theory.”34 Figure 8. Cross section from Scrope37 of basalt flows (black) from Puy de Dôme (right) down towards the valley of the River Allier. View is to the south; flows moved east off of Puy de Dôme. Scrope assumed each flow represented long periods of time. Ironically, his criticism is easily applied to gradualistic uniformitarianism. Scrope followed the popular idea of a directional geohistory, based on the gradual cooling of Earth. Volcanism, he presumed, had probably been more intense in the deep past, yet he was not able to apply that idea to his own fieldwork.Although his first book was not well received, Scrope’s 1827 Memoir on the Geology of Central France cemented his place among the geological elite of his day. It contained abundant sketches of the landscape of Auvergne, which brought field exposures to life for those who could not go: “Scrope’s panoramas therefore enabled his readers (or rather, his viewers) to see the volcanic landscapes through his eyes, as he had come to understand the terrain in the light of his fieldwork; the illustrations then became highly persuasive evidence for the geohistorical interpretations that he gave them in his text.”35 Rudwick36 noted that Scrope was “economical with his acknowledgements of his predecessors”, especially Desmarest, whose map had been published just a few years earlier by his son. Scrope’s map was substantively similar, yet published in colour, and thus more appealing than Desmarest’s. Whether from personal ego or post-war British pride, the French contribution to Auvergne’s geology was minimized.Scrope was a gradualist; he argued that observable causes acting over immense periods of time were adequate to explain Auvergne’s geology; there had been no deluges. “Scrope argued forcefully that … the occasional eruption of lavas in central France was a happy accident that had preserved many successive phases in an otherwise steady and uninterrupted process. The moral was clear: ‘surely it is incumbent on us to pause before we attribute similar excavations in other lofty tracts of country, in which, from the absence of recent volcanos [sic], evidence of this nature is wanting, to the occurrence of unexampled and unattested catastrophes, of a purely hypothetical nature!’ … . Above all, however, Scrope realized perceptively that his inferences would be accepted only if geologists were to learn to comprehend imaginativelythe vastness of deep time that they already claimed to take for granted.”38 Scrope clearly had no problem with that. Lyell Lyell’s (1797–1875) first encounter of Auvergne was through the eyes of others. He read what he could find and commented favorably on Scrope’s book in the Quarterly Review. Lyell used Auvergne to defend his view of geohistory, and argued that theorizing was not to be avoided: “But Lyell implied that geohistorical reconstructions based on sound fieldwork were in a different category from the fantasies of geotheory, and it was as geohistory that Lyell introduced Scrope’s new work.”39 He thus repackaged geotheory as ‘geohistory’, a rhetorical move worthy of his training. But Lyell was already committing two major errors: (1) a naïve confidence that field data alone would reveal history, and (2) that Newton’s method of actual causes applied to the past. That led him to conflate physico-chemical and geological uniformity, allowing him later to dismiss catastrophic actualists as ‘unscientific’. Reed40 notes that his confusion over actualism was perpetuated for 150 years, during which time no geologist ever demonstrated an univocal correspondence between uniformity and actualism!But Lyell was not content to read. In 1828, he travelled to France with Murchison. Having talked with Buckland and Daubeny, and using local naturalists (including Montlosier), Lyell was well prepared to analyze the area. Like Scrope, he saw it through the lens of deep time, and his dogged gradualism unveiled ‘evidence’ of vast ages. Seeing the Sioule River had eroded through basalt flows, sediments, and into the underlying gneiss, he saw only time and ‘actual causes’: “He expressed this in a way that showed how thoroughly he had absorbed and internalized the geohistorical perspective that had already come to characterize geological argument in general.”41 In other words, a bias towards a lengthy prehistory, accessible only to scientific investigation was ingrained into Lyell, guiding his interpretation of field data.When Murchison left, Lyell continued into Italy, to Naples and Sicily. He saw Campi Flegrei, and climbed Monte Somma and Vesuvius where “he saw enough to be convinced that both were the products of the gradual accumulation of lava flows.”42 In Sicily, he explored the region around Etna: “Lyell studied the rocks exposed in the surrounding cliffs, which offered natural sections through the volcano. Although confused at first by some very confusing appearances, he convinced himself that they did indeed show that Etna, like Vesuvius, had accumulated layer by layer by the addition of successive lava flows running down its flanks. This confirmed that the whole volcano had grown in the same manner as had been documented in the centuries covered by human records, which suggested in turn that its total age must be vast beyond human reckoning.”43 Lyell completed his tour and returned to England, where he quickly finished the first volume of Principles of Geology, which was released in 1830. Discussion By the time of Lyell’s Principles, geologists were convinced that volcanoes and volcanic terrains were concrete evidence of prehistory. However, their arguments were flawed, typically by unwarranted extrapolation from limited evidence. Logical errors arose from an inability to differentiate between assumptions and data, and gradualism was a major presuppositional error. Although Lyell is credited with this doctrine, it was common to many naturalists, including Scrope, Soulavie, Montlosier, Desmarest, and Hamilton. All were convinced by the scale of observed flows from Etna and Vesuvius that vast ages were needed to build those cones. Gradualism was implicit. None considered changing rates through time. Figure 9. Comparative volume of ejecta from notable eruptions in cubic km. Note log scale. (To convert to cubic miles, multiply by 0.2399.) Note the 1764 eruption observed by Hamilton; three orders of magnitude less than Tambora and more than five orders of magnitude less than past ‘supervolcanoes’ (darker grey at bottom).44 The paucity of actual evidence gave free rein to subjectivity, leading to absurd errors, such as Hamilton’s dismissal of the young history based on the presence of volcanic rock beneath Pompeii and Herculaneum. Valid explanations of that rock were certainly possible within young age scale , but were never considered. Modern knowledge of volcanoes and volcanism clarifies the errors of these early volcanologists.Ironically, it is geological actualism that militates against their argument. Observations of modern volcanoes and their ancient products argue against their conclusions. The most common argument for time was based on the scale of flows they observed—a few eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna. Modern eruptions and flows demonstrate great variety in the strength of eruptions and the volume of material ejected (figures 9 and 10). For comparison sake, I made a rough calculation of the volumes of the both Vesuvius and Etna. For the former, using a base radius of 9 km, a cone 700 m across, and a height of 1,281 m, Vesuvius is roughly 118 km 3 . Etna, with a 140-km circumference and a height of 3,329 m, yields a volume of 1,731 km 3 . For comparison, the volume of Mt Kilauea, in Hawaii, is about 30,000 km3 .45 Recent eruptions vary greatly in the amount of material ejected (figure 9). The total volume of Vesuvius is only 36 times the material released in the AD 79 eruption and significantly less than that released by Tambora. These modern observations alone invalidate the argument for time by the early savants. Past eruptions, based on the extent of preserved ash and lava beds, were much greater—typical of the supervolcanoes at the bottom of figure 9. Compared to these, the 1764 eruption of Vesuvius studied by Hamilton was insignificant.A common scale used to compare eruptions is the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI). Ranging from 0–8, it uses ejecta volume, chemistry, duration, and the height of the column into the atmosphere. The AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius rated a 5, and the 1815 Tambora eruption, a 7. No eruption dated to the past 10,000 years has been rated the maximum of 8. 46 Figure 10 rates recent major eruptions by this scale, showing the volume of lava and tephra released.Not only were the savants wrong about the magnitude of modern eruptions, but they had not studied a sufficient number of historical examples to learn that ancient eruptions were often much larger than those shown in figures 9 and 10. Larger eruptions would be expected during the onset and mid-to-late-Flood tectonic reorganization of the crust to accommodate the receding waters.Scientists have documented a number of ‘super eruptions’, including Toba, in Indonesia, which released nearly 3,000 km3 of material, approximately twice the volume of Mt Etna. 47 An eruption at Fish Canyon in southwest Colorado, dated 28 million years ago, released about 5,000 km3 of material.48 The Yellowstone Caldera has been the site of three super eruptions, dated within the past 2 million years, each releasing more than 1,000 km 3 .49 All of these dwarf any historical eruption, most more than an order of magnitude greater than Tambora. In contrast, the 1764 eruption of Vesuvius documented by Hamilton released 0.01 km3 of lava of 0.001 km3 of tephra—five orders of magnitude smaller than the super eruptions.But even super eruptions are dwarfed by the large igneous provinces (LIPs). 50,51 The Ontong Java Plateau is the largest documented LIP with an estimated volume of as much as 76 million km 3 . The Deccan basalt flows are over 8 million km 3 , and the well-known Columbia River Basalts are 1.3 million km 3 .52 Furthermore, almost all of the large LIPs formed rapidly. Geologists admit less than a total of 7 million years for the Ontong Java Plateau, with the bulk of the eruptions occurring in two phases; the first of approximately 500,000 years and the second of 3 million. 53 Even these numbers are deceptive. Analysis of the physical properties of lava flows at the Columbia River Basalts demonstrated that major individual flows, supposedly occurring over 11.2 million years, actually happened quite rapidly—in hours or days.54 Reed used physical data to constrain basalt flows at the North American Midcontinent Rift System. 55 The first time constraint is the time of ascent of the magma through the crust. Rates of up to 2 m/s have been documented for basalt flows, and even hydrous rhyolite has been shown to ascend at 1 m/s.56 Even through thick continental crust, this translates into only a few hours. The next component is the actual eruption rate. The single most important factor is the size of the vent. It is estimated that 4-m-wide vents reaching 100 km in length would have erupted basalt at rates of 30,000 kg/sec/m length of the vent.57 Reed estimated that the 1,000,000 km 3 of basalt at the Midcontinent Rift System could have been emplaced in forty days through one vent 10 m wide and 25 km long. 55 Of course, the documented vent system around the rift is much larger and so the actual time of emplacement could have been as little as a few days. Figure 10. Table showing some of the largest eruptions in human history. These vary significantly in size, and from those observed by the early savants. For example, the eruptions seen by Hamilton at Vesuvius were more than 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the AD 79 eruption. Geologists ignore these physical factors because they date the duration of flows radiometrically. Reed demonstrated that the results of this type of dating at the Midcontinent Rift System grossly overestimated the time of emplacement. It would not be surprising if the same errors are present in dating larger LIPs, like the Ontong Java Plateau. In any case, it is clear that the argument of the 18th and early 19th century savants, from Desmarest to Lyell, was wrong, being based on insufficient data. They assumed gradualism rather than demonstrating it. And their actualistic method invalidates their conclusions.There are only two specific arguments that retain a shred of evidentiary value, though both are inconclusive. The first is Recupero’s observation of multiple stacked flows at Mt Etna with weathered horizons. The second is the time needed for the present configuration of basalt flows, interbedded sediments, and eroded valleys at Auvergne, as argued forcefully by Scrope and Lyell.The presence of multiple stacked flows per se is not an issue of time. Under Lake Superior, the thickest part of the Midcontinent Rift System, there are probably 500–750 individual flows, many stacked on each other.55 Given the eruption rates, they would likely have formed within days. Recupero’s argument, however, was based on the weathering of the tops of flows. Rudwick notes that the argument is bolstered by observed flows at Etna that had not begun to weather, even after a century.58 However, the timing of weathering must not be too great; the region is known for its rich soils. The interpretation by Recupero and Brydone depended on several factors: (1) that the fossil soil horizons were really soils, (2) that weathering rates could be applied in a gradualist fashion, and (3) that conditions conducive to weathering were constant.Woodmorappe and Oard54 saw similar weathered horizons in some of the Columbia River Basalts. They noted that these horizons might be hydrothermal, not true paleosols. Investigation of these flows at Mt Etna would be an interesting research project, but the Recupero interpretation remains one of several explanations. Klevberg et al. noted that paleosols are frequently misidentified in the rock record.59 The argument from Auvergne, advanced by a number of naturalists, but most forcefully by Scrope and Lyell, was that the flows, sediments, and erosion demanded long ages of time. Reed2 has shown that the argument from valley erosion is flawed, and sedimentary units with interbedded basalt flows are common features throughout the rock record. The length of time required for their emplacement is primarily a function of volcanic and hydraulic properties, not time. Conclusion The second major argument for deep time in the early days of geology was that the rate of accumulation of volcanoes from observed eruptions was too slow to accommodate the young timeframe. That argument is falsified by observation; both of modern eruptions and of the physical parameters of ancient eruptions and LIPs. Hamilton’s argument from volcanic rocks beneath Pompeii is absurd on its face, although it does serve to illustrate the bias of the Enlightenment intellectuals. The argument that the terrain of Auvergne demanded great time depends on the assumption of gradualism, which has since been rejected by many secular geologists. Recupero’s argument of weathered flow surfaces at Mt Etna was the only feasible argument made, but is inconclusive based on the possibility of the ‘weathered’ surfaces being caused by contemporaneous hydrothermal processes.Ironically, the actualistic method advocated by these savants is the basis for invalidating their conclusions about deep time. Nearly two centuries of observation since Lyell have brought out new knowledge of eruptions and volcanism, showing scales dwarfing the small flows at Etna and Vesuvius. Furthermore, solid empirical data document the much larger scale of volcanism in the past; another case of actualism contradicting Lyell’s steady-state vision of earth history.Of the three major arguments for deep time advanced in the crucial years of the late 1700s, the first two—time needed for valley erosion and time needed to accrete volcanoes and volcanic terrains—have failed. The final argument is the time needed to accumulate the sedimentary rock record, and that will be the topic of the final paper in this series. If it is also false, then prehistory and its timescale will be shown to be something other than empirical conclusions; they are either beliefs stemming from Enlightenment secularism or the products of circular reasoning. Three early arguments for deep time—part 3: the ‘geognostic pile’ by John K. Reed and Michael J. Oard Of the three primary original arguments advanced for deep time in the 18th century, only one—the time needed to form the sedimentary rock record—is still advanced, even though it is a weaker argument than most think. It initially focused on the volume of the ‘Secondary’ sedimentary rocks, but grew to include a variety of sedimentary features accepted as age indicators of deep time. The argument from the volume of the sedimentary record is clearly false and many of the various ‘age indicators’ are explicable using a Flood model. Furthermore, indicators of rapid sedimentation present problems for secular geology. Since the other two primary original arguments for deep time—the time needed for valley erosion and for volcanic accumulation—are demonstrably invalid, it appears that none of the original arguments carries evidential weight. The failure of earth scientists from the 18th century to the present to objectively evaluate deep time violates evidentiary logic and strongly suggests that the empirical arguments were (and continue to be) ad hoc justifications of a belief system. Deep time is better understood as a presupposition of secular natural history, not an empirical conclusion. Since deep time has been unquestioned since the 18th century, the arguments of that time should still be valid and compelling. If not, their failure, combined with the concomitant failure of earth scientists to ever reassess the idea of prehistory1 suggests that the concept was the product of secularist faith. Previous papers in this series have shown logical and empirical flaws in two of the three arguments for deep time, namely valley erosion 2 and volcanic terranes.3This paper focuses on the sufficiency of the third argument from the sedimentary rock record, or what was originally called the ‘geognostic pile’.4 This terminology reflects the origins of modern stratigraphy in ‘geognosy’. As noted in the earlier papers, the sciences of the earth in the 18th century were different from modern geology (figure 1). The three major disciplines included natural history, natural philosophy, and geotheory. Geognosy was the branch of natural history that described and classified the subsurface strata of the crust. (1) Natural History. “description and classification of the diversity of terrestrial things” (Rudwick, ref. 2, 2005, p. 59). (a) mineralogy The collection, identification, and classification of specimens of minerals, rocks, and fossils; knowledge distributed by exact pictures. The study of the major features of Earth’s surface, primarily through fieldwork, such as mountains, rivers and volcanoes, with an emphasis on pictures and maps. The study of the structure of Earth’s crust; emphasizing cross sections to depict the third dimension and closely associated with mining. It was developed most strongly in German mining schools. (b) geography physical (c) geognosy (2) Natural Philosophy ‘earth physics’ The causal explanation via natural laws of terrestrial phenomena described by the sub-disciplines of natural history, and consciously distinct from the description and classification of those endeavors. (3) Geotheory ‘Theory of the Earth’ A high-level theory or system of Earth as a whole, derived from unifying the causal explanations of earth physics into a coherent whole. The goal was to discover the one overarching cause of Earth’s phenomena, just as Newton had done for the cosmos with gravity. Figure 1. Sciences of the earth during the eighteenth century as described by Rudwick. Note the absence of familiar boundaries between geology, biology, physics, and chemistry, which were not recognized at the time. (From Reed and Klevberg, ref. 5.) The argument from the geognostic pile What was geognosy? Geognosy was the Anglicized version of the German geognosie, or ‘earth knowledge’. It was a descriptive science, differing from physical geography in its emphasis on the subsurface dimension of the rock record. Rudwick 5 thought the only things stopping geognosy and physical geography from ever being united were the cultural and social barriers between their practitioners in 18th century Europe. Unlike the amateur intellectuals that pursued physical geography, geognosy grew out of the mining industry of northern Germany, which emphasized a three-dimensional understanding of rock bodies and structures. The centre of the discipline was the mining School at Freiberg. Its professors included luminaries like Abraham Werner (1749–1817) and Johann von Charpentier (1738–1805). Other famous geognosts of the day included Giovanni Arduino (1714–1795), Johann Lehmann (1719–1767), Johann Ferber (1743–1790), Georg Füchsel (1722–1773), and Leopold von Buch (1774–1853). These men pioneered the investigation of three-dimensional arrangements of strata or other rock bodies, and developed the use of illustrated sections as proxies for field observation. Fieldwork and mapping were important tools of geognosts, but subsurface information came from mines. Geognosts developed the practice of drawing sections and block diagrams to visualize the three-dimensional crust.Although Laudan6 argued that the gebirge (rock bodies), the basic unit of geognosts, were equivalent to geohistorical ‘formations’, Rudwick countered that it was a descriptive term: “It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the goal of geognosy, no less than the other branches of natural history, was to classify the diversity of nature; it was not to reconstruct geohistory … . Geognostic practice was primarily concerned with structural order, not temporal sequence, let alone geohistorical reconstruction.”7 However, he recognized the common-sense application of Steno’s principle of superposition to layered rocks: “Geognosts were well aware that this structural order was likely to reflect a corresponding temporal order of deposition: as Füchsel and others recognized, ‘above’ and ‘below’ could be translated with confidence into ‘younger’ and ‘older’.” 8 If the purpose of geognosy was to classify then, like the animal and plant worlds, rocks needed a scheme of classification. Given geognosy’s relationship to stratigraphy, it is worth noting the origin and use of that scheme: “The two main categories of rock mass were called Primary and Secondary. These came to be standard terms in English … they were derived from what the great Italian geognost Giovanni Arduino … had described as ‘ monti primari’ and ‘monti secondari’, in work that became known … throughout Europe. German writers usually called them respectively the ‘fundamental rock masses’ [Urgebirge] and the ‘layered rock masses’ [ Flötzgebirge]. This expressed their structural relation, namely that the Primaries everywhere underlay the Secondaries … and also a general contrast between them, namely that the Secondaries were usually bedded rocks lying in a structural sequence that was distinct, at least in any given region, whereas the Primaries rarely had any clear sequence.”9 Secondary rocks contained coal and iron, but not the precious metals of the Primaries, and thus the Primaries were typically of greater interest to the geognosts. Two additional minor categories were used. These were the ‘Tertiary’ deposits, which referred to unconsolidated sediments associated with rivers, estuaries, and plains and the ‘Volcanics’, which triggered the ‘Vulcanist-Neptunist’ controversy over the origin of basalt. Rudwick 10 emphasized that this was an argument about classification, not geohistory, despite the assertions of later hagiographers of James Hutton. 11Of prime importance to geognosy was the definition and correlation of formations. The term as used then was not the same as that used today; modern stratigraphic influences deriving from uniformitarianism and evolution were not yet linked to the rock record. Alexander von Humboldt’s (1769–1859) Geognostic Essay (1823) was called “one of the most important geological works of its time”.12 Humboldt defined formations by their spatial position in the geognostic pile and assumed they could be defined globally. Thus, he affirmed the ideal of a correlative global sequence, but assumed it could be defined by physical parameters rather than by the intangible factor of time: “Some historians and later geologists, assuming erroneously that the word ‘formation’ here carried its modern meaning, have ridiculed the geognosts’ ambition to identify the same formations globally or ‘universally’. They fail to notice that this is just what has been done with great success, with the modern ‘geological column’ of globally valid ‘systems’ such as Cambrian and Jurassic, and the corresponding relative timescale of ‘periods’ bearing the same names. The only difference lies in the criteria that are regarded as most reliable for correlation but this is just what geognosts such as Humboldt were trying to achieve.”13 Geognosy eschewed the broad speculation of geotheory, but most geognosts accepted broad conclusions from geotheory, particularly the idea that was, for all practical purposes, the standard model of the day: “… geotheories based on a falling global sea level were so general that they will be grouped together here and termed the standard model of the earth’s temporal development.”14 Though often attributed to Werner, this model predated him and was the ‘common knowledge’ of the time. Though individual authors offered distinctive details, the basic model affirmed the formation of rock bodies from a receding primeval ocean. Though obviously influenced by the accounts of Creation and the Flood, it just as clearly showed that these mining professionals had already rejected their literal historical truth.Major differences between geognosy and stratigraphy included stratigraphy’s emphasis on fossil content and correlation by time15 (an inferred property) rather than a direct property such as mineralogy. Geognosts were aware of the fossils and used them as a diagnostic tool, but only one of many such tools. The growing emphasis on fossils as the diagnostic tool of stratigraphy was an innovation associated with Georges Cuvier and William Smith, although Rudwick termed Smith a geognost. In that sense, modern stratigraphy could be seen as the integration of paleontology and geognosy. Of course, observation and description led to speculation about causal agencies, although this was in the domain of ‘earth physics’ (figure 1). Deformed strata, especially those in and near the Alps, were of deep interest to naturalists. Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794), the famous chemist, published a paper in 1793 addressing the formation of Secondary strata based on sea-level changes and shallow and deep water sediments. It was an exercise in earth physics, but important to the development of the geognostic interpretation of the sedimentary formations. Geognosy and prehistory Rudwick summarized the developing argument from geognosy for an old Earth: “Much more persuasive was a third class of evidence: the huge piles of Secondary strata that were being described in certain parts of Europe. A century earlier, when such rocks had yet to be studied closely, it had been quite plausible to suppose—with Steno, Woodward, and many others—that the entire pile of sediments could have been laid down all at once, perhaps in a violent Deluge, although even then this entailed taking great liberties with any literal reading of the story of the Flood. However, once the sheer thickness of the Secondary formations was fully appreciated, and detailed fieldwork suggested that many of them must have been deposited layer by layer under tranquil conditions, that kind of diluvial interpretation was quietly abandoned by most savants.”16 Arduino was one of those that ‘quietly abandoned’ the Flood. He showed the scale of the Secondaries in a famous sketch made in 1758 in northern Italy (figure 2). It showed how the geometry of the strata allowed calculation of their thickness from a lateral section and just how great this thickness was. It also illustrated the truncated understanding of the hydraulic potential of the Flood—naturalists in the 1700s thought the Flood responsible for only the surface veneer of unconsolidated sediment. This had obvious implications: Image courtesy of Giovanni Arduinos Figure 2. Arduino’s sketch (1758) of the Secondary formations overlying the Primaries (far left) of the Alpine foothills in the Val d’Agno of northern Italy. “And a growing awareness of the sheer thickness of the formations, many of them composed of finely layered sediments, made the short timescale increasingly implausible. So by mid-century the equation with the Flood had been generally abandoned.”17 Werner clearly had no problem with an old Earth: “Werner commented in print—casually and just in passing—that the Geognostic pile of rock masses must have accumulated ‘in the immense time span … of our earth’s existence’; and in manuscript notes for his lectures on geognosy he estimated that the whole sequence might represent perhaps a million years.”18 Thus, the argument from geognosy against the Flood was a dual argument that persists in its most basic form to this day. These two components included arguments that: (1) the sheer volume of sediment could not have been deposited in one year, and (2) internal features, such as fine lamination, could not have been deposited by the Flood. “The point was well summarized by La Métherie, the editor of Observations sur la Physique: ‘One feels that such enormous beds of limestone, gypsum, and shales, and such substantial masses of [fossil] shells, fish, and plants could have been formed only in an innumerable sequence of ages [siècles] of which we have no conception, and perhaps at different epochs.’”19 Discussion Unlike the arguments from the erosion of valleys2 and the rates of volcanism,3 the arguments for deep time from the ‘geognostic pile’ remain widely accepted and used today by secular geologists, to the extent that they are able to intimidate creationists into developing schemes that leave much of the sedimentary record outside the Flood. 20 Despite a selfprofessed neocatastrophism, the predilection for gradualism is visible in these arguments. Both aspects of this argument can be answered, and recent discoveries are providing counterexamples of rapid sedimentation. Does the total volume of sedimentary rocks invalidate the Flood? Modern geologists have a much better understanding of the sedimentary record than did the early naturalists, and so our discussion will look at the total volume of rocks in modern terms. Geologists have linked nearly 550 Ma of time to the Phanerozoic record, and billions more to the Proterozoic, Archean, and Hadean. Global exploration allows us to make rough estimates of the total volume and thickness of sedimentary rocks. Unfortunately, even creation geologists accept secular assumptions about natural history and underestimate the depositional potential of the Flood: “Many of the rocks contain evidence that they were deposited in deep, generally tranquil water far from shore. The question is whether minimally seven miles of fine-grained sediments and volcanic rocks accumulated in only one and a half millenia. We would be talking about an average sedimentation rate of about 20 feet per year for 1,656 years! If these rocks were all deposited during a one-year planetary Flood, however, then the sedimentation rate was seven miles or at least 36,000 feet per year! Do Flood geologists really expect anyone to believe that?”21 Actually, yes. A simple calculation will show that the geognosts, modern secular geologists, and compromising creationists are all wrong. The sedimentary record does not exceed the Flood’s depositional potential. Although a more detailed calculation could be done, we are convinced that this simple one shows the potential of the Flood to deposit crustal sedimentary rocks. We ignore the effects of compaction, erosion, and diagenesis, but err on the side of caution. Our argument proceeds in four simple steps: Determine the total volume of sedimentary rocks in the earth’s crust. Determine the surface area over which these rocks were deposited. Derive an average thickness of the sedimentary rocks over that area. Compare that estimate to potential Flood depositional rates. Figure 3. The total estimated volume of sedimentary rock would generate, in the most conservative case, 13.4 km of sediment over the present-day continents. That this is an exaggerated estimate is shown by comparing the estimated thickness of 13.4 km to the actual average estimated thickness of 1.8 km. There are a variety of estimates of the total volume of sedimentary rocks, most ranging between one and two billion cubic km.22 Holt falls on the low end of that estimate when he includes Precambrian metasedimentary rocks and continental margin and seafloor sediments.23 Assuming a flat surface, Earth’s total surface area is 510,072,000 km 2. Of that, 148,940,000 km2 is present-day land.24 On the continents, the total average thickness is about 1.8 km. The worst case possible for the Flood’s depositional power would be to take the high end of 2 billion cubic km deposited on the present-day land surfaces. If that total volume of sediment was deposited on that small land surface during the 371 days of the Flood (figure 3), then the total average thickness of sedimentary rock would be 13.43 km (44,062 ft), a thickness found today only in deep sedimentary basins. Since geologists have calculated the actual average thickness of sedimentary rocks on the continents as only 1,800 m (5,906 ft),25 it is clear that the worst possible approach is wildly conservative. Even so, it requires the Flood to have deposited an average daily rate of 36 m (118 ft) per day on the present continents. Contrary to secular geology, that is not farfetched. We only need examine rates of modern day, high-energy processes. If we used the actual continental estimate of 1,800 m average thickness, the daily Flood average would only be a mere 4.85 m (16 ft) per day.Some might argue that although an average thickness might be achieved, the tens of thousands of feet in deep sedimentary basins, clearly deposited in only part of the Flood, would be impossible to achieve. In those cases, it is incumbent on the critics to demonstrate that impossibility, given sufficient sediment source and the hydraulic magnitude of the floodwater. Currents hundreds of feet deep and hundreds of miles wide flowing at elevated velocities would have a correspondingly high carrying capacity. As has been argued for many decades, time is only one factor; geologic activity rises with energy.With regard to the average daily depositional rates, modern local catastrophic events meet or exceed these rates. Thus, geologists who accept the principle of actualism have little room to complain about the capacity of the Flood to deposit thick sequences of sediment, especially since they—as neocatastrophists—accept rapid, catastrophic deposition. For example, a levee breach in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina deposited approximately a metre of sediment in the Lower Ninth Ward neighbourhood in just 46 minutes. 26 At the 1980 eruption of Mt Saint Helens, approximately 183 m (600 ft) of landslide material accumulated following the collapse of the north side of the mountain. Given these modern examples, it is clearly the skeptics who have erred in claiming that great thicknesses of sedimentary rock could not be deposited. Even the overly high estimate of 36 m per day is not unreasonable—indeed, it is only slightly higher than the actual rate of deposition from the Katrina levee break.There were obviously locales where the rate was much higher, just as there were locales where the rate was much lower. But the original argument that the Flood could not have deposited the volume of sedimentary rock is proven incorrect. Supposed slow processes deduced from the strata The early geologists rejected the historicity of the Flood because of: (1) the volume of strata, and (2) seeming evidence in the rocks of slow processes. Their first argument is invalid; had the 18 th-and 19th-century scientists actually calculated the sedimentation rates at particular locations and compared them to the hydraulic potential of the Flood, they would have seen that the derived rates for the Flood are not unrealistic. That this exercise was apparently not attempted suggests a powerful bias against the Flood, creating errors in their argument. Similar defects in their other arguments for slow deposition should then be expected. We will focus on present-day, rather than outmoded, arguments since they represent a greater empirical knowledge of the rock record. Bedding and lamination (including varves) For many decades, geologists believed that bedding, especially fine lamination, required long periods of time for tranquil processes to create the individual layers. This assumption was applied to everything from sandstone beds to evaporite laminae to varves. However, recent research and field examples have begun to show otherwise. In the late 20 th century, geologists tried to match modern depositional environments to the rock record via facies modelling. However, a more rigorously scientific approach has been found in the growing work of quantitative sedimentologists, using both lab and field data to integrate sedimentation and fluid dynamics. For example, Berthault has shown that with particles of different sizes, masses, and densities, fine and medium-sized layers form quite rapidly in water and in air, especially with a moving current.27 Others have applied those methods to the rock record 28 and to modern sedimentation examples,26 showing that sedimentary bedding—and even fine laminations—can form in a matter of minutes. Figure 4. Rhythmic lamination from the Green River Formation is thought to represent varves, but could easily be the result of any other (including rapid) rhythmic sedimentary process.A classic ‘slow deposition’ argument is that of varves.29 Thin rhythmites are seen throughout the rock record (figure 4) and these are often claimed to be varves, ‘proving’ slow sedimentation over thousands, or even millions, of years. But thin alternating laminae can form quickly.30 The fact that millimetre-thick laminae can be traced over 114 km (71 miles) in the Castile Formation of west Texas negates modern environment analogs.30 The Castile Formation is composed of halite and anhydrite, and has tens of thousands of thin laminae. Since there is no observed example of this type of sedimentation, the actualistic method fails. Such large-scale layers of such unusual composition suggest large-scale unusual processes. Secular explanations of the Castile Formation strain credulity. Shales and mudstones Shales and mudstones make up about 80% of the sedimentary record.31 These rocks are composed of very fine particles, less than 1/256 mm, which were once believed to have been deposited very slowly as clay particles settled through a stationary water column. But these clay-sized particles can be deposited rapidly by several processes. For example, these particles flocculate, forming larger clumps of particles that sink faster. Furthermore, mud can be deposited rapidly in currents once thought too fast for mud deposition.32 Reefs and paleosols Carbonate features interpreted as ancient reefs are found in the rock record. Much research remains to be done, but many of the ‘ancient reefs’ appear to be quite different from modern reefs. For example, the organisms in many ancient ‘reefs’ do not form framework reefs, and even the organisms that make up the ‘reefs’ are different from those found today. 33 Many of the ancient ‘reefs’ could easily be allochthonous piles of carbonate debris (i.e. washed into place).Secular geologists also think that paleosols are natural chronometers. These so-called ancient soils are found in many places and many horizons. However, ‘paleosols’ do not exhibit features of modern soil horizons, especially the organic layer. It is claimed that these layers were apparently eroded or altered, but this is an argument from silence. When compared to modern soils, paleosols exhibit other inconsistencies.34Distinct layers of clay, carbonate, or other materials, often interpreted as soil horizons, are more likely the result of diagenetic processes by hydrothermal fluids, groundwater, or migrating pore fluids. Numerous research opportunities exist for those willing to examine the data from a different perspective. Cementation and fossilization Cementation and fossilization are processes claimed to require long periods of time, much more than the Flood year. But the physico-chemical environment is a much greater factor than time. Cementation and fossilization can both occur rapidly under the right conditions, e.g. the fossilization of a miner’s felt hat within a few tens of years. 35 We see rapid cementation every time concrete is poured. Numerous minerals act as cements in the rock record; carbonate and silica are common. During cementation, ions enter the pore spaces of sedimentary rocks via pore fluids. The chemistry of these fluids can vary significantly, as can the temperature, pressure, pH, and Eh. When the chemical environment meets specific parameters, carbonate, silica, or other cements bind to the edges of grains, often with bonds stronger than the grains themselves (figure 5). Cement can make up a significant percentage of a rock body.Although geologists claim that cementation is a problem for diluvialists,36 it is just as bad for secular geologists, especially when trying to explain the unusual chemical conditions required for cementation. For example, there must be a large volume of silica in pore fluids to cement sandstone. Geologists can measure silica concentrations in modern groundwater, but silica is often undersaturated in groundwater, making the uniformitarian or actualistic explanation difficult.37Pettijohn38 noted: “A cemented Figure 5. (A) Silica in pore fluids formed overgrowths on corroded sandstone stratum 100 m thick, for example, quartz grains and chert cement (upper middle). Scale on bottom. (B) Dolomite rhombs are beginning to coat grains and infill pore spaces as cementation progresses. contains within it enough cementing material to form a layer 25 to 30 m thick if these materials were segregated.” Where did the cement come from and how was it distributed through the rock?Fossilization is also a problem for old-earth geologists.39 The primary requirement for fossilization is rapid burial. The size of the organism defines the necessary rate. A thin trace can be covered by a thin layer of mud, but a tree trunk can require tens of feet of sedimentation in a short time. In some cases, an organism’s original substance is replaced by mineralization, as exemplified by petrified wood. But this must happen before the original material decays. In many sedimentary environments, organisms decay quickly, even after burial. Most geologists admit that fossilization is rare today, yet there are vast numbers of fossils in the rocks. Not only must their rapid formation at regional scales be explained, but once again the actualistic principle fails to explain field observations.The Flood would have been a near-perfect environment for fossilization. Organisms and sediments were buried rapidly and deeply. The elevated fluid content of these sediments would have migrated rapidly in response to compaction and overpressure. Igneous, metamorphic, and tectonic processes would have altered the temperature and chemistry of pore fluids, causing rapid diagenesis and cementation. High pressure gradients would have caused the fluids to move rapidly through the sediments, preventing equilibrium conditions from being established. Features such as chert layers, quartz dikes, and nodules indicate conditions favouring silica precipitation, something rarely seen today. Tracks, burrows, and nests Many argue that fossil animal tracks, burrows, and nests indicate long periods of time of sedimentation. However, these and other ephemeral features can be explained as products of the early phases of the Flood. 40 These features could have formed in areas where sedimentation was rapid and heavy, and where abrupt changes in base level (whether from eustatic change or tectonism) would have exposed an extensive flat bedding surface. For example, dinosaur tracks, nests, and eggs are often seen as arguments that surrounding rocks were not produced during the Flood. But if sedimentation was ongoing, newly deposited sediments could have served as substrate for animal tracks. With more sedimentation, multiple layers of track-bearing rocks would have quickly accumulated. These briefly exposed diluvial sediments would be ideal environments to preserve ephemeral traces like tracks, as well as nests, eggs, and scavenged carcasses. At the same time burrowing organisms would have been active, introducing more conventional trace fossils. Other exotic features, such as mudcracks and raindrop imprints, could have been preserved in the same way. Figure 6. Tapeats Sandstone near the Great Unconformity. Pen for scale. Note coarse sand to pebbly cross beds. The sequence of basement-unconformity-clastic-carbonate extends over much of North America. Indicators of rapid deposition Although much remains to be learned, it is clear from a few decades of work by a few Flood geologists that many so-called uniformitarian challenges to the Flood can be met. But what about diluvial challenges to secular natural history? There are a number of features of the rock record that suggest rapid, catastrophic deposition. If diluvialists are required to explain problems with their model, then why are not secular geologists held to the same standard? We will summarize four of these challenges. 1. Large horizontal extent of many layers Many sedimentary layers can be traced over long distances, contrary to currently observed processes. For instance, the Tapeats Sandstone at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, lying on top of the basement granites and metamorphic rocks, is a coarse sandstone about 60 m thick containing abundant quartz pebbles (figure 6). Resting on top of the Tapeats is the green Bright Angel Shale, which contains features that appear to be worm burrows. The sequence is capped by the Muav limestone.41 This same sequence of sandstone–shale–limestone overlying igneous basement rocks can be traced northward into Wyoming and Montana, although the formations are called different names. For example, the sandstone further north is called the Flathead Sandstone, but it is similar to the Tapeats, overlying the basement granites (figure 7). On top of the Flathead Sandstone is a green shale with abundant ‘worm burrows’ (figure 8), which in turn is overlain by carbonate strata. Reed noted a sequence of sand and conglomerate grading into a thick carbonate sequence in Oklahoma. 42 In fact, Snelling claims that the Tapeats Sandstone and its equivalents can be traced mostly on top of basement rocks over much of North America.43 This is continental-scale sedimentation. Many other formations are of regional scale. Figure 7. Flathead Sandstone just west of Cody, Wyoming, Figure 8. Burrows in shale above Flathead Sandstone in the in the Shoshone Water Gap. Sun River Canyon of the Rocky Mountains, west of Great Falls, Montana. Burrows are abundant at bedding planes. Deposition by observed modern processes does not generate regional-scale beds of sediment. Different environments of deposition create different stratal geometries, but they are restricted in areal extent. However, the Flood would be expected to generate geographically extensive deposits due to its scale and intensity. Figure 9. Strata at Grand Canyon, showing Phanerozoic strata overlying Great Unconformity, with angular Proterozoic strata beneath. 2. The lack of erosion within and between layers Secular geologists since the 18th century have thought sedimentary strata required much time to form. But if so, then these strata should show evidence of erosion within the formations and at their boundaries, as seen in modern landscapes where streams and rivers dissect the landscape and do significant erosion in decades or centuries. Shorelines changing due to minor fluctuations in relative sea level should also generate erosion. But thick deposits, such as those seen at Grand Canyon (figure 9), show little, if any, erosion within layers or at contacts. Secular geologists claim that the thick horizontal sequence at Grand Canyon represents over 300 Ma of low-energy sedimentation, with seas migrating back and forth across the area. If so, there should be significant erosional features seen in the layers forming the canyon walls. Erosion presents another problem for long-age geologists. At the current rate of erosion, all of North America would be reduced to sea level in as little as 10 Ma 44 or, at most, 33 Ma.45 Given that, the sedimentary sequence at Grand Canyon should show evidence of massive erosion. This evidence does not exist. Photo courtesy of Tom Vail Figure 10. The sedimentary sequence in Teton Mountains, northwest Wyoming, shows a similar sequence to that found in Grand Canyon. The same is true of sedimentary rocks worldwide—there is often little or no erosion between the layers; deformation often occurs after deposition by faulting, folding, and tectonism. For example, strata found on the south side of the Teton Mountains of northwest Wyoming (figure 10) were deposited before being uplifted and eroded, leaving a 2,000-foot sequence very close to that of the lower Grand Canyon. So, little (if any) erosion can be seen between the layers of this sequence, and some geologists think the layers look like they were deposited inone single uninterrupted sequence: “The regularity and parallelism of the layers in well-exposed sections suggest that all these rocks were deposited in a single uninterrupted sequence.” 46Despite the physical evidence, secular geologists still think the beds were deposited over 200 Ma, based on the fossil dating scheme developed in the 1800s. Other examples could be cited. The lack of erosion between and within these layers is powerful evidence for rapid deposition consistent with the Flood and is another example of the failure of actualism. 3. Closed-shelled mollusks Not only do the sedimentary rocks point to the Flood, but their fossils do too. Bivalve mollusks are commonly found as fossils.47 It is observed today that when these types of organisms die the muscle attachments weaken and the shells opens up within hours. However, fossil bivalves are often found with their shells closed, meaning they were killed and buried within hours. Thick, widespread beds containing these types of fossils must have been deposited very rapidly. 4. Polystrate fossils Secular geologists emphasize modern processes, especially those that support their time scale. They estimate that the average rate of sedimentation is around 1 cm/1000 years. That low rate is one reason they claim that most strata represent millions of years. But that conflicts with indicators of rapid sedimentation, such as closed-shelled fossils. Another indicator of rapid sedimentation is a feature called polystrate fossils. Figure 11. Polystrate tree from Joggins Formation, Nova Scotia. Photo courtesy of Ian Juby. Tree is several metres long. Polystrate fossils are fossils that penetrate more than one sedimentary layer. Such fossils are relatively common and are most often represented by trees (figure 11). Polystrate trees are equally preserved along their entire length, indicating that the tree was rapidly covered, since decomposition would have occurred within weeks to months. Polystrate fossils contradict the predicted average rate of sedimentation.Actualistic geologists attempt to explain this field evidence by claiming that deposition was rapid only in one location and only for a short period of time. While it is true that modern examples of local, rapid sedimentation are observed, polystrate fossils often cross bedding planes and strata representing millions of years as defined by other dating methods, such as biostratigraphy or radiometric dating. In these cases, there is a clear conflict that cannot easily be explained. For example, some polystrate trees penetrate multiple coal seams,48 even though coal is assumed to have formed very slowly in a peat swamp environment. The presence of both polystrate fossils and coal seams requires that either the environmental explanation is wrong or that there is an unknown mechanism for preserving trees for thousands of years in such an environment.Polystrate fossils are no problem for diluvialists. In addition to conditions of rapid and violent sedimentation and fossilization, a specific mechanism for Flood polystrate fossils was seen in the development of log mats at Spirit Lake after the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption. These trees later sank, often in a vertical position. In a Flood setting, the combination of vegetation mats and rapid sedimentation can easily explain polystrate trees.49,50 Conclusion Since the 1700s, geognosts have used the volume and thickness of sedimentary formations as an argument against the Flood. With the development of geology in the 19 th and 20th centuries, these arguments increased in sophistication, moving from total volume to small-scale sedimentary features. The original argument from sedimentary volume does not hold up against the expected hydraulic conditions of the Flood. Even isolated modern examples exceed or meet the rates needed to deposit all of the sedimentary rocks.More recent arguments from particular sedimentary features, including: laminations, varves, paleosols, preserved nests, burrows, and tracks of various creatures do not stand up to strict scrutiny. Furthermore, there are a number of sedimentary indicators that suggest large-scale rapid deposition and these features are difficult for secular geologists to explain.This means that all three of the original arguments for deep time, valley erosion, volcanic terranes, and the geognostic pile, are invalid. It seems clear that the early geologists did not understand the rock record or the nature of their discipline as well as they thought they did. Valley erosion is a function of process, not time. Rates of volcanic accumulation are determined by the energy of the eruption, not time. The sedimentary record can be explained in terms of the Flood, both in gross volume and fine features. Factors other than field evidence seemed to have driven geological interpretation from the earliest days of the discipline. Subjective rejection of the young history combined with a commitment to gradualism to drive the secular view of earth history decades before Lyell. Even the interpretations of the geognosts illustrated the role of assumptions in interpreting the past: “Füchsel’s published block diagram of the Secondary formations of Thuringia and Lehmann’s earlier section through the same region, had a similar effect. Lehmann had still attributed all his formations to a gigantic Deluge, but a generation later most savants who had seen such evidence with their own eyes in the field, or who had at least been turned into virtual witnesses by the persuasive accounts of others, concluded that the Secondary formations must have needed humanly inconceivable spans of time for their deposition.”51 Since the original arguments for deep time are all invalid, there should be a record of geologists objectively evaluating Earth’s age once evidence of the failure of these arguments became known. This did not happen. Instead, secular geologists used deep time as a starting point, and interpretations that reached the conclusion of vast ages naturally followed. This continued fallacy of assuming the conclusion strongly suggests that belief in deep time is a subjective commitment of secular earth scientists, not the objective conclusion of valid field evidence. Is plate tectonics occurring today? John Baumgardner In this brief article, I focus on the question of whether or not the primary plate tectonic processes of seafloor spreading and subduction are occurring in the present day. Restricting the scope to the present moment eliminates many of the issues arising from uniformitarian bias on the part of the secular earth science community. I discuss the GPS determinations of present-day plate motions, the present-day distribution of seismicity, the topography and elevated heat flow along the present-day mid-ocean ridge system, the slip and fault plane orientation of present-day mega-earthquakes, and the close association of most present-day volcanism with deep ocean trenches. I conclude that these multiple, largely independent, lines of observational evidence strongly support the premise that coherent plate motions, commonly on the order of centimetres per year, are occurring and that seafloor spreading and subduction are close to undeniable realities. GPS testifies to the reality that plates are currently moving Data courtesy of NASA Figure 1. Time history of location of the Cook Islands station in the western Pacific as determined by GPS over the interval 2002–2011. I frame my discussion of these topics around several claims Michael Oard made in his response1 to my letter2 in J. Creation 25(2), where I outlined my reasons for concluding that rapid cooling of the ocean lithosphere was responsible for the rapid sea level drop in the later portion of the Flood.In his response to my letter, Oard claimed that present-day GPS measurements, which I had offered as definitive evidence that plate tectonics is occurring today, admit “other, non-PT, explanations”. Yet he provides no hint as to what those other explanations might be. In this context it seems useful to summarize the present status of GPS determinations of plate motions. Currently, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, under contract with NASA, collects and compiles precise geodetic position measurements of each of over 2,000 GPS receiver stations distributed worldwide, utilizing a constellation of 30 GPS satellites. Figure 1 displays the relative latitude and longitude measured from 2002 to 2011 as a function of time for the Cook Islands GPS station in the western Pacific. Lines fit through these points over that time interval give an average northward velocity for that station of 3.5 cm/yr and an average westward velocity of 6.3 cm/yr relative to the GPS reference frame for the earth. Because the noise in these data is so small, the confidence level in the velocity implied by the change in the station position with time is high. Photo courtesy of NASA Figure 2. Displacement rates of GPS stations in the western Pacific region as compiled by JPL. The time history data for each of these more than 2,000 stations is available on the JPL website, sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov/mbh/series.html, together with an interactive global map that summarizes these data in a visual way. Figure 2 is a portion of this map that displays the western Pacific, south-eastern Asia, and Australia. These GPS measurements show that the Pacific Plate is currently moving coherently to the west-northwest relative to the trenches on its western margin at a rate of about 7.5 cm/ yr. They show that India is moving as a coherent block to the northeast relative to the region to the north. They show that Australia is moving north-northeastward as a coherent block toward the ocean trenches to its north.Elsewhere these data show that sites west of the San Andreas Fault are moving north-westward relative to sites to the east of the fault by several cm/yr. They also document that Easter Island on the Nazca Plate in the south-eastern Pacific is currently moving eastward at about 7 cm/yr. This implies seafloor spreading is occurring across the East Pacific Rise to the west of Easter Island at a rate of about 14 cm/yr.These measurements demonstrate, with little room for debate, that plates are real entities and that they are currently in motion across the face of the earth. The measurements document the reality of plate divergence, or spreading, across the mid-ocean ridge system. With equal clarity they document the reality of plate convergence, i.e. subduction, at deep ocean trenches. They also document the reality of transform faults, such as the San Andreas, along certain portions of plate boundaries. In other words, these data document the reality of the defining aspects of plate tectonics in operation in our world today. It is hard for me to imagine an alternative explanation. Nevertheless, I am eager to learn about the ones Oard mentioned but did not describe. Earthquakes reveal lithospheric deformation is localized at plate boundaries Oard makes the further claim that the inclined zones of intense seismicity adjacent to the deep ocean trenches, known as Wadati-Benioff zones, likewise admit “other, non-PT, explanations”. Again, he provides no clue as to what those other explanations might be. Like the GPS measurements, the distribution and character of earthquakes that occur on a daily basis across the world testify powerfully to the present reality of plate motion. Figure 3 shows the distribution of earthquakes of greater than 4.5 magnitude for the period 1991–1996 as compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey. These earthquakes display a strong correlation with plate boundaries. Furthermore, the deep events are associated exclusively with the zones of plate convergence. Data courtesy of NASA Figure 3. Global distribution of earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 4.5 during years 1991–1996, as compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey. Earthquakes represent an important diagnostic of zones of deformation in the lithosphere. For an earthquake to occur, the rock must be cool enough to deform in an elastic manner. In general this means that to support earthquakes, rock temperature must lie below the brittle– ductile transition temperature, which, for granitic crust, is about 300°C and for olivine-rich ocean lithosphere is about 600°C.3,4 Below this transition temperature, rock behaves elastically and stores elastic energy as it is deformed. Above this transition temperature, rock deforms in a ductile or plastic manner, and there is no storage of elastic energy. Earthquakes therefore indicate that the surrounding rock is at a sufficiently low temperature to be able to store elastic energy.Earthquakes are also diagnostic in that they reveal where deformation is actually taking place. If there is no deformation, there is no accumulation of elastic energy and hence none to be released in an earthquake. The general paucity of earthquakes in plate interiors indicates that there is little deformation occurring there. By contrast, the high density of earthquakes at plate boundaries reveals that most of the deformation occurring across the earth’s surface today is taking place precisely along these boundaries. Photo courtesy of NOAA PMEL Vents Program Figure 4. High-temperature black smoker vent at South Cleft, Juan de Fuca Ridge, NE Pacific. July 2000 ROPOS dive 542. So what do the zones of intense seismicity which deepen with distance from an ocean trench, i.e. the Wadati-Benioff zones, represent? From what we know from rock physics, the high seismicity means that cooler rock is present and also that this rock is undergoing active deformation. Is it not an entirely reasonable inference that the cooler rock in which these earthquakes occur is cool because it is part of a subducted oceanic lithosphere slab, especially in view of the geometry of these zones? Laboratory experiments indicate that deep-focus earthquakes, 300–700 km below the surface, occur by a somewhat different mechanism than shallow earthquakes, but this mechanism also involves rapid sliding on a fault plane in cold elastic rock as in the shallower events. 5 I am currently not aware of alternative explanations for the presence of cold, actively deforming rock in such a special geometrical relationship to the ocean trenches at depths up to 700 km, so I am eager to learn about them. On the other hand, the GPS measurements, which now have such high precision and such wide coverage, in concert with the earthquake data, which reveal so precisely where and how the lithosphere is currently deforming, to me testify in a convincing way the reality of active plate tectonics in our world today. Black smokers and ridge topography testify to the reality of seafloor spreading Additional evidence supporting this conclusion are the hot water vents, or ‘black smokers’, observed along the mid-ocean ridges, as shown in Figure 4.6 Moreover, the elevated topography of the ridges also indicates elevated temperatures in the underlying rock column at the present moment, consistent with the spreading process.7 Mega-earthquakes testify to the reality of subduction Photo courtesy of TEC Figure 5. GPS coseismic surface displacements of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake using 2-day site positions of 451 stations before and after the main shock, the epicentre of which is marked by the star. Dashed line marks trench location. In addition, the mega-earthquakes occurring in the world today, including the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku event off the coast of Honshu, Japan, in March 2011, likewise testify to the present reality of plate motion and subduction.8 Figure 5 shows the displacement of the land surface in Honshu in response to the Tohoku earthquake as documented by the change in location of 451 separate GPS stations. This east-southeasterly motion represents elastic rebound of the body of rock of which Honshu is a part that resulted from the slip and stress release on the fault plane below. The elastic rebound of the downgoing plate presumably was of similar amplitude but in the opposite direction. This means that the downgoing plate in some places slipped, or subducted, some 8 m (26 ft) relative to Honshu into the mantle beneath. With this portion of the fault locked for more than a century, the westward motion of the Pacific Plate relative to Honshu produced considerable accumulated elastic shortening in both plates. The presently measured rate of 7.5 cm/yr implies 7.5 m of total shortening per century. Analysis of the seismic waves generated by this event yielded a dip angle for the fault plane of 14° to the west-northwest. The rectangular box in figure 5 encloses the portion of the dipping fault plane over which most of the slip occurred. The Global Seismographic Network, with more than 150 state-of-the-art digital seismic stations, currently provides real-time open access data from which details concerning the focal mechanism, the slip plane, the area and magnitude of slip on the slip plane, and the earthquake magnitude can be determined. Such analyses reveal, as in the case of the Tohoku event, the reality of subduction in these contexts. Volcanoes behind trenches confirm the reality of subduction Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Figure 6. Global distribution of volcanoes that have erupted since 1964. Additional evidence that points to the present reality of plate tectonics is the current pattern of volcanic activity occurring across the face of the earth. Figure 6 displays the locations of volcanoes that have erupted since 1964. The vast majority of these volcanoes are adjacent to deep ocean trenches where active plate convergence is currently taking place. Many of the remainder are on ocean islands, such as Iceland, Hawaii, Cape Verde, and Tristan da Cunha, or in regions of continental extension such as East Africa. Why should there be volcanism associated with plate convergence? The basaltic crust of the downgoing slab generally contains a moderate amount of water in its pores and fractures as well as within its hydrated minerals. As the slab descends to depths on the order of 100–150 km, its basaltic crust encounters sufficient temperature and pressure to cause this water to be released into the hot mantle rock above.9 Water, in turn, has the effect of lowering the melting temperature of this overlying mantle rock sufficiently to initiate partial melting. The buoyant basalt magma which this partial melting generates has a low viscosity and is usually able to rise to the surface to produce volcanoes. The volcanism we observe today so closely associated with the deep-ocean trenches, particularly along what is known as the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’, hence has a simple and plausible explanation. As such, it represents another important complementary strand of observational evidence that plate tectonics is indeed a truthful description of the dynamics of the earth’s lithosphere in the present day. 50–100 km of magma beneath mid-ocean ridges? In his response to my letter in Journal of Creation 25(2), Oard raises what he considers a problematic issue for plate tectonics. Somehow he concludes that a 700°C higher average temperature in a 50–100 km rock column beneath a midocean ridge, compared with such a column in the lithosphere well away from the ridge, would require the column beneath the ridge to be molten. I certainly never intended to give this impression. Nothing in the professional literature suggests this even as a possibility. Perhaps the sketch in figure 7 showing the relationship of a plate and the asthenospheric mantle beneath as the plate migrates away from a ridge will help clarify the issue. This trend of rapidly increasing lithospheric thickness as a function of distance from a ridge is constrained by seafloor heat flow, by seafloor topography, and by Love and Rayleigh seismic surface wave velocity measurements. 10 These datasets indicate that oceanic plate thickness reaches a maximum value of about 90–100 km.10 Figure 7. Sketch showing slab of oceanic lithosphere bounded by 0°C and 1100°C isotherms adjacent to a mid-ocean ridge. Passive upwelling of solid peridotite mantle rock from the asthenosphere fills the volume displaced by the slab as it moves to the right, relative to the ridge. Peridotite is composed mostly of the minerals olivine and pyroxene. Partial (up to 20%) melting of peridotite beneath the ridge produces basalt that rises to the surface to form the ocean lithosphere crust, typically 5–7 km thick.The 1100°C isotherm is used here to define the base of the thermal lithosphere. At temperatures of 1100°C and below, mantle rock displays considerable strength to resist deformation, especially with warmer and much weaker asthenospheric rock below it. A uniform vertical temperature gradient across the slab, consistent with conductive cooling, implies an average slab temperature of about 550°C, independent of its distance from the ridge.The temperature, known as the solidus, at which the mineral with the lowest melting temperature in a rock first begins to melt, is about 1200°C for the peridotite mantle rock at shallow depths beneath a ridge.7 Solidus temperature generally increases with increasing depth and pressure. With rock solidus temperatures below a ridge in the range of 1200–1400°C, it should be evident how the average temperature beneath a ridge can indeed be 700°C higher than within the corresponding depth range in the adjacent oceanic lithosphere, and the rock still be mostly solid.From an observational standpoint, the actual amount of melting that does occur at midocean ridges is tightly constrained by the observed thickness of the oceanic crust, which is the uppermost portion of an oceanic lithospheric plate as shown in figure 7. This crustal layer, typically 5–7 km thick, is composed of basalt. Basalt is formed by partial melting of the peridotite mantle rock. From the bulk chemistry differences between mid-ocean ridge basalt and peridotite, laboratory studies constrain the melting fraction of the source rock to be 20% or less. 7 To generate 5–7 km of basalt therefore requires only 10–14% partial melting of a 50-km thickness of mantle rock. Melting temperatures of silicate minerals, as mentioned above, decrease with decreasing pressure or depth. As asthenospheric rock rises passively beneath a ridge as the lithospheric plates move apart, some of the minerals in the upward-moving rock which had been fully unmelted can suddenly find themselves above their individual melting temperatures and begin to melt. This process is commonly known as decompression melting. After only a few percent partial melting, the molten fraction begins to mobilize, move between mineral grains, and migrate toward the earth’s surface. According to the best diagnostics available, this is the way in which the basalt currently forming today’s new ocean crust is being generated.Apparently, Oard’s failure to understand these aspects of mid-ocean ridges allowed him to construct a straw man picture of 50–100 km offully molten rock beneath a ridge, a picture which he then used to ridicule the process of seafloor spreading. An appeal to move forward In conclusion, given that the case that plate tectonics— as a present-day reality—is supported by such compelling observational evidence, why should this issue be a subject for debate in creation journals any longer? I find it bewildering why Oard is opposed to the possibility that seafloor spreading and subduction might actually be occurring even in the present day. In his mind, just what in regard to creation science and the young age account of earth history is at risk? When one rejects uniformitarianism with its timescale, just where do any remaining conflicts reside? On the other hand, as I have stressed many times before, the plate tectonics picture, involving the earth’s mantle as it does, seems to represent a gigantic breakthrough in understanding earth history from a creation standpoint. It provides the key to understanding how a cataclysm as dramatic as the Flood, with the staggering tectonic changes it brought to the earth, could unfold in a moderately orderly way and in so brief an interval of time. Caves and Age How radioactive dating confuses the situation by Emil Silvestru Caves are a common feature of karst landscapes—the rugged sort formed in rocks that dissolve easily such as limestone (mainly calcium carbonate), forming underground passages and drainages. Caves have always been considered the perfect archive, preserving the past, unlike most other environments. And they offer evolutionary scientists an array of items aching to be radiometrically dated.These include the inspiring stone decorations called speleothems—such as stalactites (on the ceiling), stalagmites (on the floor) and flowstone. These formed when water enriched by dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2)—making it acidic—dissolved the alkaline calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in one place and released the mineral in another.1Evolutionists claim speleothems formed over hundreds of thousands of years. But in my own evolutionary days, I had never considered an important consequence of such an age: the tiny water droplet, which built that stalagmite, had to keep arriving at precisely the same spot on the floor of the cave for 100,000 years!Well, I knew—and all karstologists know—that the surface of limestone terrains above caves changes dramatically in short periods of time. And any change at the surface also changes the location of the water droplets inside the cave. However, the stalagmites do not indicate any changes. So the conclusion is simple: they cannot be that old. And that fact indicates the old-age belief is fallacious. Radiometric dating Speleothems are amenable to the uranium-thorium (234U/230Th) method of dating, and caves are assumed to be much less prone to variations of all sorts. Sometimes the ‘measured’ ages of speleothems can be tested by radiocarbon ages of artefacts and fossils found in caves. Speleothems are believed to preserve accurate records of ancient climates—or paleoclimates. This is because they preserve oxygen and carbon isotope ratios from the past, and that allows scientists to make paleoclimate reconstructions.Radiometric dating however often disagrees with the observed growth rates of speleothems and their complex formation processes,2 and this confuses attempts to make sense of speleothem interpretations. As for paleoclimate reconstructions, one must understand well how any variation in climate could have affected the isotopic ratios and accurately relate these to the speleothem record. Speleothems and ice cover On the use of climate variations, karstological wisdom maintains that during the Ice Age the water infiltrating into caves either stopped or significantly diminished. At this time, ice covered much of the ground and even where it didn’t, beyond the ice sheets, permafrost was extensive. With less water it is expected that the growth of speleothems would be arrested or much diminished. This is a soundly-based understanding of how past environments would affect speleothem development. Yet, this karstological wisdom is contradicted by most of the speleothems studied from areas that are known to have been affected by the ice cover! The reason is all to do with the dates that have been assigned by radioactive dating. Because of the ‘dates’, evolutionists concluded that speleothems grew fast when they should not have grown, and did not grow when they should have! Rather than discard the dates, most evolutionary scientists prefer to discard all ‘unorthodox’ speleothems, and use only the few that match their grand scheme of things. Vancouver Island karst Some of the contradictory results have come from the karst on Vancouver Island, Canada, which has provided only a few datable speleothems. The reason for the paucity of specimens is that the island was covered by up to 2 km (6,500 ft) of ice during the Fraser Glaciation, the most intense episode of glaciation during the Ice Age. Understandably, the speleothems did not grow when ice covered the landscape, and after the ice melted, the caves are too young to have a large number of speleothems. In fact all North American karst terrains that have been covered by ice have similar characteristics.Also, massive amounts of meltwater, running beneath the ice sheet, repeatedly flooded Vancouver Island caves. This is revealed by the frequent and large rounded boulders inside many caves, some transported by moving water from a considerable distance. This would have destroyed any speleothems and prevented new ones from forming. Thus, in North America, only caves south of the ice cover during the Ice Age are rich in speleothems.The Vancouver Island speleothems have yielded radiometric ages of between 12 and 18 thousand years. 3,4 That creates a problem and causes confusion. According to various geological evidences, the island was covered by ice, so the speleothems should not have grown at this time. But rather than question the radio-isotopic dates (and hence the methodology involved), some scientists have proposed that the 2-km—(6,500-ft—) thick ice cover melted and grew back in a few thousand years, even though there is no evidence for this melting and they cannot explain how it could have happened! Of course, a simpler explanation is that the radiometric dating is incorrect and that the speleothems grew only after the ice had melted. Arch Cave Another contradictory result was uncovered by scientists studying a speleothem from Arch Cave on Vancouver Island. They nonchalantly stated that the cave was “chosen for its proximity to the ocean so as to reflect a global climate history, and for its abundance of accessible cave deposits that were distant enough from the cave entrance and ground surface to mitigate any seasonal temperature effects.” In other words, they envisaged that speleothem growth on the ancient shore lines on the east coast of Vancouver Island would allow meaningful global correlation as the world’s sea level oscillated during the Ice Age—rising and falling as ice was locked on continents or melted.Based on the measured oxygen and carbon isotopes ( 18O and 13C) they reconstructed the paleoclimate from the speleothem, which was radiometrically dated at 12,500 years. Yet, the geological evidence indicates the island was covered by ice at that time, so there should have been no speleothems growing at all. Not only the island, but the nearby Strait of Georgia was completely plugged by ice, with glacial scouring still visible on the bottom. In spite of this, maintaining their unshakable confidence in radiometric dating, the scientists conveniently ignored these geological facts and claimed the speleothems grew beneath the ice cover.But if there really was this much ice cover at the time that the speleothems grew, the water infiltrating into the caves would not reflect the atmospheric composition at the time (as rainwater infiltrating into caves does today). Rather it would reflect an unreliable mixture of water from the melted ice layers. That would render any paleoclimate reconstruction from speleothems meaningless. Under such circumstances the ‘global climate history’ cannot be reconstructed and cannot be directly correlated with data from the caves.In other words, by uncritically accepting the radioactive date without question, the researchers have ended up with a scheme that contradicts the geological evidence and undermines the basis for making paleoclimate reconstructions in the first place. Clearing the confusion On the other hand, when we apply some scientific skepticism to the spurious dates, we uncover a rather simple and consistent scenario that is in perfect accordance with the young age record. This allows us to understand the proper sequence of events, with the effects of the Flood being the key. The caves on Vancouver Island formed after the Flood and during the Ice Age.5 As creationist geologists have so simply documented, the Ice Age was a consequence of the warmer oceans and cooler land that existed on the earth immediately after the Flood.6Only when the ice from the Ice Age had retreated did speleothems start growing inside those caves, and these have recorded the post-glacial climate variations over the last 4,000 years. Geological excursion at Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland A giant first—interpreting an iconic World Heritage Site using young age history by Tas Walker Published: 14 December 2014 (GMT+10) Figure 1. Checking the geology at Giant’s Causeway in the middle of a busy path on a glorious day. In September 2014, I visited the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland to conduct two geological tours on the same day. In all almost 90 enthusiasts came from all over the province, and some from Republic of Ireland, even as far south as Dublin and Athlone. The event was organized by CMI-UK/Europe in partnership with Creation Outreach Ministries of Northern Ireland.The aim of the tours was to train people to see how the creation model explains the rocks and landscapes. We wanted people to understand how this worked, and not just take our word for it, so we made a point of discussing what we could actually see as we walked along the various paths (figure 1). Then we would explore ideas about what could have happened in the past, events that would explain the features in the present, including explanations by long-age geologists. We were careful to stress that stories about what happened in the past are speculative because we cannot go back in time and make observations. However, the approach taken for creation geology is different from that of long-age geology. It has a logically defensible basis because it does have observations of past events—observations made by those who were present at the time, which have been written down and passed onto us in the young age account.For each tour we hiked some 3 km (2 miles) along walking paths, inspecting the rocks and landscapes, and occasionally climbing some very steep slopes. The excursions lasted about three hours each, and we had warned participants to bring appropriate outdoor clothing in case of rain and strong winds. However, on the day, we were greeted with glorious sunshine, blue skies, and a calm ocean—an Indian Summer. Many said they could not remember a better day.The organizers had booked a function room in the Giant’s Causeway Hotel, where people gathered to be briefed. Each person was given an excursion guide (seebox) together with a little radio receiver to hear my commentary without needing to crowd in close. The organisers had obtained 50 such receivers, which were similar to those which National Trustguides use on their tours.Those taking part came from a wide geological background, some with very little knowledge and a few who were professional geologists. On the tour we covered much basic geology, beginning with the decorative basalt columns on the outside of the new Visitors’ Centre.1 Here we studied the mineral structure of the basalt, explained the different types of magma (molten rock), how magma moves through the crust of the Earth, erupts onto the surface, and crystallizes.From the Visitors’ Centre we walked 1 km (0.6 miles) down the bitumen path to the Causeway itself, weaving our way through the multitude of sightseers, being careful to avoid the busses shuttling people up and down. Apart from the beautiful scenery, there are many interesting features to look at. Figure 2. Examining the red, Interbasaltic Bed near the Visitors’ Centre. In the rocky headlands jutting into the sea we could see the dark, horizontal basalt beds, called the Lower Basalts. A broken ‘wall’ or sea stack stands in the small bay near the shore, looking from the side like a camel, which is why it has been called The Camel’s Back. It’s the remains of a dike, formed when the earth moved and split the Causeway rocks, allowing molten lava to rise into the crack and solidify into a ‘wall’. There are many dikes visible along the coast.The path ran alongside the cliff which towered overhead, and rose steeply to the Antrim Plateau. In the escarpment we could make out more flat-lying basalt beds, in this case called the Causeway Basalts. Immediately alongside the path, not far from the Visitors’ Centre, is a mass of soft, red, crumbly material that catches the eye (figure 2). This 10–12 metre (35–40 feet) thick bed is called the Interbasaltic Bed, because it sits between the Lower Basalts and the Causeway Basalts. As you follow the path you can see that this red bed dips downhill. It’s claimed to be an ancient soil that formed slowly over millions of years, which is why it’s called a laterite. This time-frame contradicts the history of the creation , and not surprisingly we saw many characteristics of this bed that do not fit the ‘ancient soil’ explanation, which we will discuss later.Halfway down, the path turns through Windy Gap, where you can see outcrops of the black Lower Basalts alongside. The basalt rock has been disintegrating to form rounded, spherical boulders that are sitting in a soft, brown, crumbly ‘soil’. The weathering forms a soft skin on the boulders, a process that is sometimes called onion-skin weathering. As you round the corner you have a clear view of the Causeway jutting into the ocean like the tail of a crocodile. Picture - Tas Walker Figure 3. Causeway section. A 25-km (15-mile) long geological section of the Causeway Coast from Portrush to Kinbane Head looking north. The Giant’s Causeway is in the middle of the section. Vertical exaggeration is approximately 6 times. Adapted from Lyle, P., A Geological Excursion Guide to the Causeway Coast, W&G Baird, Second Printing, p.4, 1998. Even though the view at the Causeway is incredibly spectacular, with massive cliffs and expansive landscape, there is not a great variety of geology exposed. It mostly consists of large flows of basalt lava. To provide a better perspective for the sorts of rocks that are found on the Causeway Coast, I included a geological cross section in the excursion guide that covered some 25 km (15 miles) along the coast. This section (figure 3) shows how far the lower basalts extended along the coast and how they are related to other rocks that we could not see at the Causeway itself. For example, the geological cross section shows that the Lower Basalts sit on a thick deposit of chalk, not visible at the Causeway. In addition, there are many faults in the section indicating that the land has been broken in the past, and that different parts of the coast had moved up and down relative to each other. The section also shows how the land surface had been eroded reasonably flat to form the Antrim Plateau. This cross section gives a broader perspective to the order of the geological processes that occurred in the past, and how they formed the landscape. Photo - Philip Bell Figure 4. Large boulders of broken entablature rocks at the bottom of the cliff. One of the fascinations of the Causeway is the way the rocks on the headland sit tightly together in a honeycomb pattern, like paving stones. It might almost look as if it was constructed by human hands. Most stones have six sides, but they can vary from four to seven. Advertising blurbs say there are 40,000 columns, but it is hard to imagine how someone would have counted them all. The Causeway itself provides amazing examples of the columns, but there are other spectacular exhibits further on, including The Organ which sits alongside the path some 500 m (550 yards) beyond the Causeway.On top of the vertical columns in each flow sits a chaotic mass of irregular, fractured basalt. Geologists have looked to Greek Architecture to name these features, calling the columns “the colonnade”, and the irregular mass “the entablature”, which resembles a lintel. You can see outcrops of different entablatures at various levels up the cliff, with The Organ being the most prominent. In the past, large chunks of entablature rocks have broken off and rolled down to the bottom of the cliff (figure 4).Together the colonnade and entablature represent a single lava flow. So when you are standing alongside The Organ, for example, and see how far the columns tower above you, and then note the height of the top of the entablature above that (figure 5), you can imagine how much molten lava had accumulated, and how it would have moved across the ground surface like a fiery ocean, belching ash and toxic gases into the sky. And the molten lava had to move quickly to fill the whole area before it cooled, solidified, and stopped flowing.Participants learned that the remarkable shapes of the columns formed after the lava crystallized. Once the huge volume of lava had accumulated, and began to cool and solidify into rock, further cooling caused contraction, creating stress. Little star-shaped cracks developed in the rock. With more cooling these cracks grew larger until their points joined together, forming polygons with four to seven sides. At the top of the lava flow, where cooling was rapid because of the presence of water, the cracks grew rapidly and randomly, forming a chaotic mass. Further down, where the cooling was slower, the cracks grew in an orderly fashion, moving downward, forming vertical columns. After the columns were complete, they continued to cool and contract, causing them to break into long pieces with ‘ball and socket’ joints.After we had explored the Causeway (figure 6), we set out for the next rocky headland, which involved a long walk up some steep inclines. Since the remaining route included a steep climb, a few people decided to end their tour and took the shuttle back to the Visitors’ Centre. But other people who had encountered the tour and overheard the commentary asked if they could join, and they were able to use the spare radio receivers. Figure 5. Appreciating something of the size of one lava flow at The Organ. The long columns broke into shorter lengths as the rock cooled and contracted. We followed the path as far as the rocky headland adjacent to Port Reostan and had a great view of The Organ, the Interbasaltic Bed, vertical dikes in the ocean, and a basalt flow with curved columns, called The Harp. We returned by climbing the escarpment via the steep Shepherd’s Path, which culminated in more than 150 steps. It was with a sense of achievement that we reached the top of Antrim Plateau, and paused to catch our breath. As we walked back to the Visitors’ Centre we had a good view of the rolling surface of the plateau and could appreciate how it had been eroded flat, first by receding floodwaters and then by glaciers that covered the landscape during the post-Flood Ice Age. Along the way we discussed different geological explanations. Many ideas that had been proposed by longage geologists seemed to make good sense, especially interpretations that recognized geological catastrophe and the presence of large amounts of water. The geological evidence thus described was consistent with the catastrophic processes operating during the Flood. However, some of the long-age stories conflicted with the young timescale, and this identified a problem that needed investigation, and highlighted the need for some different scenarios. Figure 6. Participants of one of the excursions at the Causeway. In this regard, one feature significant for the young age interpretation is the prominent, red, Interbasaltic Bed. This is visible alongside the path near the Visitors’ Centre, and on the far side of the Causeway near the headland at Port Reostan. Longage geologists say this bed is an ancient soil formed by tropical weathering over millions of years, a story that conflicts with the young age for the Earth. We spent some time examining the bed close up, and could see there were geological problems with that story. We discussed different scenarios for its formation, including the idea that heat and fluids released from within the molten lava itself caused its alteration soon after it was emplaced, a process that would happen quickly. This scenario would also explain a similar red horizon visible at sea level in the distant headland between two flows of the Lower Basalts, a horizon that was much thinner than the Interbasaltic Bed. (See Reading between the Giant’s Causeway basalts andGiant’s Causeway geology clarified for Earth Science Ireland.)During the excursion we discussed issues related to the timing of the formation of the Causeway, such as its emplacement and erosion. The underlying chalk deposits (figure 3) were significant for addressing this question, as well as the relationship between the different kinds of rocks, and the shape of the landscape. We concluded that the Causeway was emplaced after the chalk layers were deposited, as the waters of the Flood were receding into the ocean. Further, the area was eroded first by the receding floodwaters and then by glacial ice during the post-Flood Ice Age. (See: How did the Causeway form?) Excursion Guide Participants received a complimentary geological field excursion guide entitled “Fire, Flood and Catastrophe”. This included maps and information about the Causeway and the adjacent coast (compiled from readily available sources), together with material to understand the geology of the region and interpret it from a young age perspective. A pdf of the guide can be downloaded here. Print it double-sided landscape on A4, and staple in the middle.Indeed, those who took part received a broad experience of geology and learned about different views of looking at the world. This contrasts with presentations by conventional geological publications, which only present one interpretation—their long age one—and openly lobby to censor any other ideas from the public square. But why should only one view be presented on an important issue when it is subjective speculation? It’s only fair for people to be properly educated about the various ideas on offer and given opportunity to think about and decide these issues for themselves. In this regard, it was pleasing to see that the Visitors’ Centre has one small audio that mentions the debate over the age of the Causeway, remarking that it is ongoing and that some people today do not accept the claimed age of 60 million years. (See How dating methods work and The way it really is: little-known facts about radiometric dating.)It’s possible that one day, the guides at the Visitors’ Centre will make a point of separating the actual evidence at the Giant’s Causeway from the speculative stories. Perhaps one day tourists will be informed that the rocky outcrops are a memorial of the vast watery catastrophe that overtook our globe just some 4,500 years ago. When we understand what really happened in the past, it places our lives within a wholly different perspective. The world looks wholly different, our place in it is clearer, and our destiny comes into focus. May the tiny audio at the Giant’s Causeway interpretive centre grow into something more inclusive and more enlightening for the benefit of all who visit this World Heritage site. The Ice Age After its eruption, Giant’s Causeway was overtaken by glacial ice which eroded the cliffs to shape this World Heritage Site. Today, some 10% of the earth’s land surface is covered with ice sheets and glaciers, but there was much more ice cover in the past. The evidence for greater ice includes U-shaped valleys cut by glaciers, mounds called drumlins pushed up by glaciers, rocks that are scoured and scratched, broken rock, called tillite, pushed by glaciers into mounds called moraines, and erratic boulders dropped by floating ice into sediment.Ideas that long-age scientists have proposed include large meteorite impacts, supervolcano eruptions, and changes in things such as atmospheric carbon dioxide, the sun’s solar output and the orbit of the Moon. The most popular idea today relies on Milankovitch cycles, where changes in the tilt of the earth’s axis and in its orbit around the Sun make the climate cooler every 41,000 years or so.One problem with all these ideas is that the proposed effects are too small; they do not cause a large enough change in the temperature. So, it is further proposed there must be a positive feedback mechanism that amplifies the change. The possibility of positive feedback has made today’s climate scientists worried that a small change in climate may cause a large instability.Another problem is that a cooler earth will not cause ice to build up on the continents. It will just create a cold desert, like most of northern Siberia and Antarctica today. For ice to build up, we need increased precipitation of snow and ice. creationists geology provides an obvious and simple explanation for the start and end of the Ice Age. 2The evidence for the Pleistocene Ice Age indicates it was very late geologically, which means it occurred after the global Flood. The Flood is the key. Being a catastrophic, tectonic event, much volcanism occurred and this heated the oceans to warmer than they are today. Indeed, ice cores show evidence of warmer oceans in the past, which we place immediately after the Flood. This evaporated the water needed for the ice accumulation; the warm oceans increased evaporation which precipitated as snow and ice on the continents.Also, after the Flood, there would have been fine volcanic dust high in the atmosphere, which kept the interiors of the continents cooler in summer. The snow and ice that fell on the continents in winter was not fully melted the following summer, so the ice built up from year to year. Oard estimates that the ice accumulated for 500 years. After the oceans cooled and the volcanic dust cleared, it would have taken some 200 years for the ice to retreat to where it is today. Thus, when the Flood ended, the conditions were exactly as needed to create the Ice Age. Thermal isostasy—a new look at its potential to advance diluvial geology by Emil Silvestru Epeirogeny, isostasy and plate tectonics Long-term vertical movements of large areas of the earth’s landmasses, particularly cratons (the core areas of most continents, built of continental lithosphere) have been part of geological investigations and models for a long time, well before plate tectonics became the leading paradigm. Moving up and down fault lines (even if they were not visible or detectable) was for most of the time the only explanation, especially when large shallow-sea sedimentary basins were present inside continental areas, far from the oceans. Alternatively the crustal injection of igneous rocks was invoked as a cause of regional uplift without folding.The term epeirogeny has been used regularly for such movements, being usually coupled with isostasy—the gravitational equilibrium of lighter rocks ‘floating’ on denser yet plastic rock. In plate tectonics that refers to lithosphere floating on the uppermost mantle—the asthenosphere. The crust will sink into the asthenosphere according to its density, heavier rocks sinking deeper than lighter ones. It is therefore expected that if density changes, so will the isostatic position of the crust. Heat is by far the most important source of density variation (assuming the same mineral composition). Rock density varies inversely with rock temperature. Thermal isostasy Geophysical research1,2 has looked into epeirogeny and isostasy and even managed to quantify thermal isostasy, i.e. how the elevation of the crust (above sea level) is influenced by the temperature changes (caused by heat flow) in the mantle and crust. In order to achieve that, the compositional effect on isostasy (control of elevation by variation of compositional density of the crust, while assuming the same mantle density) had to be filtered out.There is a marked difference between oceanic crust thermal isostasy and continental crust thermal isostasy. Although oceanic lithosphere has a significantly lower lateral compositional variation (making calculations easier) it is affected by ‘heat mining’ i.e. heat loss because of consistent, wide-spread shallow hydrothermal circulation (the mechanism that creates and fuels hot vents). Surface heat flow measurements therefore are not reliable and bathymetry must also be applied. There are no such processes in the case of continental lithosphere where surface heat flow can be used if a proper model of density and thickness are applied. Figure 1. The correlation between LIPs and extinction of marine biota, according to standard geological ages (based on data from Coffin et al., ref. 4). The calculations have shown that doubling the heat flow in and under the continental crust in North America will produce ~3 km of uplift.1 Conversely, an equivalent drop in the heat flow would cause a lowering of the crust of the same order of magnitude.Evidence that the ocean floor rose and dropped suddenly was recently presented for an area north of Scotland,3 where the sea floor has preserved a complete piece of ancient surface landscape, with valleys organized in a tight and coherent network of hydrographic basins, hills and planes. This unusual feature has been explained by the rapid (“geologic blink of an eye”) uplift of the sea floor with at least 800 m by a mantle ‘hot blob’. After reaching the surface and being rapidly eroded into a typical landscape, the crustal heat dissipated rapidly, causing a rapid lowering below sea level.There are two elements of the plate tectonics model to which the above phenomena may apply constructively, namely Large Igneous Provinces (LIP) and Mantle Overturn and Major Orogenies (MOMO). The former represent large areas of the crust into or onto which enormous flows of basaltic lava—often called ‘flood basalts’—have been emplaced in very short geologic times. One of the most famous LIPs—India’s Deccan Traps— consists of over half a million cubic kilometres of basalt emplaced in less than 30,000 years (from within the uniformitarian paradigm). Much of the original material has been removed by erosion. There are terrestrial LIPs (like the Deccan Traps and the Siberian Traps) and oceanic LIPs (like the Ontong Java Plateau). 4The terrestrial LIPs rocks have not formed by sea floor spreading or subduction. Based on the study of volcanoes on other planets (Venus and Mars) where there is no evidence for plate tectonics (so-called ‘one plate planets’) it is now believed that terrestrial LIPs are the result of ultrafast upwelling.5 The reason for this is attributed by some geologists to ‘slab avalanches’ 5 i.e. massive accumulation of subducted oceanic lithosphere at the base of the asthenosphere managed to break into the more rigid mantle below, causing large overturns in the lower mantle—MOMOs. The resulting heat plumes will cause immense basalt flows—LIPs. There is a significant overlap of LIP episodes and extinctions (most likely caused by repeated peak volcanicity during the Flood), especially of marine creatures as figure 1 reveals. Some geologists5 suspect that what triggered such massive lava flows in the middle of cratons could have been meteorite impacts whose geological signature has been erased by the LIPs.MOMOs can also significantly amplify dynamic topography,6 which represents the vertical oscillation of the lithosphere because of heat flow in the mantle —the essence of intracratonic epeirogeny. As heat accumulates under the thicker continental crust without breaking through it and causing volcanicity (LIP), regional uplift occurs, and conversely, when heat decreases, subsidence follows. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics and thermal isostasy All these geophysical processes seem to fall well within the hypothesized conditions at the onset of catastrophic plate tectonics (CPT) and the ensuing global Flood. 7 Let us further hypothesize some sort of change in Earth’s core which would have caused massive increase in radioactive decay. Many scientists believe it is radioactive decay in the mantle that is the source of most of the heat that provides the mantle with such a dynamic behaviour. If the decay (natural nuclear fission) increased so did the heat flow, and that could have caused massive columns of hot mantle, much larger than mantle plumes today, to rise towards the surface, generating both continental and marine LIPs.Ocean floor above these columns would be pushed upwards and the sea level would rise dramatically. The essentially static pre-Flood lithosphere was thrown into turmoil, with parts starting to slip underneath the continental masses (subduction). It may well be that the first subduction occurred where the overburden created by submarine LIPs was heavy enough to depress the lithosphere to the subducting point. Being colder, the subducted lithosphere would cause a drop in temperature at the lithosphere/ asthenosphere boundary, resulting in large parts of the landmass subsiding and, combined with the global sea level rise, would end in the complete flooding of the landmasses. The sheer weight of the newly ejected lava onto both continental and oceanic lithosphere is something that needs to be seriously taken into consideration in dynamics calculations.Intensified radioactive decay inside the mantle would have been accompanied by a massive increase in geoneutrino output, 8 which would then influence nuclear decay rates9 much more than solar neutrinos.10This author is very aware of the speculative character of the last few paragraphs. Nevertheless it is in the nature of science to attempt hypotheses whenever new data is available, leaving it to future research to confirm or reject the respective hypotheses. It is also my conviction that an integrated, factbased model of the Flood is likely to emerge by including various elements from presently competing diluvial models. Galápagos with David Attenborough: Origin by Russell Grigg Published: 4 April 2013 (GMT+10) Galápagos with David Attenborough is the title of a three-part Sky 3D TV series that premiered in the UK in January 2013. The series was shown in Australia in March 2013 with the revised title, David Attenborough’s Galápagos. In the first episode, titled “Origin”, Sir David introduces viewers to this group of 16 major volcanic islands and many smaller ones that straddle the equator some 600 miles (970 km) from the west coast of South America (off Ecuador, which claimed sovereignty in 1832). Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution after he visited four of the islands here for five weeks in 1835. Millions of years not needed Attenborough, in accordance with his evolutionary worldview, tells viewers that the “volcanic activity began to build the Galápagos islands four million years ago”, with the youngest island, Fernandina, “rising from the sea just 500,000 years ago”. Although he does not mention radioactive dating, such long ages are usually derived from such methods. However, radioactive dating is not reliable. For example, three lava flows from Mt Ngauruhoe in New Zealand that were observed to occur in 1949, 1954, and 1975 were given radiometric dates of millions of years.1 Earth Observatory 8270 and NASA GSFC; Wikimedia commons/M.Minderhoud. Click to enlarge. According to the creation worldview, the Galápagos islands would be postFlood. The fact that millions of years are not needed to form volcanic islands is shown by Surtsey, the recently-formed island off the south-west coast of Iceland that rose out of the sea due to volcanic activity from 1963 to 1967. The official Icelandic geologist, Sigurdur Thorarinsson, reported in 1964: “On Surtsey only a few months sufficed for a landscape to be created which was so varied and mature that it was almost beyond belief.”2In this short time period there formed wide sandy beaches, gravel banks, impressive cliffs, soft undulating land, faultscarps, gullies and channels, and “boulders worn by the surf, some of which were almost round, on an abrasion platform cut into the cliff.” And all of this despite the “extreme youth”3 of the island! Top: NOAA; Bottom: Wikimedia commons/Worldtraveller Top: Surtsey shortly after it began erupting in 1963. Bottom: Surtsey in 1999. Notice the many ‘old-looking’ features on this young island. Arrival of plants Attenborough explains in some detail how plant seeds were blown across the sea from South America to the Galápagos, finally resulting in some of them producing new plants there. Likewise vegetation formed on Surtsey, albeit quickly. In 1965, researchers found the green shoots and pretty white flower of a sea rocket, its roots sunk into the ash and in full bloom. Lyme grass, sea sandwort, cotton grass and ferns soon followed. Mosses arrived in 1967 and lichens in 1970. By 2008, 69 species of plant had been found on Surtsey, of which about 30 had become established. New ones continue to arrive at the rate of about 2–5 new species per year. Arrival of animals Attenborough’s scenario for how the animals got to the Galápagos is: Spiders and insects arrived ballooning through the skies, blown by the wind. Carpenter beetles would have arrived in driftwood scraps floating on the sea. Sea birds, such as boobies, albatrosses and frigates came to rest and breed. Penguins were carried there from Antarctica by ocean currents. Concerning cormorants he says: “Cormorants are coastal birds rather than ocean travellers, so they can only have arrived here by accident, having probably been swept out to sea by a gale. But they arrived a very long time ago.” Concerning tortoises he says: “About 3 million years ago one of them from the South American forests was carried away perhaps by a flash flood, swept out to sea and in time landed on Galápagos … produced eggs, and as time passed they spread to other islands.” Concerning iguanas he says: “Many million years ago, somewhere in South or Central America, an iguana was grazing close to the banks of one of the great rivers. Perhaps it was feeding on floating vegetation. Maybe it fell onto such a raft from a tree. Patches of floating vegetation, if quite big, are easily buoyant enough to support a metre-long iguana and sometimes [the patches] don’t break up but float out into the open ocean … At some point in Galápagos history the currents carried an iguana across 600 miles of ocean to the islands. Not once but several times. Here they settled and multiplied. Today there are thousands of them.” Notice Attenborough’s addition of millions of years to the above scenario: “A very long time ago”, “About 3 million years ago”, “Many million years ago”, all without any evidence or justification, except that as an atheist and an evolutionist he needs the time for his view.However, Surtsey Island says: “Not needed!” Insects and spiders were the first to arrive here, via the air, as expected. Then birds began nesting there in 1970, producing chicks just three years after the lava stopped flowing (in 1967). These early residents were seabirds such as fulmars and black guillemots, building nests of pebbles, and keeping to the cliffs. But in the summer of 1985, a pair of lesser black-backed gulls arrived and constructed a nest of plant materials on the lava flats. They returned the following year with others, and there is now a permanent gull colony of more than 300 pairs.The birds have contributed to Surtsey’s ‘greening’. Snow buntings brought the seeds of bog rosemary from Britain in their gizzards. Combined with bird excreta, seeds grow rapidly—there is now a ‘bright green oasis’ spreading from the gull colony. Geese now graze the island’s vegetation. The cycle continues. The plants support insects, which attract birds, that bring more plants. Recent arrivals include willow bushes and puffins. According to the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, “[W]e now have a fully functioning ecosystem on Surtsey.”4 In 2008, the 14th bird species was detected with the discovery of a Common Raven’s nest, and in 2009 a Golden Plover was nesting on the island with four eggs. Flightless cormorant Flightless cormorants not evidence for evolution Attenborough makes the following interesting comment concerning the Galápagos cormorants: It’s ancestors when they first arrived had wings like any other cormorant, but with no land predators that might threaten the birds sitting in such a vulnerable place [i.e. in their nesting sites], it had no need to fly. Over generations, its wings became smaller and smaller. Now they are mere stumps with a few tattered feathers. So now the bird can’t fly even if it wanted to. And it is now heavier than any of its flying relatives. However, this is not evolution in progress. The first cormorants to arrive, that could fly, would have been vulnerable to being blown out to sea in gales, and thus not able to pass on their genes to birds remaining on the islands.5,6Attenborough’s explanation of a lack of predators is also reasonable, but we would say that this meant a lack of selection pressure that would eliminate flightless mutants. Note that natural selection was discovered by people before Darwin, some of whom were creationists.7 But they, like creationists today, recognized natural selection as a culling force that removed harmful changes, not a creative force as Darwin believed. Darwin’s co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823– 1913),8 while believing that natural selection could be creative, also pointed out its conservative function:The action of this principle is exactly like that of the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities almost before they become evident; and in like manner no unbalanced deficiency in the animal kingdom can ever reach any conspicuous magnitude, because it would make itself felt at the very first step, by rendering existence difficult and extinction almost sure soon to follow.9So, in time, the flightless condition would spread throughout the remaining cormorant population. This inability to fly would be a survival advantage to these birds, but it involved a loss of genetic information, and hence is in the opposite direction to that required to turn microbes into microbiologists or fish into philosophers.10 Soil microbiologist: Evolution no help in research Don Batten interviews Professor ‘Skip’ Skipper Horace D. Skipper is Professor Emeritus, Soil Microbiology, College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences, Clemson University, South Carolina, USA. He has a B.S. from North Carolina State University, M.S. from Oregon State University and a Ph.D. from Oregon State. His main field of research and teaching concerns microbes that benefit plant growth. He was also honoured to be elected President of Clemson University’s Faculty Senate. Dr ‘Skip’ Skipper I met Dr Skipper when I spoke at the Creation Study Group meeting in Greenville SC last year. Dr Skipper’s research includes the role of beneficial soil organisms in plant growth and also the degradation of pollutants and pesticides.1 Skip became particularly interested in the creation-evolution debate in the early 1990s after hearing Dr D. James Kennedy (Coral Ridge Ministries) on a DVD, where he showed the link between abortion and other social issues and evolutionary dogma. Dr Skipper is active with the Creation Study Group 2 in Greenville SC. Marvellous microbes Dr Skipper researched nitrogen fixation in plants, where bacteria stimulate the formation of nodules on the roots of plants and the bacteria then reside in those nodules, living on food provided by the host plant. The bacteria take nitrogen from the atmosphere and make it available to the host plant in a suitable chemical form. This marvellous ability3 means that plants such as soybeans and cowpeas (legumes) do not need nitrogen fertilizer. Dr Skipper: “Since there are about 50 genes in the root-nodule bacterium and another 50 or so genes in the host plant involved in nodule formation and nitrogen fixation in legumes, the process speaks loud and clear of design and not evolution by random changes called mutations. The probability of multiple genes coming together accidentally to fix nitrogen is beyond comprehension.” Soybean root nodules. These contain Rhizobium bacteria that take nitrogen from the air and make it available to plants for their nutrition. “If mankind could develop corn (or wheat or rice) with a bacterium partner to fix nitrogen, it would be a great scientific breakthrough that could save billions of dollars for producers and consumers. Such an accomplishment would come from intelligently-designed experiments, proven by the scientific method, not chance mutations.” Dr Skipper has also researched mycorrhizae, which are beneficial fungus-root associations: “Again there are multiple genes involved in the host plant and the associated beneficial fungus to promote nutrient uptake, especially phosphorus, and water, and in some cases to provide protection from root injury by pests. Plants like onions, peaches, pine trees, orchids, and many others will not grow without this beneficial fungus-root association. To me this is another great example of designed function by our Creator and Redeemer.” I asked Skip if evolution played any role in his real-world scientific research. “In my years of research on biological nitrogen fixation with emphasis on soybeans and cowpeas, evolution was not a factor in our studies. Interestingly, my student textbook on plant breeding in the 1960s did not even have the term evolution.” Mending microbes Diverse microbes are essential for the health of the planet. Dr Skipper: “In my research on microbes that break down pollutants and pesticides, I have always been fascinated by the many microbes that could detoxify and even use toxic chemicals for energy or carbon sources. There are some chemicals that can persist for years in the environment, but even with PCBs [a type of toxic, persistent organic pollutant], native microbes can slowly detoxify these products.” “Soil microbes perform a major role in decomposing organic materials; otherwise we would be buried up to our eyeballs in organic waste. Some are pests to humans since the Fall, but the many beneficial ones are a very necessary part of creation.” Where did the first microbe come from? Dr Skipper: “ A wide range of microbes were created at the beginning for the world to function properly. Of course evolutionists want us to believe that one type of microbe just popped into existence by some unknown natural process. The first living cell thus had to come from spontaneous generation from non-living matter; but the famous creationist scientist Louis Pasteur disproved this notion in 1859. There is not one shred of evidence to support the ‘blind faith’ precept of spontaneous generation.4 And yet, the general theory of evolution depends on this to get started. “Theories on the origin of life and its diversification are outside the scope of operational / experimental science. What scientist was present to observe the origin of life? What scientist has created life from nonliving materials in his or her laboratory by random chance (just physics and chemistry with no intelligent design)? How does one experimentally test a hypothesis of origin? When one moves away from operational sciences that are based on the scientific method and moves to historical science of origins, then multiple, alternative theories are appropriate to fully inform the public. Since all hypotheses on origins are outside of the scientific method, origins should be addressed in historical science or philosophy of science courses and textbooks, not mainstream science classes.” Microbes-to-microbiologists evolution? I asked Dr Skipper if he saw any evidence for large-scale change in microbes that could support the idea that microbes could change into mankind. “Not one scientist has ever created a model that can account for the generation of the staggering quantities of genetic information required for a microbe to change into all the other life forms on earth.” Root nodules from soybean. Bright red leghemoglobin indicates active nitrogen fixation by the bacteria in the nodule. “Even though laboratories have cultured some bacteria for thousands of generations, no one has reported seeing even the rudimentary beginnings of something more complex coming out of the incubators. Could mutations and natural selection explain the transformation of microbes into microbiologists (evolution)? Dr Skipper: “The last things potential parents and also most evolutionists want to see with the birth of their child are mutations, because nearly all mutations are at least slightly harmful (and they cause a lot of diseases). Geneticist Dr John Sanford has shown how mutations are destroying us, not creating us.5 And the fossils? “The fossil record does not support the microbe-to-microbiologist dogma, or even the ‘deep time’ idea. Stephen J. Gould, a vocal evolutionist, often stated that the fossil record did not support the Darwinian theory of evolution. He said that this lack of support was a ‘trade secret’ for paleontologists and curators of museums. In other words, the public has been misled / deceived. “Fossilization does not speak of millions or billions of years either. Fossilization has to occur in a relatively short time span; otherwise, the dead plant or animal would be scavenged or decomposed (by microbes) before it could become a fossil.” Mycorrhizal fungus inside a root cell. External hyphae of mycorrhizae in soil that increases uptake of nutrients and moisture. Indonesian mud volcano keeps erupting Geological forces inside the earth unleash disaster by Tas Walker Early on Monday 29 May 2006, a mud volcano started erupting in East Java, Indonesia, near the village of Sidoarjo. 1Boiling water, steam, gas and mud began gushing from the ground just 200 metres (650 feet) from a drilling well exploring for natural gas.Enough mud is flowing out of the volcano to fill 50 Olympic swimming pools every day. 2 The mud has destroyed factories, schools, 10,000 homes, a dozen villages and displaced over 50,000 people. It has buried a major freeway and a railway line.3Some say it was caused by a “kickback” at the tip of the drill that fractured the rock strata around 2,000 m below the surface. Others say it was caused by an earthquake that hit the coast of Central Java two days before (seebox). NASA Earthen walls have been built and now contain the mud to an area of seven square kilometres (3 sq. miles). The mud is up to 20 metres deep.The locals call the volcano Lusi. 4 Every effort to stop the eruption has failed, including dams, drainage channels and even dropping massive concrete balls into the crater. Scientists think the volcano will continue erupting for decades. More homes are threatened as new mudflows appear in the vicinity.In 2007, geologists reported that the land around the mud volcano was subsiding. The mud escaping from beneath the surface was allowing the overlying rock strata to collapse. It could be the start of a caldera—a large basin-shaped volcanic depression. So far the ground under the mud has subsided over 60 m and the volcano has risen more than 25 m.5 Some geologists believe that, as the land subsides, more cracks could open up that develop into new mud volcanoes, making the mud volcano self-perpetuating.1Even though the Lusi mud volcano has been disastrous for the local area, the total volume of mud extruded in the first few years was less than one tenth of a cubic kilometre (0.1 km 3). That is small compared with volcanos such as Mt St Helens in the USA which ejected one cubic kilometre (1 km 3) of material in its 1980 eruption.6 In 1883, the infamous Indonesian volcano, Krakatoa, blasted out 18 km 3 of material.7 Even larger still, the Taupo volcano in New Zealand ejected an enormous 800 km 3 of debris, creating a huge caldera (now Lake Taupo, the largest freshwater lake in Oceania) a few thousand years ago.8Even larger were the volcanos that erupted during the Flood. One well-known deposit of volcanic lava in the UK extends for hundreds of kilometres, covering most of Northern Ireland and a large part of Scotland. Individual lava flows are up to 100 m thick, while the entire deposit is more than a kilometre thick.9Lusi demonstrates that vast geological forces still10 lie stored beneath the earth, and that these can inflict sudden damage and loss on tens of thousands of people in a relatively short time. Contrary to the impression we are given, it does not take millions of years for thick deposits of mud to accumulate. When geological forces are very large, the time involved can be very short, as the thousands of Lusi refugees know from personal experience.Lusi gives us a tiny clue into how the year-long catastrophe of the Flood could have unfolded. Lusi helps us picture how those enormous geological forces of the Flood day changed the surface levels of the earth and the oceans. This catastrophe destroyed the world as it existed at that time. What caused the volcano? Some geologists suggest that some two kilometres (1.2 miles) underground the exploration drill bored into a limestone area containing water at very high pressure. The water forced itself into the overlying strata creating a network of fractures that reached all the way to the surface.Instead of flowing through the drill pipe, the high-pressure water flowed through the fractures in the rock picking up mud from the overlying strata as it went. Eventually, it erupted as a mud volcano 200 m away from the well. 12Other geologists claim that an earthquake that hit Java two days earlier, not water from the drill, caused the deep fracturing. The high pressure mud and water in the overlying strata then travelled to the surface through these fractures.13 The basement rocks of the Brisbane area, Australia: Where do they fit in the creation model? by Tas Walker A geological model based on a creation model suggests that geological processes acting in the past varied in nature and intensity from time to time. Consequently, characteristics such as the physical scale of a rock unit, its degree of disturbance, how the unit responds to disturbance, its texture and fossil content will help classify the rocks within a young age . This concept has been applied to the basement rocks of the Brisbane area, Australia. Following a process of elimination, it is concluded that the basement rocks were deposited early during the Flood event, that is the Eruptive phase as defined by Walker’s creationists geologic model. Introduction One of the important tasks facing Creationists is to relate geological data within a young age. Geological data is interpreted and presented in terms of evolutionary framework. As a result, when a person inspects a geological map or reads a geological text-book it is not obvious how the data could possibly relate to the young age history.In 1994 Walker1 presented a geologic model based on the creation model at the third International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The model provides a framework to interpret the geology of an area in terms of a creationists understanding. A number of criteria were suggested by which rocks can be classified. Froede has independently proposed the same concept, that creationists use a geological framework based on the young age model, but has not developed the idea to where it can be used for classification purposes. 2This paper examines the basement rocks in the Brisbane area, Australia to see if they can be classified within the framework of Walker’s creationists geologic model. Relationship between the Genesis and geology The purpose of a creation geologic model is to successfully link two different sources of information, namely, written history and observed geological data. Whenever different sources of information are encountered, such as field notes and map information, they need to be related together. Unless this is done neither source will be of assistance to the other. Map information, for instance, provides no assistance to navigation until a location on the map can be tied to a physical location on the ground.The inability to link separate sources says nothing about the accuracy or reliability of the information. The absence of a link simply means that one source of information is not able to shed light on the other source. If an incorrect link is assumed the result will be confusion and error. Both sources of information may still be accurate and reliable yet the further one proceeds the more difficulties are encountered. The problem is not with the information but with the link.First, the geological model as presented in Pittsburgh will be outlined. Then the geology of the Brisbane area will be examined with a view to classification within this model. As further attempts are made to establish links between the creation record and the geological information the usefulness of the model be tested. The creation geological model Figure 1 shows an overview of the creation geological model as presented at Pittsburgh.3 The time-scale is shown on the left with the most recent time at the top and the earliest at the bottom. The scale is divided into four parts, each clearly identified with the young age. Two events are shown, the Creation event and the Flood event lasting about one year. The 1,700 year period between the Creation event and the Flood event is called the Lost-World era while the 4,300 year period from the Flood event to the present time is called the New-World era. Figure 1. Overview of Walker’s creation geological model. The term “event” conveys the idea of a significant happening within a short period of time whereas “era” relates to a much longer period of time. These terms reinforce the idea that geologic processes varied in intensity (rate of work) at different times in the past.The length of the time-scale reflects the length of time associated with the events and eras. The dates shown are based on Ussher’s chronology4 but changes to these dates, even of 1,000 years or so, would not affect the validity of the model.Correlated with the timescale is a second scale, a rock-scale, shown to the right with the most recent rocks at the top, and the earliest rocks at the bottom; the same way they occur in the earth. The lengths of the rockscale units conceptually correspond to the quantity of rock material found on the earth today and stand in marked contrast to the length of the units of the time-scale.This concept of time-rock correlation is fundamental to the creation geologic model and reflects the non-uniform effect of historical events on the geology of the earth. The concept focuses on the geologically significant processes indicating the relative intensity of those processes. The idea is indicated by arrows which, for example, point from the Creation event on the time-scale to the rocks on the rock-scale formed during this event. Similarly, arrows point from the Flood event on the time-scale to the rocks on the rock-scale formed during the Flood. Even though the Creation and Flood events happened quickly, they were responsible for almost all the rocks present on the earth today. The long eras, which make up virtually the whole time-scale, do not contribute significantly to the rock-scale. Because these eras have such little impact on the rock-scale, the exact dates, for the Creation and the Flood, within reason, are not critical to the model.For ease of classification and systematic analysis the four parts of the time-scale are subdivided as shown in Figure 2, using the time and process information in the scripture. The first level of sub-division is termed the stage. The Creation event is divided into two stages, the Foundational stage of two days’ duration and the Formative stage lasting four days. The Flood event is divided into two stages, the Inundatory stage and the Recessive stage. Figure 2. Walker’s creation geological model. The duration of the Inundatory stage of the Flood is shown at 60 days (a little more than 40 days) making the duration of the Recessive stage about 300 days. However the young age account can be interpreted at 150 days for the Inundatory stage making the Recessive stage just over 200 days. The last level of classification is termed the phase. The Foundational stage has two phases, the Original and Ensuing phases. The Formative stage also has two phases, the Derivative and Biotic phases. The Lost-World era is not further divided and so has only one phase of the same name. The Inundatory stage of the Flood event is divided into three phases, the Eruptive, the Ascending and the Zenithic phases. The Recessive stage of the Flood event has two phases, the Abative and Dispersive phases. For the New-World era two phases have been included, the Residual and Modern phases.The duration of each phase varies considerably as shown on the figure. The duration of the Inundatory stage of the Flood is shown at 60 days while the Recessive stage duration is 300 days. It is possible that, the Inundatory stage may have been longer at 150 days making the Recessive stage about 210 days long. This possible uncertainty in the timing should be kept in mind.The aim of the model is for all component parts such as each event, era, stage, and phase, to relate to a geologically significant process with easily identifiable starting and finishing criteria. In this way it should be possible to correlate the model with the geology in the field.Note that even though the terms event, era, stage and phase are shown for convenience on the rock-scale, they are actually time terms. It is proposed that the rocks formed at these times be given the same name but with the time term replaced with the word “rocks”. For example, rocks formed during the Derivative phase would be called Derivative rocks and those formed during the Inundatory stage, Inundatory rocks.Finally, four geological actions are shown in Figure 2. In chronological order the first is the Foundational action which represents the very first creative act that founded the earth in the beginning. Also during the Creation event, the Formative action took place on day three causing the waters which covered the earth to be gathered together into the ocean basins and allowing dry land to form. At the beginning of the Flood the Eruptive action burst open the springs of the great deep initiating the inundation of the continents. And lastly, the operation which closed the springs of the great deep and produced the new ocean basins is called the Abative action. Following this action the waters of the Flood receded from the earth. In geologic terms an action can be defined as a world scale geologic disturbance which formed or modified the large scale geologic structures of the earth. Actions are represented on the figure as a single arrow but in fact may have involved a sequence of tectonic activity continuing over one or two, or more phases. Numerous suggestions have been made as to the specific form of some actions, including rapid subduction of the continents, 5 lateral movement of the contents following the impact of a giant meteor,6 lateral movement of the continents following rupture of the crust, 7 and crustal distortion due to the gravitational attraction of a celestial body approaching the earth.8 As far as the model is concerned, the key concept involves significant tectonic and crustal movement accompanied by major changes to the surface shape of the earth. An action, therefore, would substantially disturb any pre-existing geologic structures on the earth and initiate secondary water-driven geologic processes. Geological principles such as erosion, sedimentation and superposition have been incorporated, but at this stage the geologic data has not been consulted. Consequently, the relative volume of rock material currently present on the earth for each phase is not known. Nor is it known if some phases are now absent. While we are confident of finding New-World rocks and Flood rocks, it is possible that rocks formed earlier during the Lost-World era and the Creation event may have been destroyed during the Flood. Flood rocks must have been derived from Creation rocks and Lost-World rocks by erosion, alteration and magmatic differentiation. It is possible that some rocks such as Biotic and Original never existed. The point is that the model provides a coherent framework for approaching the data from a creation point of view. Classification criteria Inherent in the creation model is the concept that past geologic processes varied in nature and intensity from time to time. Most of the rocks of the earth must have formed under different geologic processes to the slow and gradual, relatively small scale processes observed today. It is anticipated that this variation in magnitude will be reflected in certain unique geologic characteristics and help classify rock formations within the framework of the model.Some potentially useful geological characteristics have been deduced from the nature and sequence of the processes. These include the physical scale of the geologic structure and whether it has been disturbed by tectonic processes since deposition. In addition, the manner in which the structure has responded to disturbances would be significant as would the texture of the rocks and the presence or absence of fossils. Fossil footprints of terrestrial creatures have special importance for classification within the young geological model. This list is preliminary because, with experience, additional criteria will be found useful.To differentiate between rocks formed during the Creation event and rocks formed at later times two important metaphysical questions must be addressed. The first involves the processes operating during the creation. It is reasonable to assume that natural laws would have operated once supernatural actions were completed. For example, the creation of the first bird was a supernatural act which has not been humanly observed and has never been repeated. However, once the creature was formed, we can accept that its physiological functions such as breathing, blood circulation, and digestion would have been like what we observe today. In the same way, the creation of the earth instantaneously on the first day was a supernatural act. However, subsequent processes such as the movement of water and the precipitation of dissolved material would have followed natural processes.The second question involves the form of creation. Would a inteigent designer instantaneously create rocks with an apparent history? Fossils in rocks, for example, look like they lived and died before the rock was formed. Most creationists today conclude that rocks were not created instantaneously ex nihilo containing fossils. Apart from the illusion of history, the appearance of dead fossils would not be consistent with a good creation. Furthermore, fossils are easily explained as being destroyed during the Flood event.Many sedimentary and metamorphic rocks appear to be derived from pre-existing source rocks. By the same reasoning such rocks would not have been instantaneously created. This is not to say that sedimentary or metamorphic rocks were not produced during the Creation event by natural processes operating at that time. However rocks created instantaneously out of nothing would not appear to have been derived from pre-existing source rocks. Scale The young age model proposes that the geographical extent of geological processes was different at different times in the past. Consequently the scale of a geological structure should give an indication of the geographical extent of the process involved in forming that structure. It is anticipated therefore that scale will be a useful characteristic for classifying geological structures. Naturally the scale of a geological structure refers not only to its geographical extent but also to its thickness. As a convenient measure four categories of scale are here defined: world scale, continental scale, regional scale and local scale. Perhaps the most useful single parameter is the volume of material in a geological structure. A helpful scheme is set out in Table 1. This table indicates, for example, that a world scale structure would involve more than 100,000,000 km 3 of material whereas continental scale structures would involve between 100,000,000 km 3 and 10,000 km3 of material. Typical dimensions to achieve a volume of 100,000,000 km3 would be 3,000 km by 3,000 km in aerial extent coupled with a thickness of 10 km. Any combination of dimensions achieving a comparable volume could be considered equivalent from a scale point of view. Scale Limiting Volume km3 Typical length by width by thickness ← 3000 World Continental 100 000 000 km x 3000 km x 10 km Regional Local ← 10 000 100 km x 100 km x 1 km Table 1. A scale classification for geological structures. Degree of Disturbance A definite sequence for past geological disturbances is set out by the young age model. The major disturbances of great intensity are the Foundational action, the Formative action, the Eruptive action and the Abative action. Such actions would significantly disturb structures already formed. For any geologic structure the degree of disturbance would depend on the number and intensity of actions to which it was exposed. It is expected therefore that the degree of disturbance of rock structures will assist in their classification.Tectonic activity during the New-World era would be of much lesser intensity and would have disturbed the geologic structures of the earth to a much lesser extent. The same would be anticipated of tectonic activity during the Lost-World era. Response of the Structure According to the young age model definite time periods, which vary greatly in duration, separate past geological actions. For example there were only two days between the Foundational and Formative actions but over 1,700 years between the Formative and Eruptive actions. Similarly, the time between the Eruptive and Abative actions was relatively short at sixty days compared with the 4,000 years which have elapsed since the Abative action to the present. (As discussed earlier the duration of the Inundatory stage may have been 150 days, but this is still a relatively short time.)How soon a geological structure is disturbed after its formation will affect the way in which it responds to the disturbance. Broadly, a rock formation may respond in a plastic manner with oozing, twisting, bending and folding or it may respond in a brittle manner displaying faulting, crushing, and fracturing.The response of rocks to imposed stress is an involved process. Even hard and brittle rocks can respond in a plastic manner if they are deeply buried when disturbed. 9 It should also be noted that the concept of brittle and plastic depends on the scale at which the units are viewed. For example, numerous, small, brittle failures can add together to give smooth curves and flow like structures which, when viewed from a distance, looks like a plastic response.The creation geological model introduces two additional factors affecting the response of rocks to disturbances, factors not normally considered in uniformitarian models. The first factor involves the extent to which a sediment has hardened since deposition and before disturbance. Material properties of rocks such as fracture strength, elasticity and viscosity which prescribe how the rock will respond to disturbance all depend on the degree of diagenesis. This in turn depends on such factors as the physical and chemical characteristics of the rock material, temperature and pressure resulting from depth of burial, and the time between deposition and disturbance. Given the right chemical situation, soft sediment can harden rapidly. Concrete, for example, can set within a few hours and reach full strength after a month or two. Yet, even though sediments could harden quickly, the young age model suggests that sometimes rocks would have been disturbed and deformed while still soft.The second factor arises because large volumes of sediments would be deposited rapidly and contain significant amounts of water. The presence of water in soft sediments reduces the stress required to produce deformation and assists the relative movement of grains to each other.It is expected therefore that response of rocks to disturbance will help classify units within the young age model when the timing of geological actions is taken into account. Texture A number of issues concern the texture of rocks and how these would be classified within the young age model. The first involves the anticipated texture of sedimentary rocks deposited at different times. The model envisions that the hardness of source material would vary from time to time as would the erosive intensity of water-driven geologic processes. These differences would affect the texture of the resultant sedimentary rocks.For example, rocks formed from fine, soft, unconsolidated source material would have a fine texture, no matter how intense the erosive action of flowing water. On the other hand, the texture of rocks derived from hardened source material would depend on the erosive intensity of the water flows. Intense erosive action on hard, strong source rock would produce rocks of coarse texture such as conglomerates and breccias. Clasts of soft sediments could be eroded from partially hardened source rock. These would exhibit plastic behaviour after deposition or be rounded in shape.The second issue, a metaphysical one, involves the texture of rocks formed during the Original phase of the Creation event. The concept of the Original phase is of an instantaneous supernatural creation out of nothing at the beginning of the first day. The nature of such created rocks was discussed in a previous section where it was proposed that they would not appear to be derived from pre-existing source rocks. Consequently sedimentary and metamorphic rocks would not have formed during the Original phase of the Creation event. The third issue, also of a metaphysical nature, is whether volcanic activity occurred during the Creation event producing extrusive igneous rocks. For the sky to be filled with debris ejected by volcanic eruptions and accumulating into large deposits of pyroclastics would seem to run counter to the concept of a perfect creation. It certainly would not be “good” for the atmosphere to be dense with scalding hot ash that settled and welded itself into crystal tuff. Nor is it likely that the contamination would clear in time, ready for the creation of birds, animals and people within a few days because ash can persist in the atmosphere for weeks or months after volcanic eruptions. It would appear unlikely therefore that tuffs and pyroclastics would have formed during the Creation event.There is a remote possibility that certain igneous rocks could form during the Creation event without spoiling the new creation. Magmatic material could be extruded under the ocean or within the crust of the earth without harm. Even extrusive volcanic rocks could form on land provided the extrusion was not explosive or injurious to the environment and provided the lava flow was in an isolated location where it could cause no damage. These processes however would not produce pyroclastics or crystal tuffs. Fossils Fossils are described as the remains of organisms that lived in the past. 10 As discussed earlier, metaphysically, it is considered that all fossils have been formed since life was created during the Creation event and that no fossils were created supernaturally within the rocks.Fossils indicate rapid burial of living creatures before they decompose, and before being consumed by other creatures. The state of preservation of the fossil would indicate how quickly the organism was buried, and whether it was subsequently disturbed. The distribution of fossils would reflect the distribution of life on the earth at the time of the Flood and the order in which they were buried by the Flood. The requirement for rapid burial makes it more likely for fossils to form during the Flood than during the Lost-World or New-World eras. Figure 3. The Brisbane area. Note that the Biotic phase has been included within the Creation event. This phase allows for the remote possibility that some plankton or other organic material may have become trapped after its creation when sediments were forming in the oceans.11 Such a possibility raises the metaphysical issue of “death before the curse of death which followed Adam’s sin”.12 Consequently the possibility of fossiliferous organic material within rocks formed during the Creation event is not inconsistent with the record.The use of fossils to correlate strata is fundamental to current geological practice and routinely employed to interpret geological structures within a region. Fossils have also been used to set up geological systems with their alleged world wide “time zones” and as such are utilised to tie regional geology from different parts of the world into a universal time sequence. From a young age perspective, fossils should be useful for classifying rocks on a regional basis and their distribution would relate to the progressive destruction of biogeographical zones. However, the model provides no basis for assuming a time correlation on an inter-regional scale based on fossil evidence because this would require each index fossil to be deposited worldwide at the same time during the whole of the Flood event.14 Geology of the Brisbane area Now that the young age model has been described and a number of classification criteria outlined, we will attempt to classify as a test case the basement rocks of the Brisbane area. The actual area examined is 60 km long and 50 km wide as indicated within the rectangle shown on Figure 3. Figure 4. Simplified geology of the Brisbane area. Key to geological units: Nfb—Neranleigh-Fernvale beds; BPh—Bunya Phyllite; RG—Rocksberg Greenstone; Kb— Kurwongbah beds.A simplified geological map of the area after Willmott and Stevens15 is shown in Figure 4. The geology has been reduced to three broad type categories: basement rocks, intrusive units of granitic texture and rocks on the basement. The basement rocks occupy a reasonably large proportion of the area trending from a north-west to south-east direction and form the high elevation hilly country of the D’Aguilar Range and the hilly country south of Brisbane. Diorite, granodiorite and adamellite plutons intrude the basement rocks to the north-west.16 The majority of the rocks which lie over the basement are of sedimentary nature although there are some minor volcanic units occupying restricted areas. All these units lie against the basement rocks either with an uncomformable or faulted contact.17 General description of basement rocks As can be seen in Figure 4 the basement rocks occupy a significant part of the area of interest. Four rock units have been defined, the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds, the Bunya Phyllite, the Rocksberg Greenstone and the Kurwongbah beds.18 The lithologies of the four rock units which comprise the basement of the Brisbane area are described in a number of sources19-22 and are summarised in Table 2. Neranleigh-Fernvale beds Byna Phyllite Rocksberg Greenstone Kurwongbah beds Spilitic metavolcanics abundant) (most Metavolcanics (intercalated lenses) Spilitic metavolcanics Basic (flows and pyroclastics) (abundant lenses) metavolcanics; intercalated Conglomerate lenses (minor, pebble to boulder) Arenite/Greywacke (in places oolitic, crinoid fragments) Arenite (minor) Argillite (minor) Phyllite Chert, jasper (some large lenses, bedded, radiolarian) Phyllite, schist (minor) Phyllite, slate, schist (minor) Chert (minor bands) Table 2. The lithology of the rock units comprising the basement of the Brisbane area. The Neranleigh-Fernvale beds are hard, chiefly metasedimentary rocks, now folded and steeply inclined. 23 Five different lithologies having a blocky and structurally complex relationship to each other are recognised within these beds.The dominant rock type within the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds is a spilitic metavolcanic 24 commonly referred to as greenstone. It has a greenish-grey colour, and is fine grained. Sometimes it has a blocky appearance with few traces of the original flows while in other places it has a foliated and fractured appearance. 25 The term spilitic refers to the belief that the greenstone is altered basaltic lava, typically of submarine origin in which the feldspar has been albitized. This alteration is believed to be the result of chemical reaction between seawater and the hot basalts. 26Conglomerate lenses up to 300 mm thick crop out at different stratigraphic levels within the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds outside the immediate area of interest to the south. Clasts which range from pebbles to boulders are of two types: angular fragments 10 to 200 mm long, and rounded pebbles and boulders from 10 to 1,000 mm in diameter.27Greywacke is another abundant lithology within the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds, consisting of a hard, poorly sorted fine grained sandstone containing abundant feldspar and rock fragments in a clay-rich matrix. Large angular fragments of black shale from surrounding sediments are common in places. This arenite forms thick bands with few traces of individual beds, and where exposed has a blocky appearance. Fossil crinoid fragments have been found within these rocks in some areas.28Another minor lithology within the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds is argillite, a hardened and slightly recrystallised mudstone or shale, very fine grained with bedding commonly visible. It grades into slate locally and is closely fractured in many exposures. 29The Neranleigh-Fernvale beds also contain significant horizons of tough, fine grained silica-rich rocks such as quartzite, chert and jasper. These rocks are very hard, with distinct bedding in some places but massive and blocky in others. Fossils of radiolaria are found within the chert in a number of localities. The Bunya Phyllite is a more intensely crumpled and deformed metamorphic unit. It is light to medium grey, banded with layers of quartz and mica. The quartz layers are commonly contorted by later small folds and then cut by narrow veinlets of quartz. The mica crystals lie in one direction giving the slaty cleavage and provide a distinct sheen to the rock.30 Thin beds of arenite resembling those of the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds occur in the south-western Figure 5. Relationship between geological units comprising the basement rocks of Brisbane. belt of outcrop of the Bunya Phyllite unit. Metavolcanic rocks are observed but rare.31 The Rocksberg Greenstone consists almost entirely of spilitic metavolcanic flows and pyroclastics similar to the rocks within the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds. The rocks are foliated and crumpled. In some places sizable crystals of pyroxene Figure 6. Generalised SE-NW geological cross-section in the Brisbane area. are visible. Some minor phyllite and schist also occurs within the unit.32 The Kurwongbah beds are composed of basic metavolcanics (greenstone), minor argillite and quartzite similar to those within the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds.33 The relationship between the four units which form the basement of the Brisbane area is illustrated in Figure 5. The Neranleigh-Fernvale beds, Bunya Phyllite and Rocksberg Greenstone have a faulted relationship with each other. 34 The boundary between the Rocksberg Greenstone and Kurwongbah beds may result either from interfingering of sedimentary or volcanic rocks, or from repetition by folding or faulting. 35The relationship between the basement rocks and the other rocks in the Brisbane area is illustrated in the interpretive generalised cross-section shown in Figure 6. The basement forms an anticlinal core which is intruded at the center by granitic igneous masses. 36 At the contact with the granite the basement rocks have been metamorphosed to hard hornfels.37 The rocks which have been deposited on the basement have either an unconformable or faulted contact at the surface.38 Geological interpretation The general approach to classification within the young age model is a process of elimination based on the characteristics discussed in the earlier section. The basement rocks are the most difficult units to classify in the region because there is a conspicuous lack of fossils. Moreover, different lithologies within the units cannot be correlated with each other on account of the units being extensively deformed, leaving them in a faulted and blocky relationship with each other. Consequently the units have appeared in different positions on geological maps since the time they were first explored. Originally assigned to the Precambrian, they were later moved to the Silurian but now they are shown straddling the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary. The model will draw on different characteristics of the rocks to classify them within the young age framework. Figure 7. The New England Fold Belt. Scale We note that the basement metasediments within the area of interest form part of a much larger structure termed the New England Fold Belt,39 a region nearly 300 km wide extending along the Australian coastline about 1,500 km as shown in Figure 7. A fold belt, or orogenic belt is a linear region that has been folded and deformed in a mountain building episode. The concept of the New England Orogen has changed over the years depending on the various geological ideas in vogue at the time. Initially the belt was envisaged as a geosynclinal scheme, then a two-dimensional plate tectonic model and more recently the interpretation follows a terrane approach. The New England Orogen is regarded as a tectonic collage comprising numerous terranes which amalgamated, accreted and interacted with the margin of Gondwana.40 Even though the structure comprises a collage of terranes, for the purposes of establishing its scale the different units may be considered together. Certainly the sediments were all deposited before the end of the orogenic event which ties them into a distinct time zone. Coupling the extensive geographic area of the sediments with their thickness we find that they are indeed of large scale. Early estimates of the thickness of the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds were at 7,000 m maximum whereas currently they are described as of an indeterminate but large thickness. For the Bunya Phyllite early estimates have the thickness at 3,000 m maximum but now the thickness is described as indeterminate, but may be less than 2,000 m. The thickness of the Kurwongbah beds is given as indeterminate. Similarly for the Rocksberg Greenstone early estimates have the thickness at 3,000 m maximum whereas later estimates have the thickness as indeterminate, but large. 41,42Assuming 3,000 m average thickness for the metasediments and taking the aerial dimensions of the 1,500 km long and 300 km wide New England Fold Belt, the calculated scale of the structures is in excess of 1,000,000 km 3. By assessing the unit as continental scale, we can attempt a preliminary fit within the classification scheme. This is summarised in Table 3. Event/Era Stage New-World Phase Modern Residual Flood Recessive Dispersive Abative Inundatory Lost-World Creation Zenithic No—Local scale expected No—Regional and local scale expected No—Regional and local scale expected Yes, but unlikely becasue unit is foundational to other geology in the area Yes Ascending Yes Eruptive Yes Lost-World Formative Does unit fit in phase? Biotic Derivative Foundational Ensuing Original No—Local scale expected Yes Yes Perhaps—World scale expected Perhaps—World scale expected Table 3. Classification of continental scale rocks within the model. Because the geological structure is of continental scale it would not have been deposited during the Lost-World and the New-World eras; that is the Modern, Residual and Lost-World phases as shown in Table 3. We would expect that the intensity of geological processes at these times would be similar to the intensity of geological processes operating at present and produce local or perhaps regional scale structures.The formation of continental scale structures would also be unlikely during the Dispersive phase of the Flood event. Although considerable quantities of water would flow from the continents at this time, deposition from the dispersed watercourses would be of regional and local scale.The early Recessive stage of the Flood event, the Abative phase, may involve continental scale structures as the waters flowed off the continents in large coherent sheets of wide geographic extent. However the Recessive stage would be less likely from a relational aspect. Almost all the other rocks in the area are deposited on the basement rocks indicating that if the basement rocks were formed during the Flood event it would be early in that event. Consequently it would be unlikely that they would have formed during the Abative phase.Continental scale structures would be consistent with deposition during the Creation event, particularly during the Formative stage. To raise the Lost-World continents above the waters covering the earth at the time would involve continental scale geological processes and result in continental scale geological structures. By the same reasoning continental scale structures would be expected during the Inundatory stage of the Flood event when continental scale geological processes flooded the continents with water.By identifying the rock units as part of a continental scale structure we have narrowed the number of possible phases where the units could be classified within the model. However there is still a range of uncertainty and we need to consider other criteria to be more specific. Degree of Disturbance All the rock units which make up the basement rocks of the Brisbane area have been extensively disturbed making it difficult to recognise the stratigraphic succession.43 The Neranleigh-Fernvale beds have tight folds with rotated bedding. 44 The beds are steeply inclined, displaying moderate to steep dips. 45 The Bunya Phyllite is a more intensely crumpled, contorted and deformed metamorphic unit which also has moderate to steep dips. The Rocksberg Greenstone has up to two generations of folding and dominant transpositional layering. That is, the dominant direction of the beds is parallel to the orientation of the axial plane of the folds of the units. The Kurwongbah beds have three generations of folding recognised and dominant transposition layering parallel to the first generation axial plane foliation. The unit also has moderate to steep dips.46,47Summing up, the basement rocks of the Brisbane area have experienced moderate to intense disturbance which can help classify the rocks within the context of the young age model. The probability that these units formed during a particular phase of the model is summarised in Table 4. Event/Era Stage New-World Phase Modern Residual Flood Recessive Dispersive Abative Inundatory Lost-World Creation Zenithic Does unit fit in phase? No—Minimal disturbance expected No—Minimal disturbance expected No—Minimal disturbance expected No—Minimal disturbance expected Unlikely—Only moderate to minimal disturbance expected Ascending Yes—Moderate to intense disturbance expected Eruptive Yes—Moderate to intense disturbance expected Lost-World Formative Biotic Derivative Foundational Ensuing Original Yes—Intense to moderate disturbance expected Yes—Intense to moderate disturbance expected Unlikely—Intense disturbance expected Unlikely—Intense disturbance expected Table 4. Classification of moderate to intense disturbance within the model. The presence of moderate to intense disturbance within the basement rocks of the Brisbane area would require deposition early in the geological history to allow time for exposure to the deforming effect of geological actions. This would rule out the New-World era and the Recessive stage of the Flood event; that is the Modern, Residual, Dispersive and Abative phases because rocks deposited at these times would be exposed to only limited tectonic activity.Disturbance of this nature would be possible following deposition during the early phases of the Flood event assuming the Eruptive action extended over several phases, but less likely during the Zenithic phase when the majority of the Eruptive action would have been nearing completion.The Lost-World phase needs no further consideration as it has already been ruled out on the basis of the scale of the basement rocks.Deposition during the Creation event is possible because rocks deposited at this time would be exposed to a number of disturbances. The early phases of the Creation event would be less likely than the later phases because the units display moderate to intense disturbance. Intense to very intense disturbance would be anticipated for rocks formed early in the Creation event because they would be deformed by the Formative action while soft as well as by the geological actions during the Flood event.The moderate to intense character of the disturbance experienced by the rocks has enabled improved discrimination over that possible with the scale criteria. The disturbance displayed by the rock units has made the Zenithic, Ensuing and Original phases less likely. Response of the Structure The basement rocks of the Brisbane area exhibit both a brittle and a plastic response. The Neranleigh-Fernvale beds indicate plastic response in the form of open folds and isoclinal folds, particularly the chert beds. They also exhibit a brittle response in the form of large scale thrust faults. In the Bunya Phyllite several generations of folding is recognised while only minor local faulting has been observed. The Rocksberg Greenstone has up to two generations of folding recognised with dominant transpositional layering. In the Kurwongbah beds three generations of folding are recognised. Faulting is recognised only locally.48,49The folds within the structures could indicate that the formations have been disturbed while still plastic. Brittle response is indicated by the fact that the formations are closely fractured in many exposures, blocky in appearance, and cut by straight and narrow quartz veins. 50Further evidence of a large scale brittle response is evidenced because the units tend to have a faulted relationship with each other. In fact it is difficult to correlate the beds with each other because they are typically separated from other units by faults. 51The presence of both plastic and brittle response helps classify the units as summarised in Table 5. (Note that comments are not necessarily included against phases which have already been eliminated as possibilities in earlier sections.) Event/Era Stage New-World Phase Does unit fit in phase? Modern Residual Flood Recessive Dispersive Abative Inundatory Lost-World Creation Zenithic Unlikely to have enough time to harden Unlikely to have enough time to harden Doubtful whether enough time to harden Ascending Perhaps—Plastic expected but brittle possible if hardening was rapid Eruptive Perhaps—Plastic expected but brittle possible if hardening was rapid Lost-World Formative Biotic Derivative Foundational Ensuing Original Yes—Plastic and brittle expected Yes—Plastic and brittle expected Yes—Plastic and brittle expected Yes—Plastic and brittle expected Table 5. Classification of plastic and brittle response within the model. The plastic response suggests that the sediments were exposed to disturbance while still soft. The brittle response indicates that the formations had already hardened before they were disturbed which would make deposition late in the Flood event during the Dispersive, Abative or Zenithic phases unlikely. Sediments deposited at these times would not have sufficient time to harden or be exposed to significant geological actions to respond in a brittle manner. The dual plastic and brittle response displayed would tend to favour the Creation event. Deposition of the sediments during the Creation event would provide opportunity for plastic disturbance at this time. Subsequently, after the sediments had hardened, the sediments would respond in a brittle manner to disturbances during the Flood event. Alternatively it is possible for a plastic and brittle response to have occurred during the Flood event provided deposition was early enough in the event and hardening of the sediments was rapid enough. It is still not possible to discriminate further at this stage. Texture The textures of the six different lithologies which comprise the basement rocks of the Brisbane area are summarised in Table 6.52 Type of Rock Texture Spilitic metavolcanics Volcanic—pyroclastics, crystal tuff, basalt flows with occasional pillow structures, dolerite sills. Conglomerate lenses Angular shale fragments 10mm to 200mm long. Rounded granite, adamellite, granodiorite, and some chert and limestone from 10mm to 1,000mm in size. Feldspathic matrix has grain size from medium to coarse sandstone. Silt and clay fractions are absent. Arenite/Greywacke Grains range from fine to very coarse but generally medium to coarse. Grains are angular to subrounded and the boundaries are often altered by severe compaction. Grains are feldspathic and lithic. Feldspathic grains of plagioclase (commonly saussuritised), unaltered orthoclase, and microline. Lithic fragments include chert, schist and quartzite. Coarser grained beds may contain abundant shale clasts which show signs of plastic behaviour since deposition. Quartz content is variable but can be up to 30%. Silicified ooliths occur in some areas. Beds can be massive or vary in thickness up to 3 m. Normal and occasional reverse grading has been observed. Argillite Finely grained, shale and siltstone, thinly bedded Phyllite The grain size of all constituent minerals is about 0.01 mm except that of granular quartz in veins which is about 0.25 mm. Chert, jasper Interbedded with shale and arenite. Table 6. The texture of the rocks comprising the basement of the Brisbane area Although the greenstone is described as spilitic or of submarine origin, the presence of subaerial pyroclastics and crystal tuff is also reported. If this depositional environment is correctly interpreted, then deposition during the Creation event would be eliminated by the metaphysical arguments outlined in the section concerning classification criteria. There remains, therefore, the Flood event as the most likely time for the formation of the greenstone.As a point of interest, Hunter 53 suggests that Archaean greenstone sequences were deposited during “Stage I of the Flood, (day 1 to 40)” being the result of “upward (vertical) movement of fluids on a massive scale.” He submits that the composition of these fluids might include water and steam with dissolved minerals, gasses, and magma, reflecting an origin from deep within the earth released when the “springs of the great deep burst forth ” Hunter also suggests that the greenstone sequences from other parts of the geological column might also be the products of “Stage I” of the Flood event. This is consistent with the conclusion reached here.The conglomerate lenses have been derived from pre-existing source rock. As discussed in the section about classification criteria, this would preclude their formation during the Original phase because there were no rocks existing before the Original rocks. Deposition of angular shale clasts during the Ensuing Phase is unlikely because the source material is expected to be soft. However the conglomerates could be deposited during any other phase of the model.Some idea of the relative timing of the various units associated with the basement rocks of the Brisbane area can be inferred from the texture of the conglomerate lenses. Firstly, sufficient time would have been required for the source rocks to harden before being eroded to produce the clasts. Hardening of the sediments could occur within days or weeks given suitable conditions.54 Secondly, the composition of the clasts provides constraints on the sequence of geological events. The angular shale fragments composing the conglomerate have presumably been derived from the argillite within the basement rocks therefore making the conglomerate younger than the shale. In the same way the conglomerate would be younger than the chert because it contains chert clasts. The rounded clasts of granite, granodiorite and adamellite are of similar composition to the granitic units which, as shown in Figure 4, outcrop within the basement rocks. Within the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds, therefore, the conglomerate lenses would appear to be the youngest lithology.The texture of the arenite or greywacke has been attributed to rapid deposition.55 One indication of this is the wide range in grain size from very fine clay to very coarse sand-sized grains. This wide grain size-range indicates that there has not been a suitable mechanism or sufficient time to sort the material into a more limited or homogeneous size-range. Another indication of rapid deposition is the angular shape of the grains implying limited time for the grains to abrade against each other and produce a rounded shape. These features which are characteristic of greywacke around the world are not observed in rocks forming at the present time. 56 A third sign of high energy sedimentation is the presence of shale clasts within the beds. The current flow was obviously intense enough to erode the shale and incorporate the clasts into the arenites as they were being deposited. The power of the process is also indicated by sharp and in places scoured basal contacts. Other evidence for rapid deposition is seen in the internal and external bedding characteristics of the units such as level and persistent bedding and graded bedding. Finally the thick and massive beds indicate large volumes of sediment which is also suggestive of rapid deposition.Once again, using the metaphysical argument from the section on classification criteria, the greywacke could not have been created instantaneously during the Original phase because it has been derived from pre-existing rock. The requirement for large scale high energy processes as indicated by the distinct texture of the greywacke would rule out deposition during the LostWorld or New-World eras where the processes do not have the required energy. Deposition during the Ensuing phase is conceivable but we would possibly not anticipate lithic fragments or angular clasts because the source material is expected to be soft. It is conceivable that greywacke could form during any other phase of the young age model.The argillite, or shale is composed of very fine grains of clay and silt. Apart from the Original phase, rocks of this texture could be deposited during any other phase of the model.The phyllite is comprised of very fine grains. Leaving out the Original phase, rocks of this texture could be deposited during any other phase of the model.The bedding exhibited by the chert suggests it is of sedimentary nature, and as a derived rock it would not have been formed during the Original phase. Nevins 57 describes the three major theories for the formation of chert and argues that no chert is forming today. If this argument is accepted the formation of chert would be ruled out during the New-World era. One could not be as sure of the possible formation of chert during the Lost-World era because the water cycle at this time is unknown. It is conceivable that the circulation of water within and around the lithosphere was different during the Lost-World era and may have been conducive to the formation of chert. Nevins suggests that the deposition of chert is the result of chemical precipitation of silica gel during the Flood event.58 Such deposition would be feasible during the last three phases of the Creation event as well as during the Flood event. The conclusions from the discussion of the possible classification of each rock texture within the model are summarised in Table 7. Phase Greenstone Conglomerate Greywacke Argillite Phyllite Chert Modern No Unlikely Residual No Unlikely Dispersive Abative Zenithic Ascending Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Eruptive Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Lost-World No Biotic No Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Derivative No Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Ensuing No No Unlikely Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps No No—Not expected to be derived from pre-existing rocks, though could have appearance of age and process Original Table 7. Classification of textured rocks within the model. As a result of this analysis the Original phase has been eliminated and the remainder of the Creation event would now seem to be unlikely. Figure 8. Radiolaria fossils from chert horizons in the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds. Length of scale bar in µm as follows a. 100 µm b. 125 µm c. 125 µm d. 110 µm. (from Aitchison61). Fossils No fossils have been found in the Bunya Phyllite, the Kurwongbah beds or the Rocksberg Greenstone.59Fossils have been found at several localities in the NeranleighFernvale beds. Firstly, invertebrate macrofossils have been reported from interbedded oolitic arenite and argillite exposed in a road cutting. The fossils consist of grain-sized specimens or fragments of crinoidea stem and calyx plates, brachiopods and bryozoa. They are not believed to have formed in-situ. 60 Secondly radiolaria microfossils have been found in cherts at three localities. Radiolaria are about 0.1 mm in diameter and are considered the remains of plankton. Some of the specimens found are illustrated in Figure 8. 61 Both types of fossils are found in specific horizons within the Neranleigh-Fernvale beds rather than evenly distributed throughout the unit.62 The distribution of fossils enables classification within the model as shown in Table 8. Event/Era Stage New-World Phase Modern Residual Flood Recessive Dispersive Abative Inundatory Lost-World Creation Zenithic Yes—Fossils are expected Yes—Fossils are expected Yes—Fossils are expected Yes—Fossils are expected Yes—Fossils are expected Ascending Yes—Fossils are expected Eruptive Yes—Fossils are expected Lost-World Formative Does unit fit in phase? Biotic Derivative Foundational Ensuing Original Yes—Fossils are expected No—Only microscopic marine organisms No—Life was not created No—Life was not created No—Life was not created Table 8. Classification of fossils within the model. The presence of fossils rules out deposition during the first three phases of the Creation event because life had not been created at this time. The fact that the fossils consist of fragments of crinoidea, brachiopods and bryozoa would indicate that the rocks were not formed during the Biotic phase. It is only anticipated that tiny marine organisms may possibly have been trapped at this time. It is hard to imagine that other parts of the creation such as crinoidea, brachiopods and bryozoa would be destroyed and fossilised so quickly after being created. The presence of fossils is consistent with deposition during the Flood event.If the unit was deposited during the Flood event, then an explanation is required for the absence of fossils in the Bunya Phyllite and the Kurwongbah beds which are of sedimentary origin. 63 Not only are macroscopic creatures such as brachiopods, trilobites and graptolites lacking, but also microscopic specimens such as pollen, foraminifera and radiolaria. It is generally thought that the sediments were derived from the continental slope and deposited by turbidity currents generated after a slump. It is difficult to imagine how rocks formed by this process at the time of the Flood, with the oceans containing abundant microscopic life, could have no fossils whatsoever. Hunter also recognises the problem when he suggests that the Archaean strata belong to the early stages of the Flood event. He says, “Lack or paucity of fossils in Archaean strata might be attributable to the destruction of organisms by intense turbulence, heat, volcanism and subsequent metamorphism, and should perhaps be considered an expected characteristic of these strata.”64 It is possible that, rather than slumping from the continental slope, the sediments were eroded from the Lost-World ocean crust as the waters escaped from inside the earth after the fountains of the deep were broken up. The source of this water and sediment, being from regions which possess no life, would explain the absence of fossils in the rock units. In addition, sediments from this source might be expected to be fairly basaltic in composition. Discussion and Summary Table 9 summarises the results of applying the different classification criteria. The continental scale of the units eliminates the Modern, Residual, Dispersive and Lost-World phases as indicated by the X on the table. Continental scale also puts a question against the Abative phase. Exposure to moderate to intense disturbance confirms the elimination of the Modern, Residual and Dispersive phases and excludes the Abative phase as well. Degree of disturbance also queries the Zenithic, Ensuing and Original phases. The combined plastic and brittle response of the units places a question against the Abative phase. The volcanic texture of the greenstone eliminates the Creation event. None of the sedimentary rocks such as the conglomerates, greywacke, argillite, phyllite or chert could have formed during the Original phase. The greywacke and chert are also not likely during the Modern or Residual phases. The texture of the greywacke also rules out the Lost-World era. The presence of fossils rules out the Creation event as a possible time for the formation of the rocks. Phase Scale Disturbanc Respons e e Modern X X X X Residua l X X X X Dispersi ve X X ? Abative ? X ? ? ? Zenithic Greenston Conglomera e te Greywack e Argillite Phyllite Chert Fossils Ascendi ng Eruptive LostWorld X X Biotic X X Derivati ve X X Ensuing ? X ? ? Original ? X X X X X X X X Table 9. Summary of classification of the basement rocks of Brisbane within the model. X marks phases eliminated as a possible times for the formation of the rocks on the basis of the classification criteria shown. ? marks phases which are questionable. When the total information from the range of classification criteria is considered together, all but the first two phases of the Flood event have been eliminated.Is it possible that some lithologies were deposited at different times from others, some say during the Creation event and others during the Flood event? If so, which lithology would be a candidate for deposition during the Creation event? The greenstone is not likely to have formed during the Creation event because of the presence of pyroclastic and crystal tuffs. Neither are the conglomerate lenses likely to have been deposited during the Creation event because these were the last lithology of all the units to have been deposited based on the texture and composition of the clasts. The fossil fragments found in the greywacke indicate deposition during the Flood event and not during the Creation event. The argillite is often interbedded with the arenite suggesting deposition at the same time and therefore during the Flood event.65 The phyllite is considered a finer grained part of the same sequence 66 and as such would be deposited at the same time as the other units. Although the chert contains radiolaria and could conceivably have been deposited during the Biotic phase of the Creation event, it is commonly interbedded with shale and greywacke 67 which would suggest contemporaneous deposition during the Flood event. On the basis of this reasoning there would not appear to be a case for placing some of the lithological units in the Creation event and others in the Flood event. The evidence strongly suggests that all lithologies were formed in the early part of the Flood event. It would seem necessary to place deposition as early as possible in the event, that is the Eruptive phase, to allow time for hardening and brittle behaviour to occur during the Flood event.One possible scenario for the origin of the sediments follows the current geological thinking which is based on modern analogues.68 The situation commences with the floodwaters flowing off the Lost-World continents at the beginning of the Flood event. Huge volumes of sediment from the continents would have been deposited at the margins of the Lost-World continental shelves prograding into the oceans. Slumping on the steep inclines of the soft and unstable deposits would have set up turbidite flows carrying sediment into the deeper parts of the ocean basins forming the arenite and argillite. Under this scenario though, it is difficult to explain how the large chert deposits would have formed and why such large volumes of sediments would contain no fossils. It is also difficult to explain how sediments which were eroded from the continents, transported long distances to the continental slopes and then slumped onto the ocean floor could exhibit an unsorted and angular texture as is seen in the arenite.An alternative explanation for the geological history of the region follows the ideas of Hunter69 and Brown.70 This scenario envisages the floodwaters bursting out from under the lithosphere into the Lost-World oceans at the beginning of the Flood as the fountains of the deep were broken up. Immense quantities of sediment eroded from the lithosphere would be deposited in the Lost-World oceans forming the arenite and argillite. At the same time hot magma sourced from the mantle deep below the crust would extrude through the fissures and flow across the ocean floor. The resulting differences in temperature and chemical composition between silica-rich subcrustal water and the cooler waters of the ocean would provide ideal conditions for contemporaneous deposition of silica as chert layers entrapping microscopic organisms. Later during the Inundatory stage of the Flood event crustal shortening due to tectonic activity would compress the soft sediments, deforming them and raising them above sea level at which time pyroclastics and tuff deposits were formed. Continued lithification of the sediments would produce strong rocks which would subsequently respond in a brittle manner to disturbances throughout the remainder of the Flood event. Conclusion This paper has tested the usefulness of Walker’s young age geological model71 to classify the geology of the Brisbane area within a young framework. The basement rocks of Brisbane are notoriously difficult to classify because they have been extensively deformed and have very little fossil content.The Pittsburgh model consists of twelve geological phases. Four phases cover the Creation event, one phase covers the 1,700 year period between the Creation and the Flood, five phases cover the Flood event lasting one year, and two phases cover the 4,300 year period from the Flood to the present time. The model is designed such that each phase is related to distinct historical circumstances during which specific geological processes were operating, thus providing a time scale by which rocks may be classified.A number of potentially useful classification criteria have been considered including the physical scale of the geological structure, the degree of disturbance, how the structure responded to disturbance, the rock texture, and fossils. These criteria have been used to classify the basement rocks in the Brisbane area. Because of the need to discriminate between rocks formed during the Creation event and rocks formed subsequently it is not possible to avoid metaphysical issues such as the relationship between supernatural and natural processes during the Creation event, the possible attributes of created rocks, and the plausibility of death before the curse of death which followed Adam’s sin.The scale criterion, which is based on the volume of rocks eliminated some phases as possible formation times. The disturbance criterion confirmed the conclusions from the scale criteria and excluded additional phases. The response of the unit to disturbance provided no extra discrimination but was consistent with the scale and disturbance characteristics. The texture criteria, particularly for some lithologies, eliminated more phases as possible depositional times. The occurrence of fossils also helped discriminate between phases. Application of the classification criteria within the creation geological model provides a disciplined and systematic approach to relate the geology of an area to the creation. It is possible to reach a reasoned position on where the rocks fit within the model using a whole range of characteristics. Overall the model provides a reasonable link between the geology of an area and the creation record. However it is not possible with the criteria used to have precise control on the placement of geological units within the model, a feature which would obviously be desirable.Finally, it is concluded that the basement rocks of the Brisbane area were deposited during the earliest phase part of the Flood event; the Eruptive phase. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr Andrew Snelling and anonymous reviewers for detailed input into this paper. Their suggestions and encouragement are much appreciated. Grant Woolston and Bruce Blackshaw also provided helpful advice. Manganese nodules and the age of the ocean floor by Kenneth Patrick Marine manganese nodules, those strange, fist-sized metallic clusters that cover about 30% of the ocean floor, have been known for over a hundred years. At first glance they appear very fresh; yet, according to paleontological and radiometric dating methods, the nodules are supposedly multi-millions of years old, the result of extremely slow growth rates of just millimetres per million years. However, actual observations have revealed that nodules can grow in excess of 20 cm within hundreds of years, a growth rate several orders of magnitude faster. In addition, nodules are found only at the top of the ocean floor, with the greatest density within the first 5 m of sediment and decreasing in size at greater depths. This contradicts the idea that ocean sediment accumulated gradually and continuously over millions of years. Rather it suggests a period of rapid sedimentation that has subsequently waned, a scenario that is consistent with the events of the Flood. Figure 1. Manganese nodules. Author Marcin Zych; courtesy of www.wikipedia.org First discovered in 1873 during a cruise of the HMS Challenger, marine Manganese nodules (MNs) have increasingly courted the attention of the geological community. As well as the obvious resource potential, MNs have also been studied for their palaeoceanographic information due to their assumed slow growth rates. MNs are found at “almost all depths and latitudes in all the oceans of the world, as well as in some lakes … The nodules are especially common in the Pacific Ocean … where it is estimated that they cover approximately 10–30% of the deep ocean floor.”1 MNs are teeming with all types of metals, but five are significant and the target of mining prospectors: Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, and Co, with manganese being the most abundant, having a mean of about 24% (hence the name Manganese Nodule).2 MNs come in all different shapes and sizes; Vineesh et al. concur: “Large variation in morphological types of nodules are found in the CIB [Central Indian Basin] with spherical, oblong, triangular rounded, subrounded or irregular shapes being most common.”3 They also make some interesting observations as to nodule nuclei, “The most common nucleus is altered basalt, while pumice, shark teeth, clay and older nodule nuclei are also present.”3 MNs are essentially a conglomerate of minerals that are thought to accumulate in one of two ways: 1) hydrogenetic nodules accumulate chemicals via precipitation directly from seawater, and 2) diagenetic nodules accumulate minerals from within a few centimetres of the ocean floor sediments, metals being derived from interstitial pore water. 1 Most nodules, however, are thought to be an amalgamation of both of these processes. Nodule sizes range from mere mm in diameter to over 30 cm (although the average appears to be around 8 cm) depending on their geographical location, the mineral content of the area and sediment and whether they were derived from hydrogenetic processes, diagenetic processes or a combination of the two.4 Another, less understood method of Mn accumulation has a biogenetic origin; bacteria that oxidise manganese can also contribute to nodule growth.Dissolved ferromagnesians and other chemicals are typically thought to interact with chemically reactive ocean floor sediments to initiate nodule growth. During the growth process chemicals in the sediments may begin to attach themselves to a nucleus of basalt or clay through the diagenesis process. These ‘baby’ nodules will usually begin to develop only cm or mm below the sediment. As the nodule matures, chemicals will also accumulate via precipitation from sea water adding more mass, eventually leading to what we see today. Manganese nodule growth rates Figure 2. The Glomar Challenger scientific vessel used on the Deep Sea Drilling Project. Image courtesy of www.wikipedia.org Perhaps the most volatile data from a young-earth perspective is the assumed age of MNs and their relative growth rates. Achurra et al. state, “Their rate of growth varies from about 1 to 200 mm/my [million years] … being normally in the range of 3–4 mm/my.”1 Yet Achurra et al. acknowledge that there are drawbacks in using MNs as a source of palaeoceanographic information because “methods applied [to MNs] to date often give ambiguous results”.4 Since most MNs are several centimetres in length, uniformitarians conclude that most MNs took millions of years to reach their current sizes. This assumption is borne out in many textbooks: “[Manganese nodules] form in ways not fully understood by marine chemists, ‘growing’ at an average rate of 1–10 millimetres (0.04–0.4 inch) per million years, one of the slowest chemical reactions in nature.”5 Yet are these assumptions valid? Have MNs really been growing on the ocean floor for many millions of years? Observed MN growth rates orders of magnitude higher than those postulated above are documented in the secular scientific literature, and some of this data is outlined below. Spatial distribution of manganese nodules As one peruses the literature on MNs, one finds a large consensus concerning the spatial distribution of MNs on the ocean floor. Images of MNs (see figure 1) reveal a rather strange accumulation of what look like potatoes littering the sea floor in every direction for several kilometres. The seafloor–water interface seems like the perfect environment for MN growth. Although the vast majority of MNs are found scattered at the sediment-water interface, many MNs have also been discovered buried in the sediment. In the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB), a research team recently pulled 50 buried nodules from twelve 6-m long cores extracted over the last two decades. Most of the nodules were found in the top 1 m of sediment, although some reached depths of 5.5 m. 6 It seems to be commonplace at other geographic locations that the top few metres of sediment contain the greatest concentration of MNs. Pattan and Parthiban said, “In the Pacific Ocean, … [various researchers] … encountered 27 nodules buried between depths of 0.73 and 2.50 m in four long box cores.” 7 They also quoted others who collected 18 m long sediment cores and again found nodules only in the upper few meters of sediment: “Martin-Barajas … collected sediment cores up to 18 m long in CIOB and observed that the maximum depth of occurrence of buried nodules was … 4.4 m below the seafloor.” 7 Some nodules have been found at greater sediment depths, usually less than about 300 m below the water-sediment interface, but there are questions associated with their emplacement. Where are all the sub-surface manganese nodules? The almost complete absence of MNs below the ocean sediment surface is completely unexpected when the ocean floor is assumed to be many tens of millions of years old. If sediment has been accruing at current rates (which are faster than the assumed rates of MN formation) for millions of years, then we would expect to find a MN stratigraphical record throughout marine sediments. Yet such a record is almost completely absent.In the 1970s a major project, called the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP), was undertaken to obtain deep-sea sediment cores of the world’s ocean floors. One of the first studies of the MNs found in these cores was published by G.P. Glasby. He said this of deeply buried nodules: “The most striking feature of the data is the extreme paucity of nodules in the cores.”8 Moreover, “The major question arising from this survey is why nodules occur in such paucity at depth in the sediment record.” 9Glasby studied 370 cores from Leg 1–41 of the DSDP. Of those 370 cores, only 10 contain MNs at depths greater than 200 m below the sediment surface. Of those 10, most of the manganese minerals are not enrolled into nodules but are simply present as “bands, flecks and laminae”. 10 At the time, however, even the few found at greater depths were discounted on the basis of contamination: “Buried nodules were observed a few hundred meters below the sea floor in [DSDP] cores … Later it was suspected that the occurrence of buried nodules was due to slumping of the upper sedimentary layer during drilling operations.”6 Glasby’s comments are pertinent: “It should be emphasized that one of the major problems here lies in establishing whether the nodules are in situ [in growth position] deposits or whether they have merely fallen down the drill hole from the sediment surface during drilling.”11Furthermore, “some of these apparently older nodules [i.e. those buried at greater depths] may merely be recent nodules that have fallen down the drill hole.”12 Later, in 1998, Ito et al. challenged these conclusions by comparing the strontium isotopic compositions of the buried MNs with those of surface MNs. Their conclusions are compelling, but even they use caution, “However, it is possible that buried nodules in DSDP cores were slumped down cores during drilling.” 13 Even if the deeply buried nodules are accepted as in situ artefacts, their scarcity when compared to the abundance of buried nodules found near the surface is significant. When one begins to stitch together all of the available data, one is left quite stunned by the picture presented: there are salient intervals of hundreds of metres in the sedimentary record where there is a complete absence of nodules.Compare this to the data above where, for example, 15 buried nodules are found in one drill core to a depth of only 5.5 m. Essentially, over 90% of the MNs found in the sedimentary record of all the world’s oceans occur in the top 250 m, and most in the top 50 m (66%) with the greatest density in just the top 5 meters (25%). These figures represent estimates taken from Leg 1–41 of the DSDP cores.10 It must be remembered that these figures include microscopic manganese material such as streaks, bands and laminae, characteristics mainly of deeper cores, as well as MNs that probably fell into the drill holes from higher in the column. Uniformitarian theories fail Some workers have wrestled with this phenomenon, trying to explain why MNs are almost completely absent in the sediment record: “Various theories have been proposed to explain the enigma of heavier nodules resting on lighter sediments especially when the rate of sediment accumulation is higher than the growth of the nodules.” 14 And this, “Various processes have been suggested to explain the phenomenon of keeping manganese nodules at the sediment-water interface. Possible mechanisms to maintain nodules at the sediment-water interface could be the influence of ocean bottom currents and the reworking of sediment by benthic organisms.”15 Again, even if this dual churning of the sediment/water current process is granted its rather unlikely result, the challenge still remains as to why buried nodules don’t persist in the sedimentary record. This is key. If the majority of MNs are indeed kept at the sediment-water interface by benthic organisms and soft water currents, and if it is assumed that a few get buried, then these buried nodules should remain in the sediment and thus consistently appear throughout the marine stratigraphical record, a record that in some places measures depths of many kilometres! Yet this record of MNs is virtually absent.This phenomenon is so strange that workers have had to furnish some rather colourful solutions. Some have suggested that MNs are a recent phenomena, only appearing in the last few million years as first generation nodules. 4,16 However, this simply begs the question because it abandons the uniformitarian principle, assuming conditions were different in the past based solely on the absence of MNs from the sedimentary record, but does not provide any corroborating evidence or reason for the change. Others have suggested that perhaps the MNs dissolve after burial, but this has been demonstrated to be false by some research on this exact possibility: “Once the nodules are buried within the sediment column, it therefore appears that they neither grow nor dissolve.”17 Figure 3. Electron micrographs of manganese micro-nodules from DSDP Leg 29, Site 278 formed by manganese replacement of foraminifera tests. a. fractured aggregate. b. unfractured aggregate. (From Margolis, ref. 25, p. 1089) Another possibility There is of course another possibility, one that fits a relatively young ocean floor model. The MNs that are found buried in shallow sediment represent a generation of nodules that grew on the freshly deposited seafloor of the postFlood world. Although initial post-Flood sedimentation rates would have been much higher than today, these rates would have eventually established equilibrium, slowing to their current rates. According to this model, buried MNs represent firstgeneration nodules that were covered within a few decades or a few hundred years after the world-wide Flood as the initial high rate of sedimentation slowed. This is supported by the decreasing size of buried nodules as they increase in depth,18 “Thirty-eight nodules out of 50 are only 2 cm in diameter. This suggests that nearly 80% of the buried nodules are of small size. The majority of surface nodules are between 2–6 cm in diameter … buried nodule sizes decrease with core depth.”7As sedimentation rates began to decline to those of the present day, more and more nodules had more time for growth before being buried in sediment. This subsequently allows for greater individual nodule size and special frequency as one moves through time, and thus through the sediment column, till the present. Those nodules that now reside in the upper few meters of sediment represent nodules that have had the greatest opportunity due to extremely low, contemporary sedimentation rates. This explains why enrolled nodules are, for the most part, only found in the top 50 metres of ocean sediment, with the majority of larger nodules found just a few meters below the surface or at the water/seafloor interface. Figure 4. Polished section of manganese nodule showing concentric laminations around a sandstone nucleus, from DSDP Leg 29, Site 280 (from Margolis, ref. 25, p. 1087).If we consider the current uniformitarian rates for ocean sediment deposition we find it yields similar conclusions. Deep ocean sediment containing at least 30% biogenous material is called ooze; one textbook states: “Oozes accumulate slowly, at a rate of about 1–6 centimetres (0.5–2.5 inches) per thousand years.” Clays, on the other hand, which mostly constitute terrigenous particles, are even slower: “Terrigenous sediment accumulation on the deepocean floor is typically about 2 millimetres (1/8 inch) every thousand years.”19 These extremely conservative rates consign a blanket of sediment over the deep ocean floor of only tens of centimetres in a total of 5,000 years—the timeframe assumed since the end of the global Flood. True, this is short of the few metres or so depth that characterize most buried MNs, but it’s close.What of MNs buried at greater depth? If it is assumed that these nodules are actually in situartefacts, they can still be incorporated into this hypothesis without much fuss; sedimentation was rapid, but not rapid enough to disallow nodule growth over several centuries of deposition. Moreover, one must keep in mind that MNs buried at great depth are not only rare, but they are extremely small and most represent simple manganese rinds, flakes and chips. This hypothesis is dependent on one crucial factor that will now be addressed: MN growth rates. Manganese nodule growth rates revisited The issue of MN growth rates still, of course, remains, even without a viable nodule-growth hypothesis. The issue for the uniformitarian is which rate is the rate to stand by: current growth rates or current sedimentation rates?Manganese as a free element dissolved in water, much like iron, can be precipitated in a number of ways. One method that has not received as much attention as the hydrogenetic and diagenetic methods involves the participation of bacteria, specifically Manganese Oxidizing Bacteria (MnOB).Krishnan et al. conducted a study on the metabolic capabilities of MnOB in the presence of Mn and their contribution to Mn cycling in the brackish water lakes of Larsemann Hills region, east Antarctica. 20 They took water samples from 12 lakes in the region and then subjected them to a number of rigorous experiments, which included the addition and/or removal of several organic and chemical compounds including Mn. The MnOB colonies were analysed before, during and after the experiments to see how these environmental changes affected Mn redox reaction rates. The results are surprising: “The presence of Mn in bacterial culture media enhanced their growth by six orders of magnitude … Mn oxidation in the lakes ranged from 0.04 to 3.96 ppb day-1 [ppb per day], while under in-vitro the isolates oxidized Mn from 10 to 100 times faster.”21 This study was of course controlled; maximum levels of Mn oxidation were the desired outcome and thus experimental manipulation of what went in and what was kept out of the isolates was crucial. Of consequence, however, is the rapid nature of Mn oxidation given “diverse environmental factors”. The point is this: given the theory of rapidly subducting plates and a recent global Flood, such “diverse environmental factors” are not only probable, but are essential. Rapidly altered ocean chemistry, geology, salinity and temperature make for equilibrium extremes that will no doubt catalyse various chemical and biological systems by many orders of magnitude.A more absolute determination for rapid MN growth has been observed in an artificial reservoir built in the 1930s. In only 70 years, MNs very similar in chemical composition to those found in marine environments, have grown to sizes of more than 2.5 cm: “Nodules of various compositions, including ferromanganese nodules, have been found in bottom sediments of an artificial reservoir in the central Altai Territory [Kazakhstan]. The nodules were formed in the alkaline environment against the background of a high carbonate content and saturation with oxygen. The rate of nodule growth is no less than 1.7–1.8 mm/yr [This is per year!].”22 And a similar story for MNs in Lake Oneida, New York, although having somewhat slower rates: “Growth of manganese nodules in Oneida Lake is characterized by periods of rapid accretion (<1 mm/100 years [or 50 mm in 5,000 years]) alternating with periods of no-growth or erosion. Rapid growth of nodules may be aided by the stripping of Mn from the water column by algae and bacteria.”23 Nodules have even been observed growing on splinters from shells dating from WWII with growth rates of between 0.6 mm/yr–1 mm/yr, as well as on other man-made items of the last century. 24 Again, each of these situations has diverse environmental factors affecting MN growth rates, and it just won’t do to apply, say, those rates of >1 mm/yr directly to MNs growing at the ocean seafloor. To do so would see MNs grow to diameters of greater than 3 kilometres in only a few million years! Yet these fanciful kinds of figures do stress the equally fanciful figures associated with conventional MN growth rates; are we to really assume that the current potato sized MNs have only reached their current, rather pathetic size, given millions of years of growth? Logic and reason must be applied here. Conclusions Manganese nodules are mostly found at the sediment-water interface, although it is not uncommon to find them buried within the first 50 m of marine sediment. That nodules are rarely found at greater depths has raised legitimate concerns as to their origin and rates of growth. Why don’t they persist throughout the sediment record? Why is the greatest density of buried nodules only found within the first 5 m of sediment? Why do buried nodules decrease in size at greater depths? Secular research has failed to query what would seem to point to a very obvious solution: the sediment on the ocean floor initially accumulated at a rapid rate that has subsequently waned. MNs, which were unable to form during the period of rapid sedimentation, accumulated when the rate of sedimentation had sufficiently reduced. Thus, the ocean floor and the MNs are actually only thousands of years old and not millions of years old.What about the growth rates of MNs? For years, geologists have been using paleontological methods (dating a nodule on the basis of the microfossils it contains) and/or radiometric analysis to ‘discover’ the age of MNs. Yet the best and most effective method for dating MNs—actual observation—has revealed significantly greater growth rates by several orders of magnitude! If nodules can grow to sizes of more than 20 cm in only hundreds of years, then it would seem that paleontological and radiometric methods used thus far have overestimated MN growth by tens of millions of years! One wonders what kind of growth rates would have been calculated had radiometric and paleontological dating methods not been applied. Observed MN growth rates therefore are a challenge not only to the age of the ocean floor, but also serve to challenge the conventional dating paradigm itself.In summary, the data (found almost exclusively in secular sources) presents a formidable challenge to the secular view of slow MN growth rates on the basis of observed MN growth rates combined with shallow MN burial depths. Speedy stone by David Catchpoole If anyone thinks that rocks need millions of years to form, then experiments carried out by Murdoch University (Perth, Western Australia) researchers would surely overturn that idea.That’s because the researchers have been able, with the help of added microbes, to turn sand into stone rapidly.1The researchers found that the bacterium Sporosarcina pasteurii2 can produce a cementing agent (dubbed “biocement”) that binds sand particles together. 3Starting with soft sand, and applying the bacterial treatment, “we found that it turns harder each time”, said Dr Ralf Cord-Ruwisch. “At the very end, it turned into something resembling marble more than sandstone.” From soft sand to marble-hard rock, quickly! “The biggest block we have made so far was in a shipping container,” said Dr Cord-Ruwisch, “just to prove that it can not only work in the laboratory.”1 The results of the research have excited many people who can see that such ‘biocement technology’ will be a great boon to construction and mining industries—not just to people wanting “to take their sandcastle home from the beach in the form of a solid rock sculpture”.A Dutch company sent sand samples from Holland for testing. Dr Cord-Ruwisch explained that the Netherlands has a keen interest in solidifying the dikes that prevent the sea from flooding that country’s vast areas of reclaimed low-lying land.“Dikes would normally be made of rocks, solid stuff, but Holland is a bit like Perth in that they only have sand,” he said. “While dikes made from sand are long lasting, there are certain risks if water intrudes into the dike sand and lubricates the sand particles so they start shifting against each other. Then you can have some instability of the dikes.”1 The Dutch have been impressed by the capability of the bacteria to cement the sand samples—hard.4A major practical application for the biocementation technique will be in mining. “It doesn’t need oxygenation,” Cord-Ruwisch explained. “In theory we could solidify the sea bed before drilling for oil. We could also drill tunnels in the sand, we could make the sand harder so it doesn’t cave in.”1The take-home message from all this? In the global Flood ,there would have been lots of microbes ‘floating around’ and buried in sand in low-oxygen conditions, just right for them to release cementing agents into the surrounding sediment. Little wonder then we see as a legacy of that watery event, lots of beautifully preserved creatures (fossils) in layers upon layers of rock-hard sediment! The mud is missing So the world is young By Tas Walker Year by year, rain, wind, frost and waves are eroding soil and rock from our continents and dumping them into the ocean. Gullies, gorges and canyons are growing. Coastlines are disappearing.Scientists have estimated that some 20 billion tonnes of sediment are disappearing each year.1,2, 3 Eventually the fine material builds up as soft layers of mud on the hard, black, volcanic sea floor.Surveys indicate that the average depth of all the sediment on the ocean floor is less than 400 metres.4 Some large areas of the ocean floor have hardly any mud at all. 5 If the oceans are billions of years old why is there not more sediment?Perhaps the creeping of the ocean floors by plate tectonic movement, at a few cm per year, is forcing the sediment deep inside the earth via the ocean trenches, also known as subduction zones. But that would only account for one billion tonnes of sediment a year.4 The remaining 19 billion tonnes per year would accumulate the total seafloor sediment in less than 12 million years. Sediment and mud should be choking the oceans, but it is not there.For creationists the lack of sediment is to be expected because the world is not billions of years old. As the waters flowed off the continents into the oceans in the second half of the Flood they deposited the sediment in just a few months. And that was just some 4,500 years ago.So, does the lack of mud on the ocean floor prove the world is young? No, evidence about past events can only be like forensic science, dealing in probabilities. But this argument fits in much better with the hypothesis of a young world than the hypothesis of an old world. The Carboniferous floating forest—an extinct pre-Flood ecosystem by Dr Joachim Scheven Creationists start from the assumption that the seams of the Carboniferous coal measures are derived from water-borne plant matter. Adherents of historical geology dispute this and affirm that each seam represents anin situ buried coal forest. Their principal reasons for this claim are the existence of rooted underclays and in situ buried erect stems. This paper exposes some of the more obvious mistakes made in interpreting Carboniferous coal seams as having grown in place. Drawing from field experience in both Europe and North America, as well as from a voluminous body of descriptive literature on the subject, it is concluded that the coal forests represented a unique type of floating ecosystem that was primarily composed of arboreal lycopods. At the onset of the Flood, these vegetation mats were dislodged and left to drift. When the Flood waters receded, the coal forest rafts were deposited on top of subsiding sediment piles that had developed after the eruption of the ‘fountains of the great deep’. Introduction The creationist/evolutionist controversy is ultimately about whether Earth history has had a relatively brief or an immensely long duration. In arguing for one or the other a correct understanding of the processes leading to the deposition of coal is crucial. If the coal seams are autochthonous, that is, have grown in place, and if the lifetime of a forest leading to a coal seam is estimated at 1,000 years on average, the time required for the deposition of the 200 to 300 coal seams in northwest Europe would be in the order of 250,000 years—and this is without allowing time for the accumulation of the intervening sediments. If, on the other hand, the vegetable matter is of allochthonous origin, that is, transported by water, it would be reasonable to assume that all the seams are of approximately the same age. In such a case the time required for the piling up of the coal-bearing sediments would necessarily be reduced.From the literature of the English-speaking creationist community one might gain the impression that the issue of coal formation has not yet been satisfactorily resolved in favour of the Flood concept. This is not the true state of the art, however. Work on coal has been progressing in Germany and elsewhere steadily. Some of the more important results of the author’s research on Carboniferous coals will be presented in this paper. Table 1. Results of work on underclays between the years 1938 and 1977. None of the authors call into question the essential autochthony of the coals. The type of vegetation in Carboniferous coals—the same the world over At first sight there seems to exist a variety of Carboniferous coals. A ‘Euro-American’ coal province is distinguished from an ‘Angaran’ and a ‘Cathaysian’ province. These three in turn are contrasted with the Permo-Carboniferous ‘Gondwana’ province as a fourth. Whereas the flora of the latter is widely spread across the Southern Hemisphere, the Euro-American, the Angaran and the Cathaysian floras are confined to the Northern Hemisphere (with an outlier in northern South America). The Gondwana flora is unique. It is chiefly composed of the genus Glossopteris. The remaining three floral units have also one important feature in common: their chief constituents are arboreal lycopods. Whereas Gondwana coals are always deposited without underlying root beds, all coal seams of the Northern Hemisphere are in contact with a rooted underclay. This slightly generalising statement is to remind us that we must give heed to the regular conditions prevailing in coalbearing rocks if we are to obtain insights into the ecology of the one-time coal forests and the mechanism of their subsequent burial. The two opposing views on coal forest ecology in retrospect (a) Arguments of the autochthonists During the first half of the last century, about coeval with the decline of creationists convictions among the prominent geologists of the day, the theory of autochthonous growth of the Carboniferous coal forests began to be vigorously promoted by Logan and Lyell in Britain 1,2 and Goeppert in Germany.3 Their line of argument rested largely on two observations: firstly, that there is a transition between the root beds and the overlying coal which indicates that the plant matter grew on a soil, that is, that it originated in situ; secondly, that erect stems rising from the coal into the barren rocks suggest that the fullgrown forests were likewise buried in situ. A huge body of descriptive coal literature published up to the present decade assumes that the autochthonous interpretation is valid. Serious attempts at falsifying this theory have not been forthcoming since, in this camp, it is taken for granted that no links exist between the Flood as a geological event and the phenomena observed in the field. (b) Arguments of the allochthonists The arguments of the allochthonists in favour of the water-borne deposition of Carboniferous coal have been much less straightforward. Although mostly well documented, their observations are scattered through the literature of the past 175 years. They have had practically no influence on the currently accepted theory of coal formation. Charpentier, 4 dealing with erect stems in the coal measures of Silesia, argued cogently that they could not have grown in the same situations where they are found now. Kuntze,5 an experienced botanist, considered the arboreal lycopods to have permanently grown from a surface of water. Being also a staunch evolutionist, however, he thought that these aquatic lycopods had evolved from early marine algae(!). Gresley6 came to the conclusion that the ubiquitous root beds beneath coal seams are clearly water-laid sediments. Schmitz7 documented lycopod stumps in growth position that had been dumped upon branches of the coal vegetation and could therefore not have grown in place. The papers by Stainier 8-10 contain a further elucidation of the rapid formation of the root-bearing underclays.Among creationists, Coffin11 revived interest in the subject with his report on the Joggins exposures in Nova Scotia. In a brief paper on the coiled worm tubes of Spirorbis which are frequently attached to objects in the coal measures, he claimed that the coal plants must have drifted in sea water for a time prior to burial.12 Austin, in his thesis on the Kentucky No. 12 coal, 13 inferred from lithological evidences that the surface of peat deposition of this particular seam (which lacks a rooted seat-earth) could not have been the site of plant growth. He posited a floating forest debris raft as the source of organic fall-out under water, but the principally substrate-dependent growth of the lycopod forests was not questioned. Scheven reported on the sedimentary nature of the Carboniferous underclays, on the information obtained from coal balls about the composition of living coal peat, on the structure of the lycopod tree roots that suggest an aquatic mode of life, and on the prevailing high-energy environments between successive coal seams that make long-term plant growth during the postulated quiet intervals highly improbable. 14-16 A fifth reason for the allochthony of Carboniferous coals will be discussed in the course of this paper: the botanical uniformity of the successive hard coal horizons suggests one defined ecological unit, rather than a sequence of evolving floras in an ascending order through the course of a so-called coal age. Five reasons why Carboniferous coals are allochthonous (1) Underclays are not soils The term underclay or seat-earth (Wurzelboden in German) implies that the rock layer represents the petrified remains of the substrate on which ancient vegetation once germinated, flourished and died. This deep-rooted notion forms one of the pillars on which historical geology rests. If underclays were to be regarded as anything different from soils the currently accepted theory of Carboniferous coal formation would be in serious difficulty. Rooted underclays are the chief reason for claiming that the coals above are autochthonous. As will be shown, this claim is not only poorly founded, but is directly opposed to the facts:(a) The exclusive occurrence of lycopod roots below coal seams. Stigmarian roots are the only plant organs that crowd the underclays. Other roots, for example, of ferns, horsetails and Cordaites, which are all well-known from within the coal, are completely absent. This is a principal difference between lycopods and the roots of other constituents of the coal vegetation. Since the difference is nowhere emphasised in the pertinent literature one might easily miss it. In any modern plant community the member plants are rooted side by side in the substrate. This is not the case with underclays. The obvious conclusion is that the communities of the Carboniferous forests were not rooted in soils. (b) The lithological diversity of underclays. Probably the most widespread type of underclay is a purplish-black mudstone. Less common are underclays consisting of laminated silt or of pure sandstone. An interesting phenomenon is that the lithology of one and the same underclay may vary below a seam over some distance. In addition, an underclay may also consist of limestone! No living plant is known that would tolerate such a diversity of ‘soils’; from nutrient-rich to sterile, and from utterly acidic to utterly alkaline! The different lithologies around the lycopod roots are therefore purely accidental. There exists no relationship between the uniform coal vegetation and the varying composition of its supposed supporting soils! (c) Graded bedding and stratification in underclays. Many typical underclays of the north-west European coal basins are between 2 and 3 m (6.5 and 10 ft) thick. Permeation by lycopod roots fades gradually towards the base. The lower sections of such root beds are distinctly more coarse-grained than at levels nearer the coal, as can be demonstrated with a simple experiment. Hammering the underclay in a vertical direction produces an audible scale: higher notes occur below and lower ones above. The grading shows that the entire unit of 2 or 3 m was deposited as a whole. That this deposition took place with the stigmariae already present is shown by the countless roots and rootlets that penetrate the laminated or cross-bedded parts of the underclay without disturbing the rock fabric in the slightest. Such a condition would be unthinkable if the coal vegetation had taken root on the surface of the underclay only after the arrival of the sediment. (d) Non-lycopod plant remains in underclays. Although Carboniferous underclays are devoid of root organs other than stigmariae, fine examples of fern pinnules and even parts of whole fronds occur in some root beds. They are more easily detected in sandstones and hardened shale (from drill cores) than in the brittle types that happen to be exposed above the ground. These plant remains are identical to those ordinarily found in the roof shales above the coal. Both are therefore likely to have been buried in the same manner. If recognisable plant parts occur along bedding planes in a sediment with lycopod rootlets penetrating vertically at the same time, it may be safely assumed that their mode of embodiment in the substrate, as well as their mode of preservation as petrifications, was the same. A fresh fern frond in soil will decompose within a very short time. Such remains in underclays are therefore proof that nothing ever grew on these alleged root beds.More observations could be adduced to show that underclays have nothing to do with soils in the normal sense. Table 1 contains an evaluation of recognised papers on this subject from 1938 till 1977. Although none of the authors question the autochthony of the coals investigated, each one gives one or more reasons why underclays cannot have been true soils. (2) The message of coal balls Certain seams of Carboniferous coals of both the New and the Old World contain limestone concretions that have yielded important information about the composition of the original coal peat. They are known as coal balls (in German, Torfdolomit). Inside these coal balls complete plant tissues are preserved with no or very little compaction. On etching a polished surface of a sectioned coal ball with acid a softened acetate foil pressed onto it picks up the cell pattern. The resulting peel replicates the complete cross section of the tissue, which can be examined under the microscope. Besides the carbonate concretions there are also coal balls that consist of pyrite. These are worthless for study since they disintegrate within a short time. In exceptional cases even silicified coal balls have been reported. These petrified plant tissues give first-hand botanical insights into the taxonomy and anatomy of coal plants. They therefore make an important contribution to our understanding of the ecology of the former coal forest community. In the following we will consider: the significance of their globular shape, what can be learnt from their vertical distribution in coal seams, and what the coal peat must have been like in life. (a) The significance of the globular shape of coal balls. Not all concretions in coal are ball-shaped, but most of them approach this form. If observed in situ the stratified coal on either side is seen to part above and below the concretions. This means that coal balls began to form prior to the compaction of the coal peat beneath the overburden. As we shall see, this has a bearing on the question of whether the coal vegetation was autochthonous or allochthonous.The formation of coal balls can be explained as follows. Mineral-rich water becomes trapped within the coal peat. Pressure from above causes enclosures of this water to assume a globular form. Carbonate and calcium ions are expelled from the collapsing water-laden peat under extreme pressure and migrate into the pressure-resistant water bubble. There, permineralisation of the peat tissues leads to the preservation of all plant parts in a near-life configuration.Although difficult to test experimentally, the above mechanism finds a remarkable analogy in the formation of agate nodules. Like coal balls, agate nodules originated in trapped water under extreme pressure. Like coal balls, agate nodules are usually spherical. And like coal balls, precipitation or crystallisation of the mineral matter commenced from the periphery. Unlike normal agate, however, coal balls appear to have been sometimes subjected to earth shocks during formation, as is evident from healed fractures within the precipitates.This mode of formation of coal balls implies that fresh and even living plant matter was suddenly covered with a sediment pile much thicker than would be expected from a gradual transgression. Rapid subsidence and deposition of one or more vegetation mats in quick succession must be envisaged if the formation of coal balls is to be adequately explained. An autochthonous origin of the coal beds would be impossible under such conditions. (b) The vertical distribution of coal balls within a seam. The theory of autochthonous coal formation supposes that the plant matter accumulated gradually, that is, the thickness of the peat increased slowly with time. The theory demands that a ‘primary peat’ at the base of the seam would be succeeded by younger generations of a ‘secondary peat’. In analogy to modern peat bogs, a difference in age of successive layers should also be demonstrable in coal seams. This postulate can be tested with coal balls.Coal balls may occur at all levels in a seam. Among the best documented cases are those by Stopes and Watson 17 and Phillips et al.18,19The ‘infestation’ with coal balls may be so heavy that the concretions occur throughout the coal, from top to bottom. Contrary to expectation, however, the plant matter at the lower levels is not more compressed than the plant matter further up. It follows that, before burial, the entire mat was a living unit. This conclusion is confirmed by the presence of roots below the seam that, as we have seen, were choked in sediment posthumously. (c) The consistence of Carboniferous coal peat in life. Coal balls exist in a variety of types. Besides the ‘regular’ ones that are largely dominated by lycopod root organs, there are others that contain primarily macerals and a jumble of larger plant fragments. A third type is the ‘faunal’ coal balls that contain mainly shell debris. Here we shall deal with the regular type only.Root organs of plants that are entirely missing in underclays are regularly encountered in coal balls. Accordingly, ferns, horsetails,Cordaites and the like must have grown from the peat only. Arboreal lycopods evidently acted as the pioneer vegetation. Figure 1. Reconstruction of a lycopod tree stump showing its hollowness between the central cylinder and the outer rind. Many of the regular coal balls are developed around a hollow plant axis, for example, a lycopod branch or section of a stigmaria. The water leading to the formation of a coal ball seems to have been trapped inside such hollow cylinders. Next to these the most prominent constituents of a regular coal ball are the hollow lycopod rootlets, the so-called appendices. In a peel they occupy every available space in size range, from maturity down to the recently germinated sporeling. Williamson20 illustrated as early as 1887 appendices invading foreign plant tissues that had become vacant through death. An ecological explanation of this curious behaviour has never been given.The first and most obvious lesson to be learnt from the appendices crowding the coal peat is that they grew without a terrestrial soil as such. Instead, the necessary minerals must have been supplied through the water-soaked peat. A second lesson may be learnt from the hollow nature of the appendices: the coal peat contained a large amount of air. There exist a number of modern analogies in root anatomy for air-filled tissues, notably among waterweeds, but none for tissues being filled with water. Indeed, it would be incomprehensible that large plant cavities should contain a liquid. In addition, the theory for the formation of coal balls here proposed would work only if an air-filled tissue was invaded by water. The entire body of coal peat seems to have been composed mainly of a dense wicker-work of air-filled root organs that formed a single unit reaching from the aerial stems down to the free-floating lycopod roots below the peat. (3) The structure of lycopod tree roots Figure 2. The two different modes of preservation of stigmaria: (a) filled with sediment, and (b) flattened. In both cases the stelae are collapsed. In order to decide whether Carboniferous coals formed in place or were transported from elsewhere, an examination of the root structure of the principal peat-builders may be helpful. Fine sandstone casts of root-bearing lycopod stumps, among them the famous ‘Fossil Grove’ of Glasgow, bear witness to the essential hollowness of the once living trees—hollow to the very root tips! (see Figure 1). Autochthonists insist that the cavities opened when the tissues inside the stems decayed after death. It will be shown that this explanation for a feature that can be observed universally is ill-founded. For the present purpose we shall limit our attention to the stigmarian axes and their adhering appendices. (The structure of the lycopod stems will not be considered here.)Stigmarian roots, or rhizophores, occur in clastic rocks in two different versions. Either they are completely flattened, or they are filled with sediment and retain their originally cylindrical shape more or less (see Figure 2). If the allegedly present solid tissue inside the cylindrical type rotted away as is claimed, what happened to the flattened version of stigmaria about which no such claim has been made? Or are we to believe that rotting of the interior occurred under all circumstances? Fortunately, we are not left in uncertainty about this. Stigmariae preserved as cylinders bear, along the whole of their lengths, a groove on their upper sides. This is a collapse structure. The central cylinder (or stele) was already surrounded by clastic material when the increasing overburden caused the soft tissues of the stele to yield. One should expect to find stigmariae that are filled with sediment at so advanced a stage of internal decay that even the stele is missing. Yet this is never the case! The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that an extensive air tissue existed between the stele and the cortex of the stigmaria, an idea confirmed by cross-sections of stigmarian axes in coal balls. A tissue that might be taken for the lycopod root solid is simply not there! Figure 3. Reconstruction of the central stigmarian root with its radial appendices. Notice again the hollowness around the central cylinder (stele) and the scars on the outer tissue (bark) where the appendices were attached. The name ‘stigmaria’ is derived from the presence of numerous scars spirally distributed all over the surface of the cylinder. Originally, an appendix or rootlet was attached to each. If a stigmaria is observed in an underclay in situ the radiation of the appendices in all directions is a striking sight, for no living underground root system of similar behaviour is known. The tendency of root growth in soil is always downwards. By contrast, the secondary roots (appendices) of arboreal lycopods are arranged in lampbrush fashion around the main axis (see Figure 3). An analogy to this behaviour among living plants may be found in the roots of certain waterweeds. If roots are deeply submerged in water they need not be geotropic. The curious lampbrush arrangement of the appendices on lycopod roots is best explained by assuming an aquatic mode of life.Few workers seem to have reflected on the significance of the scars over the surface of the stigmaria. Investigations by Frankenberg and Eggert21 and Jennings22 on coal ball material have established that true abscission tissues occur at the junction of appendix and stigmarian bark. In rare cases, the split along the scar, arrested in the process of petrifaction, is directly visible (see Figure 4). If the scars are areas where the appendices became detached, one should inquire why they became detached. Do living underground roots shed parts of themselves? Such a separation in soil would seem to serve no purpose. In water, on the other hand, this might be meaningful. Ageing appendices could be discarded like foliage on branches. This interpreted shedding of roots implies that Carboniferous lycopods grew in water—a view strongly supported by the sedimentary nature of the underclays, as pointed out above.Finally, the condition of the appendices as they appear in the rootbeds also argues for the allochthony of the coal. The appendices inside coal balls are mostly inflated, whereas in underclays they are practically always compressed. In more competent root beds, that is, in limestone or sand, the appendices are occasionally solid and filled with sediment. For foreign material to enter, the slender tubes must have been damaged at burial. Apart from these casts, appendices in underclays are almost invariably so battered and slashed that it is inconceivable that they could have supported vegetation in this degraded state. Lycopod tree roots point unequivocally to a life in water! (4) The prevailing high-energy environments between coal seams Figure 4. Longitudinal section through the base of an appendix attached to stigmarian bark. The split of the abscinding appendix is clearly visible. Magnification is approximately 10x. One reason why the question about the mode of deposition of Carboniferous coal has come to be regarded as settled in favour of autochthony is the philosophy of uniformitarianism. The rates of the almost imperceptibly rising or subsiding crustal plates of the present are applied to geological events of the past which were totally unlike any geological events of the present, including the formation of basins containing coal measures.All estimates of the duration of the ‘coal age’ in northwest Europe are geared to the model of the subsiding ‘Variscan Deep’ that is thought to have bordered an ‘Old Red Continent’. Depending on which author is consulted, between 32 and 45 million years are said to have elapsed from its inception to its eventual filling with clastic sediments. The accumulation rate of sediments on the present sea-floor is normally very slow, and reaches sometimes only millimetres per annum. Observations like this, however, must not be transferred to the conditions prevailing when the coal measures were formed. The rate of deposition depends on the amount of sediment suspended in water in proportion to the water’s turbulence. In theory, the amount of suspended material as well as the degree of turbulence can increase indefinitely. Seen in this light, the deposition of material many metres thick in one single event becomes understandable. (a) Sandstones. A significant percentage of the lithologies separating individual coal seams consist of sandstones. Usually they contribute 50 or more per cent to the overall thickness of the coal-bearing rocks. Due to its weight sand is deposited invariably under a blanket of fast-moving water. Sandstones are therefore—apart from massive fall-outs at suddenly reduced current speeds— invariably cross-bedded. In general, what happens is that broad foresets of sand with an uneven surface move along with the current and are then planed off from above and superposed by new foreset beds. (At the surface of these beds amplitudes of mega-ripples up to 1 m or about 3 ft have been recorded.23 ) The uniform fabric of the repetitive sandstone units that are normally one to several metres thick leads to the conclusion that the deposition of the entire stack was a continuous process. Dozens of metres of sandstone formations thus become an affair of minutes or, at best, hours! (b) Graded bedding and conglomerates in the coal measures. Figure 5. Erect lycopod stem drawn in section. The interior was filled with shale only after the stem had been surrounded with a coarser fraction of sediment. Nova Scotia, Canada, after Dawson, 1882. Graded bedding far exceeding the scale of that reported in the underclays above is known from Carboniferous sandstones. A graded rock unit is the result of one single event. The speed operating during the addition of material by depositional processes may be illustrated by the example of a graded sandstone of 20 m (about 65 ft) thickness from northwest Europe24 and another of 100 m (about 330 ft) from Upper Silesia.25 Uniformitarian explanations fail to account for such phenomena.Sandstones frequently contain conglomerates. These usually have associated with them large stem fragments of lycopods or giant horsetails. Conglomerates indicate extreme high-energy conditions during their formation. The boulder beds between coal seams of the Saar coal measures in West Germany, the ‘Holzer Konglomerat’, have been described as a ‘natural disaster of incomprehensible magnitude’.26 There is really nothing that argues for the tranquil conditions required by the theory of coal autochthony. (c) Fine-grained sediments. The second most common sediment type in coal measures is shales. These are horizontally bedded and, in analogy to the slow settling of recent clay suspensions, usually interpreted as having been formed under low-energy conditions. Without the knowledge of the actual suspension density and the amount of electrolytes present during the deposition of Carboniferous shales, however, it is unwise to draw such conclusions.In a typical pelagic sediment of a modern sea-floor the decrease of the pore spaces as the overburden increases proceeds quite slowly. Accordingly, enclosed fossil structures suffer a certain deformation with time. When investigating two Carboniferous shales in Illinios, Zangerl and Richardson27 observed, however, that the pressure acting in the compaction of the sediment from above had not actually affected the fragile fossil shells. The process of compaction had obviously been completed soon after deposition. The authors comment: Figure 6. Another example of a lycopod stem buried in the upright position (height about 2.5 metres). In this case the initial entombment by sand was fanned away and replaced by shale. Joggins Coast, Nova Scotia, after Dawson, 1882. “The mode of sedimentation and compaction of the highly carbonaceous muds that produced these shales differed radically from that currently thought to apply to ordinary finegrained marine muds. All the evidence indicates that the Mecca and Logan Quarry muds became nearly compacted at the time of their deposition and they suffered very little further compaction under loading. The volume reduction of these muds may well have exceeded 80 per cent. … but the compaction was effected virtually at the time of deposition [emphasis added]”.Such fast compaction can be explained only by supposing an equally fast settling of sediment. The transport and rapid fallout of such quantities of sediment cannot be understood as belonging to a low-energy environment. (d) Erect lycopod stems. The speed with which suspensions not only of sand, but also of argillaceous materials, could settle during formation of the coal measures is exemplified by the casts of lycopod tree trunks that occur in an erect position. Examples are known with lengths of up to 12 m (about 40 ft). 28,29 The authors describing them admit that it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that the rate of sedimentation around these stems must have been high indeed. Considering the relatively flimsy anatomy of these hollow stems it can hardly be assumed that dead specimens stood out in a ‘drowning forest’ through years or decades. Their burial in mud or sand is more likely to have been accomplished in hours or perhaps days.Dawson 30,31 was the first to draw attention to the fact that the infilling of the famous erect hollow stems of Nova Scotia may contrast markedly with the surrounding lithologies. In one of these cases several decimetres of sand rose around the torso of a lycopod stem before the following argillaceous fraction gained entrance to fill its base (see Figure 5). In another case sand reached the interior of a hollow stem whose equivalent outside the column had been fanned away by water before a replacement through mud took place (see Figure 6). The erect stem illustrated by Ferguson,32 and seen and documented by the present writer in 1981, reveals in its eroded state a cross-bedding of the sand contents that puts the catastrophic burial of these structures beyond question (see Figure 7). Evidence such as this is convincing proof that the coal vegetation was very rapidly buried.Further sedimentological evidences for the rapid burial of the coal forests may be found in the author’s book, Karbonstudien— Neues Licht auf das Alter der Erde (Carboniferous Studies—New Light upon the Age of the Earth).33 Table 2. The vertical range of arboreal lycopods through the coal measures of Great Britain from ‘oldest’ to ‘youngest’ (after Crookall, 1964). Thick lines indicate that the species is common, thin lines that it is rare. The correlations suggest that all species occur throughout the coal measures. (5) The essential botanical uniformity of successive coal deposits It has become customary to divide the European coal measures into the Namurian, the Westphalian, and the Stephanian. Further subdivisions of these principal units add to the impression that the index fossils on the basis of which they are distinguished represent some kind of trend in the evolution of the plant kingdom. The assumption that the concept of ‘geological time’ is valid becomes thereby reinforced. Figure 7. Sandstone cast of an erect lycopod stem exposed at Joggins, Nova Scotia, 1981. Weathering of the contents reveals two intersecting bedding planes attesting the sudden burial of the stem. However, the taxonomy of Euro-American lycopods, fern allies and horsetail relatives as a whole is far from settled. The connections among the various plant fragments—for example, detached leaves or fern pinnules and axial organs or roots—are to some extent still conjectural. The wider public’s acceptance of a demonstrable evolutionary progress of plant life is therefore largely on trust. The subjective judgment of the individual taxonomist and his evolutionary bias must be taken into account if floral lists of coal measures plants are to be read intelligently.According to Crookall,34 not less than 75 ‘species’ of arboreal lycopods are recorded from the five subdivisions of the productive coal measures of Great Britain. If these are tabulated with their respective stratigraphic ranges, an interesting correlation becomes apparent (see Table 2). Nearly all the common species extend through the entire sequence of the Westphalian, A through D, (represented in Table 2 by thick lines), whereas the majority of the rarer forms (represented by thin lines on the table) are short-lived. Crookall does not comment upon this pattern. The simplest explanation is, of course, that the appearance of being short-lived is a consequence of their rarity. If the rarer varieties had been more numerous, their ranks from Westphalian A to D would have been closed. In other words, all of the 59 recorded lycopods of the Westphalian may have existed throughout the sequence. This being so, a coal vegetation emerges that is ecologically uniform. Such a situation does not of course suggest the passage of millions of years! The Namurian assemblage in the table, on the other hand, is so strikingly different from the Westphalian assemblage that, again, no evolutionary picture can be construed. The soon-following superposition of floating mats from a different geographic provenance seems far more likely. The ecology of the Carboniferous forests As was pointed out in connection with the study of coal balls, each coal seam in its uncompressed state appears to have formed a floating mat built from lycopod roots, upon which the accessory flora of ferns, etc. was seated (see Figure 8). The essential floral uniformity of all coal storeys confirms this view. The observable differences in the prevalence or lack of certain plant species in individual seams can be accounted for by analogy with the distribution of woody plants through a large lowland rainforest of today. Depending on the water table, soil, relief and other factors, the many dozens of timber species participating in such an ecosystem are not evenly mixed, but tend to occur with varying frequencies.By analogy with modern vascular plants it can be taken for granted that the floating coal forest communities stood on freshwater only. The ‘marine horizons’ so frequently encountered in the coal measures represent an interfingering of the debris of submerged ‘marine’ life communities which occur in much greater concentrations in rocks which bear the names ‘Carboniferous Limestone’, ‘Mississippian/Pennsylvanian Limestone’, or ‘Kohlenkalk’ below the coal measures. Whether these habitats were really marine in the modern sense is uncertain because nothing is known about their salinity. Figure 8. Reconstruction of how a floating lycopod forest might have looked, with stigmariae and appendices interwoven to provide the framework structure for a peat mat. The drawing is based on real trunks in various European museums.Textbooks suggest that the climate of the coal forest was tropical. Apart from the undeniably luxuriant growth, this is concluded from the absence of seasonal growth rings. An equable climate, however, is not necessarily hot and humid. At least two lines of reasoning suggest that the floating forests of the coal vegetation inhabited, in fact, polar regions.Modern relatives of the very highly organised tree ferns, giant horsetails and arboreal lycopods found in the coal vegetation nearly all tolerate or demand shady situations. We know too little about plant physiology to fully appreciate the significance of the shape of the fern frond in relation to light requirements. The relationship as such is certainly obvious. Since the incidence of sunlight in polar regions is much reduced, a special flora may have been among the created ecosystems that were designed to occupy such quarters. In proposing this thought it is assumed, of course, that before ‘summer and winter’ were installed the Earth’s axis may not yet have been tilted to the degree it is today.The other line of reasoning is connected with the question, what was the purpose of a coherent floating forest? If four rivers issued from the fountainhead in Eden before the present water cycle began to operate, these huge streams may have possessed inlets whereby the waters returned to their origin and continued the cycle. It is envisaged that such rivers poured their contents beneath the floating vegetation near the poles from whence they were conducted via the caverns of the ‘fountains of the great deep’ back to Eden. The curious distribution of two different floating vegetation types, the northern lycopod and the southern Glossopteris type, 35 is not a hindrance to such speculations. The deposition of Carboniferous coal seams in the setting of the Flood events Flood geology is the study of Earth history from the perspective of events. The suppositions of uniformitarian philosophy are deliberately rejected in order to arrive at conclusions that cannot be further falsified. It is the writer’s contention that all scientific results that fall short of this goal are not yet in accordance with divine information on the subject. This is, by the way, the reason why a theory that proposes an autochthonous formation of coal should be subjected to scientific testing. Autochthonists reject the idea that the coal vegetation was rapidly buried on the grounds that, to accomplish this, the secular subsiding movements of the present are several hundred thousand times too slow. They ignore the revealed mechanism that would allow for a subsidence in the order of kilometres within weeks or months. In the account of the Flood we are informed that the greater part of the waters erupted from the fountains of the great deep. A collapse of the crustal vaults concealing these fountains would have preceded the eruption. This in turn would have resulted in downward movements of the Earth’s surface on a tremendous scale. The deep synclinal troughs filled with Palaeozoic sediments could have originated in this way. The record suggests that after about five months of unabated torrents the depressions caused by the collapse over the subterranean conduits were gradually concealed from above—‘the fountains of the deep were stopped’. The pre-Flood Carboniferous forest mats that remained unaffected as long as the waters were rising were now, perhaps, drawn into the depressions that were in the process of being ‘stopped’. All the strata of the Euro-American coal measures lie on top of usually much thicker Palaeozoic rock piles. As long as the subsiding movements went on, torn-off parts of this floating ecosystem would settle where the current stopped, so that they came to rest on top of each other. One of the most puzzling phenomena about the coal measures (the repetition of coal seams and the pattern of intervening strata) is thus accounted for. The burial of the free-floating lycopod roots in cross-bedded silt or fine-grained mud would result from a complete drainage of the water below each mat through the influence of outgoing tides. Given a steady flux of water and supply of vegetation, up to two seams per day could thus have been produced. Thus, in accordance with the young age account, the deposition of coal forest rafts would have commenced after the fifth Flood month. Furthermore, it is suggested that the completion of this process may have lasted for the remaining seven months or so. There is wide scope, however, for more detailed study of Carboniferous coal deposition, which may have continued well into the year/years following the Flood.The deposition of Carboniferous coal is thus inseparably linked to the stages within the Flood in the narrow sense. From this insight it may be concluded that the boundary which separates the geological events of the Flood proper from post-Flood events is to be drawn between the formation of the Carboniferous system and the post-Carboniferous strata. There was only one occasion and only one mechanism that could bury such floating forest mats. Summary The currently accepted theory of the formation of Carboniferous coal adopts, and depends on, the notion of long-lasting geological periods. It is thus at variance with Earth history, a history that is largely shaped by the Flood. Seemingly sound scientific reasons for an autochthonous growth of the coal forests have hindered the development of a consistent concept of Flood geology among many scholars. This paper outlines five reasons why the in-place theory of coal forest growth must be rejected.The under clays on which practically all coal seams rest are not their fossilised soils but possess the character of undisturbed sediments. The roots of the coal forest vegetation became enclosed in them only just prior to the burial of the whole forest.Coal balls, being petrified remains of the original peat, reveal that the root-work of the plants during life formed a floating mat. The entire sub-aerial vegetation grew up from this mat, while the larger roots of lycopod trees (stigmariae) extended downwards beyond the peat into the open water. The form of the coal balls and the state of preservation of the tissues suggest that these living mats were buried very rapidly.The structure of the lycopod roots (stigmariae) precludes any function in a mineral soil. Their air-filled axes, along with their tender air-filled secondary roots (appendices), could not have penetrated a substrate. Ageing appendices were discarded at pre-formed abscission points. Such an arrangement would make no sense if they were rooted in a soil as the autochthonous theory supposes.The high-energy lithologies between individual coal seams make it unlikely that any substantial amounts of time elapsed between the burial of any two coal seams. The erect lycopod stems in particular point to an extremely fast rate of sedimentation.The essential botanical uniformity of the coal plants of successive seams is a further indication that we are dealing in reality with a single ecotype piled up in synclinal basins and not with an evolutionary progression of plant life.Such floating forests must have had a function in the pre-Flood world. The vast floating forest mats may have served the purpose of concealing the inlets for the return of water underground to the origin of these rivers in the Garden. It is conceivable that these inlets may have existed in the polar regions of the globe.Floating forests would have been little affected during the initial phase of the Flood. With the abating of the Flood waters, such mats would have been washed into subsiding basins. The formation of the Carboniferous coal measures provides a convenient demarcation line for distinguishing between geological events attending the Flood year and the events of the years and centuries following. Reading between the Giant’s Causeway basalts by Tas Walker One striking feature of the cliffs at Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland, is an orange bed that forms a prominent band in the sheer basalt face. This bed creates a natural bench and the cliff path follows it around the bays. It is 10–12 metres (30–40 ft) thick and composed of soft, friable, red and brown material. Technically it’s called the Interbasaltic Bed—i.e. the bed between the basalts.1,2The standard story is that the Interbasaltic Bed is a thick soil that formed by weathering over an unimaginably long time. For example, the website of the Giant’s Causeway Visitors’ Centre says of that layer, “During 2 million years of warm, wet climate the lower basalt weathered to form a deep red rock called ‘Laterite’.”3 On the face of it, this seems to be an argument for long ages and to contradict the young age timescale.However, such soil is unlike any forming in the United Kingdom today, so geologists propose that in the past the climate was warm and wet like tropical Africa. They say the exposed top of the Lower Basalt weathered into a thick soil that supported lush vegetation for perhaps two million years. Then the next lava flow erupted and covered the landscape.4 However, there are problems with this idea: The bed contains no soil horizons (e.g. an organic horizon or a clay horizon). Ireland is not at tropical latitudes now, nor when the Causeway formed. There is no evidence that roots once grew in the loose material. The soft bed contains lignite (brown coal) which washed into place as vegetation.5Weathering over millions of years would not produce a soil bed with such an even thickness.Where the bed slopes down near Giant‘s Causeway itself, there should be evidence of an ancient watercourse, but there isn’t.In two million years, tropical weathering would remove many hundreds of metres of material, yet the Lower Basalts appear hardly touched. The boundary between the altered material and the basalt is not very thick, but long-term weathering would penetrate deeply down the joints and into the rock.Weathering cuts into a landscape producing valleys and gorges, yet the surface of the Lower Basalts is still relatively smooth.There is no baked soil or burnt vegetation. If the Causeway basalt erupted onto an ancient land surface, it would bake the top of the bed underneath.So although on first glance the bed looks like a soil, on closer examination it is clear that it was not formed by slow-and-gradual weathering over a long period of time. Rather, the thick bed was buried quickly by the later lava flow, and chemically altered by the heat that remained after the lava had been quenched in the retreating floodwaters. Interpreting the Interbasaltic Bed within a Flood framework makes better sense than long-age explanations.[Update 22 August 2011]. As shown in the diagram above, the basalt flows comprising Giant's Causeway erupted during the Abative phase (or Sheet-flow phase) of the global Flood, as the floodwaters were receding from the continents. The thick bed of sediment, which also contained vegetation, was rapidly deposited by the receding waters on top of one of the lava flows and covered quickly by the next basaltic flow. Heat and fluids from the basalt combined with the abundant water in the sediment chemically altered the bed and coalified the vegetation within it. The presence of abundant water prevented the sedimentary bed from being baked by the subsequent lava flow. Eolian erosion exposé by Emil Silvestru Figure 1. Scallops in Resonance Cave, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The speleothems mark the transition from flooded regime (when scallops formed) to free-surface flow. The cave is excavated in Triassic Quatzino Limestone. Wind (eolian) erosion is usually mentioned in the scientific literature as wind picking up sand particles (deflation) and “sandblasting” the bedrock (corrasion).1,2 The most visible results are sand deposits (dunes and associated forms) and strange “mushroom” rocks.Little is however said or taught about the possibility of wind excavating large hollows in massive rocks. The most obvious features that come to mind are tafoni (singular tafone) which is defined as“A hollow, produced by localized weathering on a steep face. Rock breakdown typically takes place by granular disintegration or by flaking, and the hollow shows a tendency to grow upwards and backwards.” 3Although most authors seem to emphasize localized weathering, mineral constituents inside the host rocks and local fracture concentration as cause for their formation, some have at least considered the role of wind in the overall excavation process.4 Wind “eats” rock I believe that wind plays a more significant role in the formation of tafoni. During microclimate research in a salt mine near the city of Turda, Transylvania, Romania, I witnessed the formation of many “megascallops”—large (up do a meter long and 30 cm diameter at the wider end) scallop or spoon-like excavations—in rocksalt resulting from the opening new air shafts. The cause was the sudden increase in fresh air flow from the surface through the shaft. The fresh humid air being unsaturated in salt aerosols, unlike the normal, near-stagnant mine atmosphere would be able to dissolve the rocksalt in areas where turbulence ensured a longer air-rocksalt contact. These were generally in the upper corners of the mining galleries and on one location dozens of parallel megascallops formed in less than 10 years. There were no significant chemical inhomogeneities in the rocksalt to explain such features by selective dissolution. Microclimate measurements as well as smoke experiments have confirmed the major role of air turbulence in creating these features. The presence of tafoni on Mars5 further emphasizes the role of wind in “tafonisation”. Water can too Similar scalloping morphologies caused by air currents also occur in ice as exemplified by the superbly scalloped walls of Arches Cave in the Khumbu Glacier (Mt. Everest, Nepal; figure 1). 6 They also occur when wind blows over compacted snow.7 In these cases the mechanism is sublimation of homogenous crystalline matter. Dissolutional scalloping and fluting is common in limestone, gypsum and salt caves. Subcritical turbulent flow of unsaturated water has been proven to be the mechanism responsible for scalloping in these situations.7 (Figure 2). A common mechanism Figure 2. Tafoni in Cretaceous sandstone at Stone Garden near Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada. The vertical jointing does not affect/control tafonization. There seems to be no case hardening nor is there any overhanging ‘brow’. There are many morphological similarities between tafoni (figure 3) and these rocksalt excavations and I suggest that air turbulence plays a significant role in the formation of tafoni. The origin of tafoni is undoubtedly polygenic, with variable porosity and matrix mineralogy acting as initiators of tafonisation. A more porous area in sandstone for example will tend to accumulate more pore water and if freezing occurs, cryoclasty will tend to cause granular disintegration. Once a tiny excavation forms, air flow will become more turbulent and deflation will occur, with a tendency for the excavation to deepen along turbulence (eddy) pathways; the larger the resulting excavation, the more airborne particles become available for corrasion. Studies have shown that tafoni tend to deepen rapidly as they expand (positive feedback)5. If the wind is consistent and persistent, large tafoni can form in a matter of years.Some authors 5 have pointed out that case hardening occurs on the outer roof areas of tafoni the result of persistent eddies that would further the specific tafoni excavation. From tafoni to arch What would happen if tafoni formed in narrow inhomogeneous sandstone ridges (“rock fins”)? If the polygenetic conditions are consistent and persistent enough, they may very well perforate the ridge from one side to the other creating arches like the ones in the Arches National Park in Utah. Once a perforation like that occurred, the turbulent airflow would increase, as well as preferential, contour cryoclasty as now the open rim will provide more porosity for water retention. Collapse will significantly enlarge arches until certain, temporary equilibrium is reached. Wall Arch was one of the largest natural arches in Arches National Park, Utah, before it collapsed in August 2008. Cave (karst) scalloping and pothole distribution reveals that these features almost exclusively form on the walls and bedrock of conduits, never in the concavity of sharp bends where water flow impact is frontal. The reason is that coherent and persistant turbulence (vital for scalloping and potholing) occurs where parallel flow is affected by rockwall rugosity. Similarly, one would expect that tafoni preferentially form on the sides of narrow canyons, and statistically they do. In the Castle Rocks State Park, Idaho, tafoni form mostly in the main cluster of spires, rather than in isolated inselbergs.5If winds were consistent for longer periods in the past, such an origin for many of the arches might be possible. I acknowledge that I have not visited the site and am relying entirely on photographic and video sources as well as field data elsewhere. Very strong and persistent seasonal winds were present during the deglaciation period in the Late Pleistocene even at midlatitudes.8 When? Oard9 attributes the arches and natural bridges in Utah to Late Flood mechanisms. Natural bridges are different from arches in that they span an existing or dry stream which is believed to have undercut them. They are often excavated in relatively homogenous rocks unlike arches which always have a harder rock forming the roof and a softer one below. According to Oard, the arches would have formed during either the Sheet-flow or Channelize-flow Phase of the Retreating Stage of the Flood, while natural bridges probably formed during the Channelized Phase. 10 Oard’s assumption is that somehow, as incised valleys formed during the Retreating Phase, undercutting of less resistant rock under a more resistant layer. However, this does not really answer the objection Oard himself quotes from the literature: “Arch formation cannot be due solely to weathering and erosion, however, because these processes are not restricted to the sides of arches in rock fins. There must be some factor that locally enhances the effects of erosion within a rather small part of the rock fin to produce an arch. How erosion is localized within the rock fin to form an arch is enigmatic.”11 I suspect that there is nothing enigmatic about such localization once persistent seasonal air turbulence is inferred. Oard’s explanation is most likely valid in the case of natural bridges and probably for the formation of rock fins during rapid downcutting of incised valleys. In fact most rock fins represent meander necks, narrow ridges of rock separating the two sides of a hairpin meander in an incised valley. I think that these arches formed towards the end of the Ice Age; during rapid deglaciation. Those were times when winds were very strong and persistent, especially since most mid-latitude areas were completely deforested, allowing for extensive eolian erosion as is current on Mars.12 In fact climate patterns were most likely very different from the present ones as the thermohaline circulation system was massively disrupted by the sudden input of huge amounts of fresh meltwater coming from the rapidly-melting ice sheets.13 Conclusion The role of early post-Flood climate in geomorphology has not been investigated to any extent by young-earth creation scientists, although it may in fact have played a significant role in sculpting at least some of the landmarks of every continent. Under such circumstances, any present attempt—including this one—cannot but be speculative in nature. I believe that post-Flood paleoclimate reconstructions are needed and they could be assisted if not complemented by geomorphic investigation. Furthermore, such reconstructions may prove useful for future faunal and floral distribution creationist studies, including anthropology. The Canadian Oil Sands: a different story by Emil Silvestru Published: 7 October 2010(GMT+10) Introduction The Canadian oil sands (COS) a.k.a. “tar sands” represent the world’s largest heavy oil reserves, and combined with its conventional oil resources, Canada is second only to Venezuela worldwide. Only 12% of these reserves are recoverable with today’s technologies, which, at present production of 1.2 million barrels a day, is enough for 600 years. 1 The embankment of Athabasca River near Fort McMurray reveals the dark grey oil sands of the McMurray Formation (classified as Lower Cretaceous) sitting on the white limestone of the Waterways Formation (classified as Middle Devonian). This implies a massive time gap yet the strata in the formations are parallel.Heavy oil is what is left of crude oil (a natural mixture made mostly of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights) when the lighter components are naturally removed. It appears as semi-solid bitumen (a Latin word possibly of Celtic origin; the Greek equivalent is asphaltos) and is found tightly adhering to the surface of quartz grains in sands, hence the name “oil sands”. The natural removal of lighter components is believed to happen through bacterial activity, water, air, or a combination of them.2The COS are found in northern Alberta in several areas, of which the Athabasca oil sands belt is the largest. The oil sands are mined/quarried on the surface, transported by huge trucks to plants where they are heated (by steam) until the oil is separated from the sand grains. The process requires the burning of natural gas (to produce the steam) and about 6 barrels of water for each barrel of processed oil. The water is contaminated with oily residue and has to spend a long time in large tailings ponds for the residue to settle. The ponds represent a threat to water fowl so that gas cannons are automatically fired at intervals to keep the birds from landing in the hazardous water. Reclaiming the land after oil sands have been removed is an ongoing process with its ups and downs. When, how, why? The sands have yielded plesiosaur fossils, which is why the oil sands of the McMurray Formation (MMF) have been placed in the Aptian (Lower Cretaceous period). Since the 1970s the McMurray Formation has been interpreted as being deposited in an estuary,3 with a gradual upward transition from fresh water deposits, through brackish-water to shallow marine. One argument for this model is based on the inferred valley-shaped surface upon which the sands lie. This is known as the “SubCretaceous unconformity” as the sediments immediately underneath the sands have been assigned a Devonian age, so that a massive time gap exists between the two according to evolutionary geology. A second argument for the model is the presence of small tubular features in the sediments. These are interpreted to be burrows left in the sediments by some unknown creatures that are believed to have lived in a brackish-water environment. Finally, rhythmic tidal deposits are interpreted as shallow marine. Although the standard working hypothesis, the estuarine model is seldom if ever confirmed by data in the field, a prediction of a given type of rock at a future location being almost always anybody’s guess.Recent isotopic studies attribute the oil formation to the same Cretaceous age as the sands. 4 There are a number of different interpretations regarding the formation of the heavy oil sands, many placing the source rock (where the oil originally formed) deep in the sediments at the foot of the Rockies whence the oil later migrated eastward during the Laramide orogeny along the Sub-Cretaceous unconformity.5 During the migration, the lighter fractions were slowly biodegraded. 6 Conventional oil is also found below the sands in Devonian limestones, and some geologists believe that a part of that oil was somehow squeezed upwards into the overlaying Cretaceous sands, rather than having laterally migrated simultaneously into the limestones and overlaying sands.In the Fort McMurray area the sands rest unconformably on top of the carbonaceous Waterways Formation (WF) of Middle Devonian “age”. 7 The scientific literature labels this as an “angular unconformity truncating Devonian strata”, i.e. cutting older layers that dip at a different angle. During a jet boat trip on the Athabasca River, the image I saw and documented was rather different. The sands lie on top of horizontal layers of limestone and marls, which contain fossils that may be attributed to a Devonian age, according to the standard geologic timetable. There is no sign of erosion on the uppermost Devonian layers, not even on a small scale. Since there is a time gap of 260 million evolutionary years between the two formations, the boundary between the oil sands and the Waterways Formation (i.e. the Sub-Cretaceous unconformity—SCU henceforth) is in fact a “paraconformity”.8 According to some estimates, based on data from many exploration wells, the SCU covers over 1,000,000 km2.9 Some problems with the evolutionary model The paraconformity Most of the existing scientific literature speaks of a paleorelief (ancient landscape) on top of the WF, based on interpretations of data coming from drill cores in exploration wells. However, frustrated with the inconsistencies in the field, some experienced geologists started doubting the validity of the estuary model and made rather abrupt statements about drill core data: “the facies distribution within the McMurray Formation is too complex to be understood in cored datasets.” What happens here is that when proceeding to interpret data from drill cores, geologists first need to have a model of the ancient environment in which the cored sediments were deposited. With this in their mind they then interpret the data from the cores consciously or subconsciously to fit the model and no alternative interpretation is even considered. On the other hand, when geologists can see the SCU in the embankments along the Athabasca River, they interpret the horizontal character of the boundary as a “local oddity”—a happenstance. They “know” it is actually an unconformity; i.e. there is an ancient, buried landscape there, and the strata below it are usually dipping—not horizontal like at that particular location they can see. It’s not much different from the way documented fast-growing stalagmites in show caves are considered as “exceptional” and the calculated long radiometric ages as the standard—a case I have often encountered.There is another issue with the standard interpretation: according to evolutionary geology, from the Middle Devonian to the Aptian there have been 3 orogenies (mountain-building periods) that affected the Rockies (whence the sands of the MMF are believed to have originated). These are:10 According to standard geology, such major tectonic events were always associated with massive erosion in the newly-built mountains and consequently sediment transport and deposition in the adjacent areas (“foreland” in geological parlance). Well, the MMF is supposed to be 1 Sonoma 270–240 exactly that, the foreland of the Rockies. Why then was no sediment laid on top of the WF for 260 million years? And if there were sediments 2 Nevadan 180–50 deposited, what removed them, since there is no physical evidence of extensive erosion? Maybe there is no 260-million-year gap after all! The paleoenvironment 3 Sevier 140–50 We have already mentioned that some geologists doubt the estuary model for the depositional environment of the MMF. And there is more to question than the drill core interpretation. Trace fossils (impressions made by living animals), also called ichnofossils or “ichnites”, are one of the most classical cases of vested bias in interpretation of facts in geology. In fact “ichnology” has gotten to the point of giving Latin names to traces without knowing which creature produced them!11 So how can someone positively deduce that certain tubular features likeGyrolithes, Cylindrichnus, Skolithos, Arenicolites, and Planolites found in the MMF are indeed ichnites of unknown creatures that are brackish-water dwellers? They could have been produced in any watery environment. Oil migration Whatever rocks the oil formed in, they must be older than the Cretaceous rocks because, according to the only accepted oilformation theory—the “biogenic theory”—huge amounts of small dead creatures and plants had to accumulate, be covered by thick sediments and sink to depths where the temperature and pressure was high-enough to turn them into oil. Yet, as we have seen, there are no sediments in the area between the Cretaceous and the Devonian! And one has to twist existing geological information a lot to somehow infer the existence of such rocks, somewhere between the Rockies and Fort McMurray. However, if the oil has actually ascended from much a greater depth, as the competing (but utterly rejected) “abiogenic theory”12 of the origins of oil postulates, the aforementioned conundrum ceases to exist. Oil has simply ascended from below the WF, accumulated in its cavities and continued to move upwards, into the MMF. A creationist alternative If the abiogenic theory is correct—and there are many reasons why that may be the case—the source of oil can be placed deep inside the earth, in areas that have never been directly affected by the Flood waters. As the sediments of the Flood accumulated and because plate tectonics was now in place, oil started its migration along deep fault lines in the crust. From there it seeped up into the newly-laid sediments above and accumulated wherever conditions were right (stratigraphic and structural traps). As oil is still produced today inside the earth, it continues to seep so that even some oil reservoirs once considered “empty”13 can actually recharge, and have done so. Of course, the pathway that the oil follows may change—the crust is a rather dynamic environment—so some of today’s known oil reservoirs may no longer be connected to the deep source. The contact between the oil sands and the subjacent Devonian limestone of Waterways Formation. The tar (bitumen) slowly and constantly oozes out the banks, sometimes rolling down the slope in little tar balls. Note the ‘Sub-Cretaceous Unconformity’ which assumes the Devonian layers are dipping at a different angle from the sands. In fact they are both horizontal. This is a paraconformity, where the strata above and below the gap are parallel and there is no evidence of erosion. In this view, the COS are the result of oil infiltrating into the sediments (most probably vertically) along a continuous fault line separating the Rockies from the eastern foreland. The Devonian limestones have retained as much of this oil as their porosity has allowed but the “overflow” kept ascending. If the sands in the MMF were capped by some impervious sediment, nothing should have stopped the oil seeping into the whole basin throughout 112 million evolutionary years. However, COS are in fact only in several areas of a much vaster sedimentary basin.There was however one significant seal during the Quaternary: the ice cap. Reaching its maximum extent about 500 years after the Flood,14 the ice cap acted not only as a solid cap but because of the cooler temperatures at its base it increased the viscosity of the oil so that seepage slowed down. Furthermore, in the later stages of the Ice Age as the ice cap was retreating, meltwater accumulated at the bottom of the ice cap to be released eventually in sudden catastrophic bursts. These outbursts would have created a vacuum/suction behind them, 15 which could have facilitated increased oil migration from the subjacent COS. Over the years, as the ice cap further receded, some of the under-ice meltwater channels became the rivers of today that have cut through the soft sands all the way down to the subjacent Devonian limestone, a situation that is now clearly visible. Such a setting and the much shorter time available for seepage can easily account for the patchy, rather than continuous extent of the COS.Such a complex geologic feature, one that has major economic value, once again proves to be consistent with a young planet. While it is possible for geologists to find oil today using either the evolutionary or the creationary model, the latter offers simple solutions to many inconsistencies with the former. Orogeny Evolutionary age (Ma ago) Liquid Gold by Daniel Devine The home of one of the biggest gold mines in the world, a Pacific volcanic island, is challenging the way geologists think about history’s most coveted metal. Before now, geologists outside creationist circles believed that gold deposits only form over long periods of time, perhaps hundreds of thousands to millions of years. The Lihir gold deposit in Papua New Guinea is quickly changing that. The Lihir gold deposit is located on an island to the north of Papua New Guinea (arrow inset) to the north of Australia. The island of Lihir is only a few miles long but sits on one of the most massive gold deposits known, the Ladolam deposit.1 This formed below-ground as magma (molten rock) heated mineral-rich water and forced the water under great pressure toward the surface. Inside the earth, these chemically aggressive solutions are able to dissolve all sorts of minerals. Approaching the surface, the water turned to steam, leaving behind its minerals, including the gold. Some geologists think many of the world’s gold ore deposits formed in this way.2 Lihir’s two open pits from the air, Minifie (foreground) and Lienetz (background).But did they form quickly or slowly? Quickly, say the authors of a paper published in the journal Science last year.3 Two New Zealand geologists, Stuart Simmons and Kevin Brown, obtained a water sample from below Lihir mine by lowering a customized probe down a deep shaft. The concentration of gold dissolved in the water was 15 parts per billion—seemingly small but 1,000 times greater than any concentration ever measured in hydrothermal surface water.4 Calculating the rate at which the steam was escaping, Simmons and Brown estimated that 24 kilograms (53 pounds) of gold are being added to the Ladolam deposit every year. They concluded the entire deposit could have been laid down in only 55,000 years. That’s extremely quickly by secular, uniformitarian standards. But that’s also assuming the rate has never changed. In January 2007, New Scientist quoted two other researchers who think the Ladolam deposit was formed even more speedily, either because of higher concentrations of gold or as the result of a cataclysmic event.5 Christoph Heinrich, a Swiss researcher who has studied gold deposits around the world, says he has found fluids locked in quartz crystals with concentrations 1,000 times higher than even what Simmons and Brown found. ‘If you spin the same argument that they are using with a thousand times higher concentrations, then the time it takes might have been a thousand times shorter—50 or 60 years,’ he said. Gold pour at Lihir.Greg Hall, a geologist who has worked for the mining company Placer Dome, told New Scientist, ‘My gut feeling looking at Lihir is that it formed in the same time it took Mount St Helens to blow up—a month, a day, maybe as short as 5 hours.’ Mount St Helens erupted in 1980 and immediately became a working example of immense geologic change occurring in a short timeframe. Lihir, as a volcanic island, has been subject to similar processes. The wonders of water by Jonathan Sarfati Water! We drink it, wash in it, cook with it, swim in it and generally take it for granted. This clear, tasteless and odorless liquid is so much part of our lives that we hardly ever think about its amazing properties. We would die in a few days without water—and our bodies are 65% water. Water is necessary to dissolve essential minerals and oxygen, flush our bodies of waste products, and transport nutrients around the body where needed. Water is the only substance that has these properties. And as we shall see, it has many more fascinating features that suggest that it has been designed ‘just right’ for life. Liquid There are three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. All three are essential for living things. The solid state maintains its shape. Liquid is able to flow and take up the shape of its container, while keeping the same total volume. A gas expands to fill both the shape and size of its container. For molecules to react together, it is best to have them close to each other, but free to move around. This is just what the liquid state provides, so it is ideal for all the thousands of chemical reactions occurring in every cell of every organism. But of all the temperatures in the universe from the –270°C (–454°F) of outer space to the tens of millions of degrees inside the hottest stars, water is liquid in a very narrow range. At normal atmospheric pressure, water is only liquid from 0–100°C (32–212°F). It should not then be surprising that Earth is the only place in the universe known to have liquid water. And this depends on having the right kind of star—neither too bright nor too dim, and thus neither too big nor too small. And the planet must be at the right distance from it [see also The sun: our special star]. Why is ice so slippery? Many people enjoy winter sports such as ice skating and skiing. What makes ice so slippery, allowing these fun activities? Many people believe that it comes from pressure melting the ice and forming a lubricating liquid layer. True, it is well-known to physical chemists that applied pressure tends to help form the substance which takes up the least room. Therefore pressure will favour production of water from ice (melting), so its melting point will decrease. But the effect is much smaller than many people think—about 100 times normal air pressure lowers the melting point by only one Celsius degree.3 So there is no way that this effect could be responsible for ice skating, and certainly not for skiing where the pressure is far less. Nor could it have caused planes to melt ice and sink 75 metres (250 feet)—see The lost squadron. The true reason is yet another unusual property—the molecules on the surface of ice vibrate much more than usual in a solid, although they don’t move around. This gives the surface a ‘quasi-liquid’ character, i.e. liquid-like but not liquid.4 Surface tension on water is easily seen when insects walk across the surface without sinking. Surface tension Water has a very highsurface tension, the force trying to keep the surface area as small as possible. It is higher than that of a syrupy liquid like glycerol. Surface tension tends to make bubbles and drops spherical, and is strong enough to support light objects, including some insects. More importantly, this means that biological compounds can be concentrated near the surface, speeding up many of life’s important reactions. Water’s power Although water usually appears placid, if a lot of it is moving fast enough, it can move car-sized boulders and carve deep canyons, even cutting into solid rock. When flowing very fast, an especially destructive process called cavitation occurs—see Interview with Dr Edmond Holroyd for more details. Also, on a chemical level, it quickly breaks down many important large molecules in living cells. While living cells have many ingenious repair mechanisms, DNA cannot last very long in water outside a cell.5 A recent article in New Scientist also described this as a ‘headache’ for researchers working on evolutionary ideas on the origin of life.6 It also showed its materialistic bias by saying this was not ‘good news’. But the real bad news is surely the faith in evolution (everything made itself), which overrides objective science. [For a more technical explanation, see Origin of life: the polymerization problem.] Temperature buffer Another very important property of water is its high specific heat. This means it takes a lot of energy to heat it (about ten times as much as the same mass of iron), and it must lose a lot of energy to cool down. So the vast bodies of water on earth help keep the earth’s temperature fairly steady. On the other hand, land masses heat up and cool down more quickly. When combined with the fairly steady temperature of water bodies, this is a good thing. It means different parts of the atmosphere are heated differently, which generates wind. This is essential for keeping the air fresh. When liquids evaporate, they draw in heat from their surroundings. This means that we have a useful means of keeping cool: sweating. An essential part of this is water’s high latent heat of vaporization. This means it takes much more energy to evaporate water than most other liquids. So we need to perspire comparatively little water to keep cool; if we sweat nearly any other liquid, the amount we would need would be enormous. Super solvent Water is one of the nearest things we have to a “universal solvent". Many minerals and vitamins can be transported throughout the body after being dissolved. Dissolved sodium and potassium ions are essential for nerve impulses. Water also dissolves gases, such as oxygen from the air, enabling water-living animals to use oxygen. Water, a major component of blood,1 also dissolves carbon dioxide, a waste product from energy production in all cells, and transports it to the lungs, where it can be breathed out.2However, a truly universal solvent would be no use, because no container could store it! But water is repelled by oily compounds, so our cells have membranes made of these. Many of our proteins have partly oily regions, and they tend to fold together, repelled by the surrounding water. This is partly responsible for the many and varied shapes of proteins. These shapes are essential for carrying out functions vital for life. Insight into ice A vital and very unusual property of water is that it expands as it freezes, unlike most other substances. That is why icebergs float. In fact, water contracts normally as it is cooled, until it reaches 4°C (39.2°F), when it starts to expand again. This means that icy-cold water is less dense, so tends to move upwards. This is very important. Most liquids exposed to cold air would cool, and the cold liquid would sink, forcing more liquid to rise and be cooled by the air. Eventually all the liquid would lose heat to the air and freeze, from the bottom up, till completely frozen. But with water, the cold regions, being less dense, stay on top, allowing the warmer regions to stay below and avoid losing heat to the air. This means that the surface may be frozen, but fish can still live in the water below. But if water were like other substances, large bodies of water, such as North America’s Great Lakes, would be frozen solid, with dire effects on life on earth as a whole. Did you know? The earth is 70% covered by water. Only 1% of the world’s water is readily available for human consumption. Approximately 97% is too salty and 2% is ice.National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Dept Commerce The earth's vast ice caps and glaciers contain a staggering 29 million cubic kilometres (7 million cubic miles) of water which is about 2% of the total on earth. The oceans contain 1,370 million cubic kilometres and the total amount of water falling as rain on land each year is approximately 110,300 cubic kilometres. Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent having the least runoff and 70% desert. It takes about 150,000 litres of water to make a family car. Only 1% of household water usage is for drinking. The rest goes on lawns, showers, etc. A household toilet flushes about 150 litres of water per day. A continuously dribbling tap wastes 600 litres of water per day. A dripping tap per day (1 drip per second) uses 30 litres. Garden mulching reduces evaporation by 75%. An average garden sprinkler uses 1000 litres per hour. Natural water has in it small amounts of dissolved mineral salts, which give it a taste. Pure water is tasteless. (Household figures are averages but will vary depending on personal habits and appliance design.) Why is water unique? The smallest building block of water is the water molecule. This comprises two hydrogen atoms attached to an oxygen atom in a V-shape, with an angle of 104°. It is polar, that is the oxygen atom has a negative electrical charge while the two hydrogen atoms are positive. This is why water dissolves so many things, like salt, which also have electrically charged building blocks; while water won’t dissolve oil which has uncharged molecules. Also, it is attracted quite strongly to other water molecules by hydrogen bonds. These bonds are ten times weaker than typical chemical bonds, but strong enough to make water liquid at room temperature, while a similar compound, hydrogen sulfide, lacking hydrogen bonds, is a gas. Hydrogen bonds are also responsible for water’s high surface tension and specific and latent heats. The shape of the molecule and hydrogen bonding mean that ice has a very open hexagonal (six-sided) crystal structure, which is illustrated beautifully by the huge variety of snowflakes [see also The treasures of the snow: Do pretty crystals prove that organization can arise spontaneously?]. This structure takes up a lot of room, but the structure collapses upon melting, so liquid water is denser. This is why ice floats. Recent research shows that water molecules form clusters in the liquid, in particular a cage-like structure with six molecules.7 This is responsible for many of water’s unique properties. Other recent research shows that there are probably two types of hydrogen bond in water, one about twice as strong as the other.7This could explain why water is liquid over a fairly wide range. Melting breaks only the weaker bonds, while boiling must break the stronger bonds too. This research also shows that the change from strong to weak bonds requires certain temperatures, one of which is 37°C (98.6°F). This is our body temperature, suggesting that this is one of the many intricate design features we have. The age of the Jenolan Caves, Australia by Emil Silvestru The Jenolan Caves system is multi-phased with overlapping meteoric and hydrothermal speleogenesis. Dating of this system was elusive until recently when illite from clays assumed to be of paleokarstic origin was dated as being of Carboniferous age, implying that the Jenolan Caves are at least of that age. However, there are serious problems both with the karstological and dating approaches that led to this age determination. Some sediments appear to be older than the paleokarst that hosts them. The geomorphology, particularly the direction of the surface drainage, is difficult to explain unless pre-existing conduits of hydrothermal origin are admitted, which could have formed during the final stages of the Flood. The evolutionary interpretation of the paleokarst and the sediments in it is riddled with difficulties and leaves many basic questions unanswered. As for the dating, besides the well-known problems with the K–Ar radiometric dating method, the particular geological and karstological setting of the Jenolan Caves provides various sources of excess 40Ar which would yield exaggerated ages. Location and setting Figure 1. Outcrops of the Jenolan Caves Limestone in the Jenolan River area. (After Osbourne4). The ‘Jenolan Caves’ are contained mainly to the large limestone outcrop at the bottom of the diagram where road access is provided. The Jenolan Caves are located 175 km west of Sydney and are a major tourist attraction. The local Aborigines knew the caves as Binoomea (Dark Places) and probably considered them a dangerous place. In 1838 James Whalan discovered the caves as he was searching for missing cattle, possibly stolen by the cattle thief and escaped convict James McKeown. In fact, one of the less visited caves in the area is called McKeown’s Hole. The initial name for the caves was Fish River Caves: the present name was adopted in 1884 after the government of New South Wales took over the management of the system in 1866. The name is derived from the Aboriginal for ‘high place’, referring to the heights above the caves.1 There are nine show caves and the sum of all known passages in the caves is 22,503 m. 2The caves even provided the name for the limestones in which they are located: the Jenolan Caves Limestone (JCL) believed to be of Late Silurian age. The JCL outcrops as a narrow band (250 m wide) over a strike length of 5 km in the caves area, continuing north as a series of isolated outcrops for a further 4 km, attaining a maximum thickness of 265 m at the Caves House (figure 1).3 The dip is generally steep and quite variable, the layers being nearly vertical in many places.To the west, the limestone is faulted against Ordovician andesite and laminated siliceous mudstone, whilst to the east the limestone is overlain by silicic volcaniclastics. To the north, east and south of the caves Carboniferous granitic plutons intrude the sedimentary sequence.3The scientific literature about the caves is limited and leaves many significant karstological questions unanswered. The caves The Jenolan Caves proper consist of interconnected passages and rooms of various shapes and sizes, north and south of the ‘centrepiece’ of the location, the Grand Archway. The caves on each side of this major landmark are distinctly different: south of the Grand Archway the caves comprise a series of large dome-shaped chambers, termed cupolas, formed by the dissolution of the limestone and interconnected by north-south trending passages. Recent diving explorations in the Mammoth Cave, one of the Jenolan Caves, have revealed even larger, flooded cupolas—up to 100 m high—below the water table (Daniel Cove, official cave guide, personal communication, January 2004). There is also a large breakdown (formed by the breaking down of the ceiling and walls) chamber, the Exhibition Chamber.3 Cupolas are not characteristic north of the Grand Archway, where multi-level, north-south trending passages are the norm. The northern caves contain significant amounts of coarse alluvial sediment which does not display evidence of high velocity flow. 3One major characteristic of the caves is that they repeatedly intersect what are believed to be paleokarstic deposits: these are deposits found in the caves that predate the cave formation. 3,4 Osborne4 has proposed karsting episodes during the Late Carboniferous, Early Permian, Permian, Late Cretaceous, Tertiary and the Cainozoic (table 1).Recently, the same author followed up by identifying clays inside the caves that have been dated to the Carboniferous.3 The Jenolan Caves conundrum Table 1. Osbourne’s4 framework chronology for the Jenolan Caves. The number against the process indicates the number of times it has taken place. Existing literature acknowledges that, unlike the vast majority of documented cases, some sections of the Jenolan Caves and caves in other karst areas in Eastern Australia have developed along alleged paleokarst deposits which would have acted as guiding features. Some authors like Ford 5 believe that such situations are due to a different type of speleogenesis (cave formation), namely per ascensum hydrothermal speleogenesis. Hydrothermal solutions are driven by thermal convection through the limestone and in places have followed pre-existing paleokarst filling. Consequently Osborne4 suggested that at least two of his proposed paleokarsting episodes, the Early Permian and the Late Cretaceous, were in fact hydrothermal.There are not many cases in the karstological literature in which so many speleogenetic phases, allegedly covering over 300 million years, have unfolded in such a small lithostratigraphic unit. As a matter of fact, it may well be that this is the longest overlapping speleogenesis anywhere in the world!Osborne 4 and Osborne et al.3 have pointed out that the Jenolan Caves have a special characteristic: parallel surface and underground drainages. The semi-dry channels of the Jenolan River and Camp Creek are closely followed, almost bend-by-bend, by the present underground drainages. This also appears to be the case for the paleochannels above the present rivers and previous, now dry or sediment-filled, caves.These unusual characteristics are part of a broader characteristic of the Jenolan Caves and their surroundings which seems to be ignored in the literature I consulted. The surface drainage of the Jenolan River and Camp Creek is longitudinal to the structure in which the JCL represents a limestone bar that is, a narrow, long limestone outcrop surrounded by non-karstic formations. In countless field examples, such bars are cut more or less perpendicularly by the hydrographic network, oftentimes through some of the most spectacular gorges. 6 Such cases are even more characteristic when the limestone bars were covered by other sediments in which the valleys were encased. The Jenolan Caves area presents enough evidence to suggest that the limestone was at some point covered by Permian conglomerates and sandstones and that valleys were cut in those formations.Longitudinal drainages represent a marked exception and even when they occur, the valleys are cut along the boundary between the limestones and the adjacent rocks. The Jenolan River and Camp Creek, however, are mostly confined within the narrow, less than 300 m wide, limestone bar. Such a setting is most unusual and is an intrinsic characteristic of the limestone, implying that conduits existed within the limestone at the time it was first exposed to karsting. In other words, the limestones were already karstified without any connection with the surface! Only one type of karsting can achieve this: hydrothermal, per ascensum karsting. Hydrothermal karsting In the karstological literature ‘hydrothermal’ refers to ‘warm water’ as against hot mineral rich magmatic emanations. There is evidence that the same solutions can change their characteristics, dissolving rather than depositing minerals. 7 I have referred to this type of karsting as ‘endogenous karsting’. 8 Osborne3 does not define the Jenolan Caves as hydrothermal karsting (HTK) but his attribution of pyrite in the paleokarst fills to hydrothermal activity seems to suggest endogenous karsting rather than thermal water activity. HTK seems to always involve two stages: 1) the excavation of the karstic voids and 2) their total or partial filling with hydrothermal deposits.I have dealt extensively with HTK, 9–11 especially in the context of paleokarsts, pointing out that paleokarst features surviving over extended periods of time in active karst areas represents a huge problem. Yet the scientific literature I consulted seems to completely ignore that and proposes repeated, overlapping hydrothermal and normal, meteoric karsting and speleogenesis over 300 million years, with each phase leaving its own signature and karst network. This involves marine transgressions which have invaded and filled the caves with layered crinoidal limestone.3,4 Yet crinoids would have not lived inside submerged caves. The notion of limestone accumulation inside a submerged cave stretches the imagination especially in this case where the authors have specifically emphasized the lack of calcite in the cave samples.12The only kind of calcite found in these sediments is in the form of clasts coming from the host limestone. Figure 2. Recently cemented coarse gravel from the Thanksgiving Cave (Vancouver Island, Canada) found in an area frequently flooded by the subterranean stream. Note the cementcoated cobble in the centre. I have seen recent calcite-cemented alluvia in Imperial Cave in the area where the lower fossil cave connects to the active cave. Cemented alluvia is a common feature in most active caves (figure 2) and I have even found it on the bottom of a flowing subterranean stream in the cave Huda lui Papară in Romania. But such cementing will never occur in salt water, during the submerged phase of the JCL.In normal spelean conditions soluted calcite from the host limestone will always end up in the cave sediments, even more so after an alleged 8 phases of karstification covering 300 million years!Osborne’s description of the paleokarst deposits3,4 suggests that they are a clearly separated entity within the host limestone. As the assembly of the JCL was submitted to HTK one would expect that all these entities—if they predated the HTK—would have been seriously affected and not preserved untouched. Such karsting develops by massive fronts of hydrothermal fluids ascending through the host rock and all existing discontinuities, paleokarst being a major discontinuity. Only meteoric speleogenesis, with passages acting as drains of infiltrated water, would cut through paleokarstic deposits and leave the rest unaffected. The paleofills and the associated problems The way Osborne et al.3 present the geological and karstological setting of JCL and the paleofills raises a series of problems if compared to other more or less similar documented locations. a) An overly long period of continuous karsting Osborne et al.3 have recently dated ten primary cave paleofills from the Jenolan Caves, as well as six surface samples, using the K–Ar method on illite, and in one case dating cave clay, using the fission track method on zircon grains. The ages yielded cover the interval from the Devonian (Emsian) to Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) with the majority of cave samples falling within the Carboniferous-Permian, from the Tournaisian to the late Ufimian, roughly 100 million years. This implies that the JCL has been submitted to karsting for all of that time. Using the existing measured karst denudation rate (KDR) in New South Wales, namely 24 mm ka-1 in the Coleman Plains,12 at least 2.4 km of limestone would have to be removed during this period. Though not clearly specified in the texts, it appears that even the earliest alleged paleokarst features are similar to the most recent ones, which are controlled by the nearly vertical bedding planes. This seems to imply that the tilting of the JCL occurred in the earlier stages of the Variscan Orogeny, hence the 2.4 km of limestone would not have been removed from a more or less horizontal structure but from a nearly vertical one.Adding the other postulated karsting phases and assuming a similar KDR, the total height of that limestone bar would have been at least double. For the sake of a simpler argument, let us assume that for all the rest of the Carboniferous—nearly 100 Ma—the JCL was covered by other sediments which are now completely missing. This would be very difficult to prove and even more difficult to admit in a karstological context. Shaw and Flood (1993), quoted by Osborne et al.,3 believe that up to 5 km of rock was removed from the Lachlan Fold Belt, of which the JCL is part, during the Late Carboniferous! That means that the assumed removal of limestone was not due to karsting but to some other, more energetic erosional episode.Assuming the Late Carboniferous lasted for a maximum of 33 Ma, the erosional rate would have been 150 mm ka -1, much higher than any measured KDR. Obviously, if the period was shorter, the erosion rate would have been even more intense. Under such circumstances karsting processes would have been extremely intense and would have left much more visible landmarks than the ones found in the field. Also, the issue of longitudinal drainage as mentioned above becomes even more problematic since now we have to account for the preservation of a preferential drain in a very narrow band of rock for 360 Ma whilst the regional erosion has eroded away all other formations. A series of perpendicular gorges cutting the limestone bar would be a much more appropriate interpretation. b) An unreasonably deep burial Based on the assumptions above, one can infer that the portions of the JCL that are exposed today would have been buried at the time of the Late Carboniferous to at least 5 km depth at which low grade metamorphic features should be present. I find it very difficult to believe that karsting, even as HTK, could have occurred at that depth without voids being constantly compressed leaving no room for infills. It therefore seems very unlikely that the ages determined for the clays could fit any known karsting scenario. Timing discrepancies Osborne et al.3 make no reference in their text to the discrepancy between the timing of karsting/speleogenetic phases as shown in table 1 and the span of the alleged ages the radiometric dating has yielded. Thus it is assumed that the first meteoric karsting phase occurred in the Late Carboniferous, yet the oldest karst filling is dated to the Early Carboniferous (Tournaisian) and is hydrothermal! So when and how did those infilled karst voids form? Invoking a Devonian karsting episode does not really work in the general context of their paper because one of the cave samples was dated as Devonian. This represents a different type of clay filling in a joint-like feature, unlike the true karstic samples dated as Carboniferous. Their paper provides no answers, merely listing them as topics for further research. The K–Ar dating method: more problems This method is based on the decay of 40K, with a half life 1.39 x 109 years13,14 to 40Ar. The problems with using 40K–40Ar have been frequently described. Austin has dealt in detail with the excess of 40Ar in dacite in a lava dome on Mount St Helens formed in 1986 and which yielded a K–Ar age of 0.35 ± 0.05 Ma. 15 The reason for this is inherited argon from the magma itself which was incorporated in the phenocrysts while they were formed. In the Jenolan Cave situation the mineral dated was illite, a phyllosilicate with three layers very similar in structure to muscovite.As mentioned before, Osborne 4 proposes at least two hydrothermal speleogenetic phases. The dated illite is believed to come from in situalteration so that the radiometric dates represent the age of the hydrothermal alteration rather than the age of the altered mineral. Under such circumstances, no sample should be dated earlier than the Late Cretaceous, the age of the last alleged hydrothermal phase.Recent research16 has also revealed another source of Ar in pure authigenic, recent to present-day smectite from Pacific sediments: ‘ … excess 40Ar, which represents radiogenic 40Ar released from nearby altered silicates, might be temporarily adsorbed at the surface of the rock pore spaces and is therefore available for incorporation in nucleating and growing particles’. In other words radiogenic Ar produced in adjacent rocks can easily contaminate secondary illite; the higher the 40Ar contents, the older the sample is supposed to be. It is interesting to notice that Osborne et al.3 make no reference to possible sources of 40Ar contamination. Yet one sample dated to 167.12 ± 3.60 Ma, which corresponds to the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian), is described as ‘weathered andesite’ from ‘Mesozoic dykes’: however, these dykes are not shown on their map. This could well be a possible source of excess Ar within the JCL itself.In addition to this, this paper presents many other magmatic formations in the areas adjacent to the Jenolan Caves: Early Devonian volcanics, Carboniferous granite and Carboniferous basic intrusions.It is very difficult to believe that with so many close sources of contamination, all the 40Ar in the dated samples comes from the decay of 40K in these same samples! Therefore it is perfectly reasonable to question the Carboniferous age of the cave sediment samples. A simpler scenario A simpler solution to all of these problems can be proposed: there weren’t eight speleogenetic/karsting phases during 300 Ma. The majority of Jenolan Caves were formed by hydrothermal karsting in four stages 11 from the final moments of the Flood to the present. In stage 1, while the limestone was still submerged, hydrothermal solutions (HTS) produced during the paroxysmal stages of the Flood, were ascending through the crust causing rapid diagenesis.11 Locally, as diagenesis depleted the mineral contents, the same solutions became aggressive, dissolving the rocks they helped create. Such situations have been recorded in the case of hydrothermal metasomatic ore deposits. 7 Though still en masse, the circulation of these aggressive solutions was partly controlled by the textural and structural features of the newly-formed JCL. The larger karstic halls and cupolas connected by large conduits were formed by such solutions. As the solutions were more aggressive at depth, the size of the karstic voids should increase with depth, which is exactly what explorations at the Jenolan Caves have revealed. This runs counter to a meteoric speleogenesis. In stage 2, during the recessive stage of the Flood,17 the entire sedimentary sequence emerged from the sea and was tilted, the JCL being still covered by massive non-karstic deposits. The HTS activity changed, the convectional per ascensum movement being gradually replaced by a gravitational per descensum flow. This flow was controlled by the structural features of the limestone. Confined between non-karstic deposits, in its search for an outlet, the drain became mostly longitudinal. The lack of cupolas north of the Great Archway suggests that the drain was from the north towards the south, along large passages with some of the cupolas becoming temporary collectors. The large amounts of HTS and the increased pressure resulted in a dramatic acceleration of the karsting processes, the cupolas and halls rapidly growing in size. Many authigenic sediments, mainly clay minerals from the insoluble fraction in the dissolved limestone, were generated during this time and they travelled extensively through the system, being trapped and rapidly cemented in what we could call ‘hydrodynamic traps’—lateral, calmer passages. During stage 3, erosion brought the JCL to the surface. By this time most of the HTS in the system were chemically dampened as the supply from inside the crust had practically ceased. At some point the fluid-filled system was opened by erosion and the fluids rapidly drained. The longitudinal north-south subterranean drain was thus made available not only to infiltrating water from the surface but also to surface streams which were pirated by this ready-made drainage system.Surface erosion would have eventually reached some of these drains, causing ceiling collapse and turning the passages into surface river channels. Thus the Jenolan River and Camp Creek were formed, preserving segments of the old conduits and even erosional ledges paralleling the remaining subterranean drains. This pre-existing drain was already so deeply entrenched that it ran and still runs counter to the normal hydrographic trends for a limestone bar geomorphic setting. The upper chambers and conduits that were partially or completely drained were reached by infiltrating water which was probably much more aggressive than it is today due to the abundance of organic materials in the adjacent Flood-laid sediments. As a result, speleothems started growing very quickly. Stage 4 corresponds more or less to the present conditions; no HTS are present. Meteoric speleogenesis reshaped the existing voids and surface erosion further dissected the cave system of the Jenolan Caves, leading to the present complex setting. The constant decrease in precipitation and consequently the reduced flow in the subterranean drain have left many of the passages dry. The deep, below water table, cupolas had their fluids gradually replaced by the infiltrating water, with many of these large reservoirs acting today as annexes to the main drain.18 Conclusions Though recently hailed as the world’s oldest (340 Ma) open cave system, 19 the Jenolan Caves system can be explained as the result of hydrothermal karsting during the final stages of the Flood, subsequently reshaped and disorganized by meteoric speleogenesis and surface erosion.The standard evolutionary interpretation of the complex cave system assumes no less than eight speleogenetic phases including both meteoric and hydrothermal activity. This leads to many problems, discrepancies and unanswered questions.Clay sediments in alleged paleokarst dissected by the cave passages have been dated by the K–Ar method as Carboniferous. However, the K–Ar method is notoriously error-prone, contamination being the most important issue. The geological and karstological situation in the area provided abundant sources of contamination which could have easily led to an excess of 40Ar and consequently exaggerated ages. In an attitude that has been consistent for many years now, radiometric dating prevails over logic, geomorphology and karstology. It seems that the accelerated return of neo-catastrophism in geology is being compensated by a desperate quest for antiquity of landscapes, both surficial and subterranean, and Australia has long been a first stage for this quest. Diamonds in days (actually, minutes!) by Richard Fangrad For many people, the value of a diamond is partially wrapped up in the belief that they are millions of years old. However, a company called LifeGem, has found a way to manufacture diamonds in as short as six months using the carbon found in the cremated remains of people. Even your pets can now be turned into beautiful blue, yellow or clear diamonds. LifeGem describes how they create their diamonds,‘The process for creating highquality diamonds has been present for many years. General Electric first pioneered this technology in the mid-1950s. Diamonds are created by subjecting carbon, the primary element of all diamonds, to conditions that recreate the forces of nature. The LifeGem creation process is identical to this, only we use an exact carbon source to create a beautiful and meaningful diamond tribute for you and your family.’ 1The company extracts the carbon from the cremated remains and, by baking the carbon at temperatures up to 3000 ºC, it is purified and converted to graphite.‘To create your LifeGem we now place this graphite in one of our unique diamond presses which replicates the awesome forces of nature—heat and pressure.’ 1Notice that even though they are attempting to replicate the forces of nature that are believed to be involved with the creation of diamonds they don’t include ‘millions of years’ in the list of ‘ingredients’. That’s because they know that millions of years are not required to make diamonds. To summarize: carbon + heat + pressure + just a few months = a diamond.‘Other than being created in our lab, LifeGem diamonds are molecularly identical to naturally occurring diamonds. They possess exactly the same traits—hardness, brilliance, fire and luster.’1 And faster still!! Actually, it’s possible to synthesise diamonds in days, rather than months. Or even just hours.For example, researchers have now made diamonds by reacting carbon dioxide with metallic sodium in a pressurized oven at only 440ºC—the lowest temperature reported so far for diamond synthesis—and 800 atmospheres. It took just 12 hours.And how’s this: researchers have transformed graphite into ultrahard pure diamond in only a few minutes under static high pressure and temperatures of 2,300–2,500°C. With their extreme hardness (being polycrystalline, they are even harder than single-crystal diamonds), these transparent artificial diamonds could be used in industry where real diamonds are currently used to cut and polish other hard materials. The ‘millions of years’ are unobserved speculation! Rapidly-formed diamonds are yet another example of something commonly thought to require millions of years but observed to happen rapidly. Science involves making observations, but no one has ever observed anything taking millions of years. Regarding fossilization, dinosaur expert Dr Phil Currie from the Tyrell Museum in Alberta, Canada has said, ‘Fossilization is a process that can take anything from a few hours to millions of years … ’2 Clearly he has observed rapid fossilization. But he has not observed fossilization taking place over millions of years. Therefore the statement that fossils can form in a few hours is ‘scientific’ but the unobserved ‘millions of years’ process is unsubstantiated speculation. Other observations that geological processes happen quickly include: Rapid deposition of very fine layers of mud Rapid rock formation Rapid granite formation Rapid fossilization Rapid canyon formation Island formed rapidly in the ocean Rapid changes in the Greenland Ice Sheet Opals created rapidly Rapid stalagmite formation Rapidly petrified wood All of these observations support the record of a recent creation followed by a global Flood. Diamonds: a creationist’s best friend Diamonds—evidence of explosive geological processes Grisly gems Diamonds fast and hard Even faster diamonds Geology Questions and Answers ‘Young’ age of the Earth & Universe Q&A Vanishing coastlines Fast erosion means the world is young by Tas Walker Mark and Louise Roberts bought the historic Belle Tout lighthouse at Beachy Head, UK, in 1996. Located near spectacular 100-m-(300-ft-) high chalk cliffs, just like the White Cliffs of Dover 90 km east along the coast, they turned it into a bed and breakfast. Selected guests would spend the night atop the stone tower, and watch the sun set.1,2Late in 1998 their dream turned into a nightmare when a large piece of the cliff fell into the English Channel. The couple fled in the night, leaving their home perched precariously just 3 m (10 ft) from the edge. Four months later, engineers saved the structure by moving it 17 m (55 ft) inland. But they warned it may only be a matter of decades before it needs to be moved again. 3Mark and Louise had not appreciated how quickly the cliffs erode.In 1832, Belle Tout was built about 30 m (100 ft) from the edge. Its location was set so sailors would see the light disappear behind the cliff if they came too close. On average, the sea has eroded one metre of the cliff every six years. In fact, erosion keeps the cliffs white by preventing grass, shrubs and trees from growing.The Roberts are not alone. Most people don’t appreciate the significance of erosion, and how quickly land is disappearing into the briny deep. Whole villages on the English coastline have been lost, and locals are used to seeing houses teeter on the edge.Mainstream geologists say the billions of tiny crushed shells that make up the White Cliffs of Dover were deposited during the Cretaceous period (the age of chalk) that concluded 65 million years ago. It’s instructive to do a simple calculation. If the cliffs have been eroding at one metre every six years since the end of the Cretaceous, more than 10,000 km of coastline would have eroded away. That’s like the distance from London to Cape Town, or nearly from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia.People speak about millions of years so easily. It rolls off the tongue. But when we think about what these unimaginable eons of time actually mean, we find they do not match what we observe. The erosion we see on the coastlines all over the world is not consistent with the idea of millions of years. It is consistent with a process that has only been working for thousands of years, since the end of the global Flood—a process that started about 4,500 years ago. Erosion rates along the English Yorkshire coast Since Roman times, the sea has eroded some 3 km of the mid-east coast, destroying many villages in Humberside, UK.1 On average, about 1.5 m of land has disappeared every year. One million years at this rate would see 1,500 km eroded, more than the entire width of England and Ireland. Clearly, this rate of erosion has not been going on for that long. Coastal erosion does not fit with millions of years, but with the timeframe of the Flood, which ended about 4,500 years ago.The Earth in our hands—how geoscientists serve and protect the public, The Geological Society, London, UK, 2001, www.geolsoc.org.uk/pdfs/coastal%20erosion%20aw.pdf, 24 October 2005. Lighthouse moved to safety When the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse (right), on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, USA, was built in 1872, it sat about 550 m (1,800 ft) from the shore.1 Standing an impressive 63 m (208 ft) tall, the brick structure was painted in a distinctive blackand-white, candy-striped pattern. In 130 years, erosion of Hatteras Island brought the sea to within 35 m (120 ft). In 1999, the National Park Service moved the structure 900 m (over half a mile) to safety. It should take the ocean a hundred years before it gets within striking distance again. In one lifetime, coastal erosion seems slow, but in relation to the age of the earth, it quickly tells a young-age story.2 Coastal erosion in the USA Coastal erosion is a world-wide problem. Up and down the United States coastline, residents are worried about undermined cliffs, vanishing beaches and houses toppling into the sea.1 The national atlas, shoreline erosion and accretion map, US Geological Survey, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1985. Message of the Apostles Coastlines down under in Australia are constantly changing too. In January 1990 one of the tourist attractions off the southern coast of Victoria crumbled without warning.1 Part of a double-arched rock bridge called London Bridge, collapsed seconds after two people had walked across, leaving them stranded high above the ocean on the newly created stack. They were plucked to safety by helicopter. Without a helicopter, it is hard to imagine how they would have been rescued from 50 m (160 ft) above the ocean.In July 2005 another rock-fall in the same area caught the attention of the nation. One of the famous rock formations called the Twelve Apostles collapsed into the foaming waves, leaving only eight still standing.2 Everyone is told the coast started forming 20 million years ago, so the dramatic disappearance of the rocky landmark caught people by surprise. One ranger said he did not expect erosion to happen in his lifetime. Obviously erosion has not been going on for millions of years. Coasts eroding for millions of years? Hardly. See what happened in England and Wales in just four months (only the big events, not all the minor ones):1 27 December 2000. Nearly 2.5 km of the 45-m-high cliffs at Charmouth, Dorset, collapsed. 2 January 2001. One person was killed as landslides at Nefyn, North Wales, swept a parked car into the sea. 26 January 2001. A section 200 m wide and 100 m deep of the White Cliffs of Dover, Kent, collapsed, taking a public footpath with it. 21 March 2001. The slope behind a hotel and flats on the Isle of Wight collapsed. 3 April 2001. The Devil’s Chimney, a 70-m high chalk stack, toppled over at East Sussex. 9 April 2001. Thousands of tonnes of debris from a cliff fell just short of a supermarket at Brighton. The Earth in our hands—how geoscientists serve and protect the public, The Geological Society, London, UK, 2001, <www.geolsoc.org.uk/pdfs/coastal%20erosion%20aw.pdf>, 24 October 2005. Water inside fire by Emil Silvestru The Beijing anomaly Deep underneath Asia, the presence of a massive body of water has recently been inferred, between about 700 and 1,400 km below the surface (roughly in the middle of the mantle). 1 This massive ‘seismic anomaly’, a segment of the mantle that attenuates seismic waves from earthquakes, was revealed by analyzing some 600,000 seismograms (graphic recordings of shock waves traveling through the interior of the planet). According to the discoverers (M.E. Wysession and J. Lawrence) the volume of water in this anomaly is at least that of the Arctic Ocean. ‘Seeing’ inside the earth After Wikipedia The internal structure of the earth. Very little of the inner parts of the earth can bedirectly investigated. The deepest mine in the world (a gold mine in the Witwatersrand area in South Africa) descends 3.5 km into the lithosphere.2 The deepest that humans have ever drilled into the earth is on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, where drill core was retrieved from 12.26 km below the surface.3 From that point on to the centre of the planet, some 6,365 km, is all ‘unknown territory’. All we can do is to infer what could be down there from the limited data we have.n making such inferences, the first thing we know quite well is the mass of our planet, which was calculated by Henry Cavendish in 1789 using Newton’s laws. We can also estimate the average density of the uppermost ‘layer’ known as ‘crust’ or ‘lithosphere’ (from boreholes and from the rocks that outcrop on the surface). But how thick is the crust and what lies beneath it? This is where seismic investigation comes into play: shock waves (be it from earthquakes or explosions) have the ability to travel through the entire earth, and their speed changes according to the density of the environment they travel through. Oftentimes these waves undergo reflections and refractions whenever the speed changes. Based on these and many other derived characteristics, an image of the interior of the earth has emerged, suggesting a series of concentric spheres: the inner core, the outer core, the mantle and the crust.The main characteristic distinguishing these regions is density, which, as a rule, increases with depth. Starting at slightly above 2 (the density of water is 1) at the surface, it is estimated to reach 11 in the core (which is believed to be made of nickel and iron). Each concentric sphere is separated from the previous one via a thin region at which the speed changes significantly; such a region is called adiscontinuity. The Kola Peninsula superdeep borehole was designed to reach the Mohorovičić (’Moho’) discontinuity (named after the Croatian seismologist Andrjia Mohorovičić who discovered it) which at that point is situated at about 15 km down (the closest to the surface anywhere on land; under the oceans, which lack the uppermost layer of the lithosphere, the Moho rises in places to only 6 km below the seafloor). Other major discontinuities are Wiechert–Gutenberg (at 2,900 km) and Lehmann (at 5,100 to 5,200 km). What’s down there?Some major seismic discontinuities within the earth. The concentric-sphere structure emerged from seismic data and the properties of minerals (from the rocks, meteorites and lab experiments). It is believed that the material comprising each of the inner spheres also has different chemical compositions. The basic conditions of pressure, temperature and viscosity at various depths have thus been estimated which has permitted certain predictions regarding behaviour and dynamics. But none of those predictions made any references to anything like the Beijing Anomaly (BA). This much water at such a depth was unimaginable! There is one exception though, namely a prediction coming from a creationist model of the internal dynamics of the earth and the way it explains how plate tectonics started. The model was created by Dr John Baumgardner, then of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.4The Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) model also provides a good creationist model for the Flood. According to it, when the first segments of the crust (seafloor) started sinking into the earth’s interior, they were moving meters per second rather than millimetres per year (the pace at which plates move today). At that speed, the sinking plates could have reached the bottom of the mantle (2,900 km below surface) in 15 days. Indeed, seismic tomography (a sort of CAT scan of the innards of the planet) provided evidence that there are colder-than-the-surroundings slabs of rock the size of continents at the bottom of the mantle which could not have been there for too long (otherwise they would have been totally melted and mixed beyond recognition with the mantle material). Consequences Mantle density structure of the eastern (top) and western (bottom) hemispheres derived from seismic tomography. Blue represents low temperature rock and red high temperature rock. Bright green contours represent present-day subduction areas.If tectonic plates were subducted at such a speed (‘runaway subduction’), sediments on the seafloor and massive amounts of water would have been dragged down with them. Once they reached the areas of high pressure and temperature inside the mantle, that water and the waterlogged sediments would have changed into very active chemical solutions and gases (sometimes referred to as volatiles) which, being significantly lighter, would tend to rise towards the surface. It is interesting that recent experiments have revealed that, when submitted to pressures and temperatures similar to those in the mantle, calcite (CaCO 3 ), in the presence of iron, turns into methane gas. 5 In light of this, a large and spectacular array of other similar chemical changes would be possible when vast volumes of seafloor rapidly sank into the mantle. At the slow pace subduction unfolds today, the seafloor melts as it descends and the volatiles separate early on, much closer to the surface. Consequently they will have different chemical characteristics and most of them reach the surface instead of remaining inside the mantle.Runaway subduction may well be responsible for the water in the Beijing anomaly. But even larger volumes of mineral-laden fluids (hydrothermal fluids) could have reached the upper mantle and the crust. Wherever they would have filtered through unbound sediments the dissolved minerals would precipitate, cementing the unbound sediments into hard rock. About 90% of all sedimentary rocks are considered to be ‘terrigenous’ i.e. made of fragments of previous rocks eroded away from the continents and bound together by chemical cements. The source of these chemical cements (their sheer volume is immense!) has long been a conundrum. Not anymore.The sediments deposited during the Flood contained massive vegetal debris and innumerable carcasses. The same hydrothermal fluids could have rapidly fossilized them (replacing the organic matter with mineral matter to varying degrees). Thus the whole of the known fossil record could have been formed in a short time. Such deep hydrothermal solutions are not known to be present on the surface now (all existing ones originated by infiltration of water from the surface to a depth no greater than a few kilometres), which would explain why widespread fossilization is not being witnessed today. The vast majority of the known fossils are the result of a unique geological process—Global Flood—which the newly discovered Beijing anomaly seems to confirm. Paleokarst—a riddle inside confusion by Emil Silvestru Uniformitarian geologists have observed limestone features in rocks ranging from Precambrian to Neogene, and interpreted them as ancient buried landscapes—paleokarsts. Assumed to require repeated periods of long sub-aerial development, paleokarsts have been used to challenge the young age time-scale.On closer examination, paleokarst is found to be a vague term adaptable to many uses. Karst landscapes develop today on the surface of limestones and dolomites when soluble rock material is dissolved by CO 2-enriched water. Distinctive landforms are produced including large scale pocket valleys, blind valleys, caves and potholes; medium scale dolines*, shafts, and karst springs; and small scale microkarst and karren*. None of the large scale karst features present today are found as paleokarsts, though standard geology claims that much better karstification conditions existed during most of the ancient past. Moreover, even under a thick rock cover, karstification continues unchecked, making it highly unlikely that old karst features could survive unchanged. If such long periods of time had been available, most of the limestone deposits should have been dissolved away a long time ago. It is therefore subjective to ascribe such great ages to what proves to be in most cases a series of superimposed and overwritten features.Paleokarst is therefore a confusing term because the observed features were formed under different conditions from those that operate today. There was a major qualitative change in the genesis of landforms, especially karst landforms, at the end of the Tertiary. Indeed, the Quaternary seems to be the only era of true karstification processes. Rather than a problem for Flood geology, the pattern of karstification in the geologic record is easily understood in terms of the different geologic processes that operated during the global Flood and the post-Flood era. * Terms marked with an asterisk are defined in the Glossary at the end of this article. We are used to seeing rivers flow on the surface of the earth, sometimes at the bottom of very deep canyons. They often cut chasms of incredible size and with bizarre shapes as they descend continuously towards an illusory rest—the sea. Yet, there are rivers which, as if hiding a shameful secret, choose to flow underground—sometimes over a kilometre below the surface. There they flow inside the earth, lured by the same illusory rest. This is how, in less prosaic language, one may define the essence of limestone terrain.Not all rocks allow water to behave in this way. The rocks must yield to the chemical attack of rainwater enriched in CO2—usually by plants and organic material from the soil. More importantly, these rocks must be able to absorb rainwater. In limestone, water is absorbed into a widely developed three dimensional network of joints (secondary porosity) and primary voids (porosity). No matter how large the volume of rock, it will rapidly fill with water and become a natural subterranean reservoir.In order for the subterranean water to move, there is need for a hydraulic head. At least one site must exist, either below or at the same level as the water table, from where the subterranean water can emerge into the light of day. Once this setting is achieved, the continuous supply of aggressive water penetrating into the rock starts to enlarge the joints and voids, generating genuine subterranean streams and rivers inside caves and cave systems. We can now speak of a mature karst geosystem*.The input areas, where the surface water sinks into the rock, impress the passer-by with their distinctive landforms*: funnel-shaped dolines, all sorts of fluted rock, with intricate channels and runnels—karren or clints and grikes*. Entire rivers are ingested by a swallowhole* at the foot of a rock step that cuts across the river-bed—a blind valley*.One wonders what would happen to these distinctive karst landforms once they were buried under thick sediments. Uniformitarian geologists have observed limestone features in rocks ranging from the Precambrian to the Neogene, and interpreted them as ancient buried landscapes—paleokarsts*. Would it be possible for buried paleokarsts to survive unchanged? Or would they continue to erode away after they were buried, since water is known to penetrate deep underground, and limestones are shaped by chemical, not physical erosion?Finally, did the same erosional processes that carve karst landscapes today, form the buried ‘paleokarst’ features in the past? After all,pseudokarst* (false karst) is quite frequent today and, once buried, what would be chances of telling the difference between the true and false karst?Anti-creationists use these ‘paleokarst’ features, abundant in the geologic record, to challenge the validity of the Flood. How could karst landscapes, which require long periods of sub-aerial development, have formed repeatedly during a one-year global flood? Paleokarst is a geological phenomenon that requires a creationist investigation. However, we must properly understand what is meant by karst and paleokarst. Karst—a brief historical overview Typical karst landscape. Input areas where the surface water sinks into the rock, exhibit distinctive morphology. On this karst plateau, the isolated firs and the pond mark dolines, funnelshaped hollows, one characteristic of karst landforms. [Creation21(3):12, Fig. 5]The word karst first appeared on a map published by Mercator at Amsterdam, in 1585. The famous mapmaker called the area east of Trieste, Italy, ‘Karstia, Carniolia, Histria et Windorum Marchia’.1 The Romans called the same area Carsus. The word seems to come from the pre-IndoEuropean period, as Karra, meaning stone.2 It was then adopted by the Celts to mean ‘stony desert’ and ended-up in Slovenian as Kras, a regional name for the area mentioned above. After the territory was included in the Austrian Empire, Kras was germanicized toKarst.The Viennese geologists and geographers of the 19th century were the first to scientifically study the area, and they introduced the scientific terminology, coining both local (Serbian) and German descriptive terms. These included doline (from Serbian), known in the Anglo-Saxon literature as sinkhole or shakehole;uvala* (from Serbian) meaning a series of coalesced dolines; polje* (from Serbian) literally meaning ‘field’ (a very large enclosed depression over 1 km across, with a flat alluvial bottom and one or more streams coming from a karst spring inside the polje and sinking inside the polje); kamenitza (from Serbian) meaning a rock pool;karren (from German) also known as clints and grikes or lapiés in French; ponor (from Serbian) meaning swallowhole, or swallet, (a place where a stream sinks under the ground). Other terms like blind valley (a karst valley abruptly terminating via a swallowhole) and pocket valley (reculée in French, sacktäler in German, the reverse of a blind valley, a valley suddenly beginning at the foot of a cliff with a karst spring) also have regional origins. All this is a peculiar kind of terminology, based on morphology, with Kras remaining a type locality. However, the incredible mixture of terms makes it difficult to communicate in a precise, unambiguous, scientific language.In 1893, a Serbian geographer, Cvijić, defined the karst phenomenon,3still emphasising morphology. This had the effect, as Ford and Williams2put it: ‘… we now consider karst to comprise terrain typically characterised by sinking streams, caves, enclosed depressions, fluted rock outcrops and large springs.’ After geographers and geologists, it was the biologists who next took to the caves, especially after the Romanian biologist and Antarctic explorer, Emil Racovitza, published in 1907 his Essai sur les problemes biospéléologiques. Most consider this the birth certificate ofbiospeleology.4Then, following in the steps of engineers digging tunnels across the Alps, hydrologists came investigating subterranean waters flowing kilometres inside the mountains. Soon a clear distinction was made between these types of waters and other subterranean waters. It was in the late sixties that a new concept began to emerge —the karst geosystem, incorporating rocks, climate, fauna and flora in a close, interconnected system. Such geosystems range from immense underground voids like the Sarawak Chamber2 in the Mulu karst, with a volume of 2 x 10 7m3 , to hydrothermal caves in Romania, close to the surface, that support an entire food chain based on chemosynthesis 5,6 and containing 32 new species and 2 new genera.7 Karst features and their significance to geology It is essential to understand that karst features are morphological expressions of a dynamic process—the transit of water throughlithostructural units. This process consists of the following stages: a) input (through aerial infiltration of rainwater and/or the punctual sinking of water streams); b) circulation (ranging from percolation to conduit flow); c) storage (in karst aquifers); and d) output (through outlets). These stages are also present in the vertical classification of karst hydrographic zones. 2,8–10 With one exception, unless all four of these stages are present, orthokarst and parakarst features do not occur*. The exception is that several small-scale surface features, such askarren and kamenitzas, may be present as parakarst features on a large variety of rocks, including granites.1,2,8,11 However, these parakarst features are not generated by simple CO 2-rich rainwater but by local acidification. On limestone (and rock salt or rock gypsum), all surface input features are connected to more-or-less vertical channels through which water circulates towards the storage section. If there is nooutput for the stored water, the entire lithostructural unit becomes waterlogged, long before karren, dolines and blind valleys can form. In such cases, there are no distinctive karst landforms.Thus a two-fold distinction emerges. Not all small-scale surface karst and parakarst features can be associated with proper karstification processes. However, whenever medium-to-large scale surface (and subsurface) karst and parakarst features are present, they indicate the existence of all four stages of the karstification process. Consequently, any correct reconstruction of a paleokarst should identify those medium-to-large scale features. Karst and evolutionary geology In modern times, most of the fundamental treatises of geology have only mentioned karst for its speleothems 12—its subterranean crystalline deposits including stalactites and stalagmites. Occasionally, mention is made about ‘paleokarst’ as a paleoclimatic and paleogeographic indicator, but with little more than the concept of karst as a geomorphic feature.Caves however, hold a special place in Quaternary geology and paleontology, because of their sediments and the associated fossils (flora, fauna and humans). However, they have only been considered a special, high-quality natural ‘storage facility’, and not a part of an important geosystem with which they are finely tuned. Only after speleothems were first radiometrically dated in 1958,13 was the potential of the karst geosystem for high resolution dating of the Quaternary recognised. The allegedly isolated environment of caves and the abundance of crystalline formations lured the new breed of ‘radiometrists’. The use of radiocarbon for these first datings drastically reduced the range to the last glacial period. Nevertheless, the ‘snowball’ was rolled over the rim, and it was just a matter of time until new radionuclides were promoted as stars on the newborn radiometric stage. A critique of the evolutionist view of paleokarst Although it appears to be a clear-cut term, paleokarst is assigned a broad array of meanings. Geographers tend to emphasise a landform; geologists a particular mineral paragenesis*; karstologists hydrodynamic functioning and morphologies. It is significant that in the most comprehensive treatise on paleokarst published so far, Bosák et al.14 writes about a ‘terminological jungle’. This can be illustrated by several examples from some of the classical treatises. The two terms, paleokarst and fossil karst, have been closely mingled from the early times of karst studies, as de Martonne (1910) pointed out.15 In different settings, these two terms have been used either as synonyms or with two different meanings. The following are just a few ‘standard’ definitions: Bosák et al.:14 paleokarst : ‘karst developed largely or entirely during past geological periods’. It is divided into: 1. buried karst: ‘karst phenomena formed at the surface of the earth and then covered by later rocks; 2. intrastratal karst: ‘karst formed within rocks already buried by younger strata’; 3. relict karst: ‘… karst landforms that were created at the Earth’s surface under one set of morphogenic conditions and which survive at the surface under a present, different set of conditions.’ Ford and Williams:2 relict karsts: ‘karsts removed from the situation in which they were developed, although they remain exposed to and are modified by processes operating in the present system.’ Paleokarst or buried karst: ‘are completely de-coupled from the present hydrogeochemical system; they are fossilized. When stripped of their cover beds they reveal an exhumed karst.’Sweeting:9 ‘Fossil karst landforms are of two main kinds. First, those formed in earlier geological periods and never covered by later rocks; these may be called relict landforms. And secondly, those formed in earlier geological periods, subsequently covered by non-limestone rocks and later re-exhumed; these are exhumed or resurrected landforms.’Ford and Cullingford:10 ‘Fossil or paleokarst … occurs beneath unconformities where solutional features of land surface have been covered by later deposits.’Apart from the obvious confusion of terminology, another problem is that these definitions do not cover all reality.For example, the category of buried karst 14 is ambiguous, since there are karsts with features that formed before the present morphogenic set of conditions. These karsts are covered by other rocks and yet they fully function as elements of the present day karst geosystem. Such an example is the Padis karst plateau in the Apuseni Mountains of Romania,16 where sediments as thick as 85 m cover dolines that still act as punctual inlets for runoff. The dolines feed a limestone aquifer (which includes caves) that is discharged by one outlet. Obviously this example exhibits no ‘paleo’ features at all! In fact, it is practically impossible for any ancient karst feature to be completely de-coupled from some type of solution. Even when located deep under the surface, infiltrated water reaches them and consequently reshapes them.17 At the greater depths, mineral waters and even hot, mineral-laden solutions of the hydrothermal, postmagmatic phase sometimes invade and even enlarge pre-existing karst features, depositing a wide array of minerals, including ores.17 In extreme cases, such an invasion may occur in the pneumatolytic phase*, with garnets depositing on top of classic calcite speleothems.18 The size and shape of such features are never truly frozen (or fossilized) since the karst system is usually within range of one type of aqueous solution or another. There is also strong evidence that thermo-mineral solutions actively create karst features deep inside limestones. Deposition, if it occurred in such environments, would have occurred only after the aggressiveness of the solutions was dampened by the limestones.18,19–22 Relict karst14 is also a misleading term since it is based on the undefined concept of ‘survival’. What is it that survives of ‘karst landforms that were created at the Earth’s surface under one set of morphogenic conditions?’ Morphologies only? As we have already seen in the above examples, the presumed paleokarst can maintain its hydrogeological functions, so how can one truly separate old morphologies from more recent ones? In most cases, hydrographic and geomorphic selection criteria are used, all based on how the researcher believes the hydrogeologic setting was functioning in the past. Ford and Williams2 draw attention to this problem but leave the issue open, by introducing the category of true paleokarst or buried karst. These authors also use the term fossilized for this category—obviously intending to link the category with the concept of ‘extinct’. However, while an extinct, buried creature is literally ‘de-coupled’ from the present biosphere, no lithostructure, let alone a buried landform (which represents an important anisotropy inside a lithostructure), can be truly de-coupled from the present hydrogeochemical system, be it surficial or deep. Finally, it is impossible to distinguish between an exhumed karst when ‘stripped of its cover beds’ (as defined by all authors) and a relict karst. Again, it is entirely at the researcher’s discretion (which depends on his pre-conceived view of the whole system) to decide which landform is what, no matter which of the above-mentioned definitions is used.In my view, it is not possible to interpret true paleokarst on the basis of its landform (or as a geographic feature). It is a lithostructural (or geologic) feature, hence it must have undergone at least one geologic event—i.e. a chemical, physical and/or tectonic change due to geological processes.23 And the so-called true paleokarst can occur in a wide array of settings, ranging from voids (acting as secondary porosity), to intrastratal breccias, and to complex petrographic structures (including some ore deposits). Any other karst or fossil karst feature that is still a landform, i.e. is exposed to surface processes, no matter its actual age or geomorphic setting, is just a karst feature which may be assigned to a stage of the history of a given karst geosystem. The use of the term fossil karst is essential in such a case, because it implies that diagenesis* had not affected the karst geosystem.In the case of true paleokarst, diagenesis does not normally wipe away the difference essential to karstification between soluble and insoluble (or rather, highly soluble and less soluble) rocks. On the other hand, it seems most unlikely that paleokarst can be buried beyond the reach of infiltrated water given the surprising results concerning running water in the ultra-deep drilling in Kola as well as a wide range of deep mines I have visited; that is, before the whole sedimentary sequence reaches metamorphism depth and therefore loses its original structure. Once water reaches the soluble/insoluble rock boundary, as would happen in the absolute majority of cases, it will exploit it, by corroding the soluble rock and thus generating karst features. Even if it may be argued that at some depth water is saturated and therefore noncorrosive (in which case it would be expected to precipitate its excess of calcium carbonate as identifiable lithologic features), the external erosion and uplift would eventually bring the paleokarst to ‘corrosive water depth’. By the time erosion and uplift brings the paleokarst to surface again, clear neokarst* features should be superimposed on the original paleokarst. The literature I have managed to investigate thus far makes no clear reference to such features in paleokarst. Problems with the uniformitarian framework Uniformitarian geologists consider the existence of paleokarst features in rocks ranging from the Precambrian to the Neogene as a serious challenge to the creationist model of the Flood. Their main question is: ‘How could surficial karst features, which require long periods of sub-aerial development, form repeatedly during the one-year Flood?’Geologists consider paleokarst as a geomorphic feature indicating continental conditions. Yet, in those cases where geomorphic conditions in the past were ideal for karst features to form but no such features are found, the issue is ignored altogether. Here is one example: in the Swiss Alps, (north of Lake Thun) the Schrattenkalk limestone, which is considered of Cretaceous age (Barremian-Aptian in Urgonian facies), is overlain by the Late Eocene Hohgant sandstone.24 I followed the Cretaceous/Eocene paraconformity (that covers, according to standard geology, roughly 75 Ma) and was surprised not to find the slightest sign of any paleorelief, let alone paleokarst, along the paraconformity. Yet, a cave has now developed exactly along it. Neither geologists nor karstologists seem at all bothered about this very unusual setting! However, in this part of Europe (in fact in most of Europe) there were, according to standard geology, at least 4 Ma of continental conditions (in the Early Paleocene or Danian) during the above-mentioned interval, and karst should have formed.In my view, one must first look for recurrent paleokarst episodes and/or evidence of their true aerial development. Local, small-scale, karst-like features, and even occasionally medium scale isolated features on one surface in a sedimentary sequence, are not reliable proof of karstification under a sub-aerial environment. We shall therefore concentrate on recurrent episodes, rather than details. At this point, it seems to me that a discussion of the general pattern of worldwide karst occurrence is more useful for testing the evolutionist framework of paleokarst. A brief overview of world paleokarst and its particular patterns There are two basic types of paleokarst: classical (exogenous, originating at or near the earth’s surface) and hydrothermal (endogenous, originating below the earth’s surface). The latter is much more complex as it involves a great deal of ‘complementary geology’, i.e. the history of hydrothermal solutions, geochemistry, tectonics, mineralogy, etc. besides karstology proper. Furthermore, this type can develop completely de-coupled from external conditions at the surface. Hence, we shall deal only with classical paleokarst. Hydrothermal paleokarst is a separate topic that deserves a separate paper.When looking for paleokarst, one immediately thinks of cratons because they have the longest continental history. Sure enough, ancient features have been identified on cratons by geologists and engineers, usually in man-made sections either in mines or road works. However, it is important to understand that at no location is an extended paleokarst surface displayed. All descriptions of such surfaces have been extrapolated from boreholes, and consequently they reflect preexistent theoretical models. Negative relief on the landscape is formed when soluble rock material is dissolved by CO 2 rich water. This mini-canyon formed inside a karstic catchment depression in less than 10 years. The sediments accumulated during periodic floods when the swallow holes’s capacity to pass water to the subterranean passage was overwhelmed. [Creation 21(3):12, Fig. 7]Far from claiming to be exhaustive, the following examples are considered by most specialists as possible or even certain paleokarst. I have presented the data within the framework of the uniformitarian geological column, only because that is how the data has been already interpreted. Naturally, as I make clear later in this paper, I do not endorse the million-year time-scale.The Archean does not display any known paleokarst features.The first alleged such features, karren and small dolines, are reported from the Lower Proterozoic of Canada, South Africa and Russia. 2In the Upper Proterozoic similar features have also been noted in Australia and China. On the North American continent, dolomites of the Latest Proterozoic-basal Cambrian in Ontario, Canada, also display such features.2 There appears to be a widespread Cambrian paleokarst in Siberian rocks, including early bauxites and deep breccias.2 The first extensive paleokarst is of sub-continental extent from the Ordovician, in North America. The cyclic platform karst, ‘the Post-Sauk Karst’, is the most common karst feature for this period. The Silurian of Eurasia also appears to have generated cyclic paleokarst.2 The Devonian only displays local paleokarst, with the most significant being in North America.2 The Devonian-Carboniferous boundary is probably the greatest global period of karstification. In the United States, the mid-Carboniferous is marked by another set of paleokarst features.2 The Permian shifted the case to Europe, Russia, China and generated local paleokarst in Canada. The Mesozoic seems to have been more selective, Europe being the sole host to some significant features. The middle and upper Triassic generated the most important paleokarst features in Yugoslavia and some smaller scale ones in southern England.2,9 At the end of the Jurassic and the beginning of the Cretaceous, many limestone deposits in Europe seem to have emerged and karstified in a low-relief, low-energy environment. This paleokarst is associated with bauxite deposits accumulated in what is believed to be lacustrine (lake) conditions inside dolines and uvalas. The type locality is Le Baux, France (where the name ‘bauxite’ comes from). Hungary and Romania also share such features and ore deposits.Finally, the Paleogene and even Neogene generated some local paleokarst around the Black Sea (now at a depth of over 2,000 m). During the Messinian Crisis (5.5 Ma ago, when it is believed that the Mediterranean Sea and consequently the Black Sea, all but dried out) small scale cave systems developed along the Romanian and Bulgarian coastline. The famous Movile Cave is considered as part of such a system.5 Problems for the standard uniformitarian interpretation In broad terms, the Proterozoic to Devonian interval generated what seems to be paleokarsts mainly on the North American continent. The Devonian-Carboniferous period was more or less global, and beginning with the Permian, the weight of paleokarstification moved to Eurasia.There are a number of important questions that emerge from this pattern of karstification, presented as it is within the usual uniformitarian framework of biological evolution, plate tectonics and continental drift over millions of years.The continental masses were more or less grouped from the Precambrian until the Permian. Limestones were relatively uniformly distributed, yet paleokarst features concentrate mostly in the future North America. According to accepted reconstructions, the North American continent was located between the Equator and either 30°N or 30°S, while Eurasia was further to the south in temperate climate.25 In such a location, the climate, especially in the case of the Late Proterozoic and Cambrian, can hardly account for the North American predominance of karst features, since karstification is known to be active from equatorial to subpolar regions. Nor can relief energy, since it was the same, i.e. reduced, worldwide. If the culprit is atmospheric chemistry, are we to believe that the primeval atmosphere was highly inhomogeneous? Or was it rather local lithological difference? In what way? Let us not forget that, though alteration soils already existed, there were supposedly no organically-rich soils to boost the CO2 content in the water reaching the limestone. As for the CO 2 content of the atmosphere, one can only guess since no reliable data is available. So, was it karst anyway?Were surface karstification processes possible at all during the Proterozoic and early Cambrian? Why should we associate any negative paleorelief feature (such as holes, shafts, and valleys) to karstification processes just because they are found on rocks that are more soluble? Even more so, since no indication has ever been found for the existence of the four essential karst hydrographic zones at the same paleokarst location.Karren are a spectacular surface characteristic typical of the input areas of karst landscapes. [Creation21(3):12, Fig. 6]Research (using evolutionary frameworks) revealed that compared to recent values, during the early Paleozoic the partial pressure of CO 2 (PCO2) might have been about 10 times higher than today’s, and 4–6 times higher during the middle Mesozoic. 26 So, why does paleokarst occur on some limestone terrains and not on others, when the climate was more or less ideal and P CO2 was so high that the rainwater would have been aggressively corrosive? Lithology again? How—since today there is little difference between the limestones of Proterozoic age of North America and Europe? Goethites (iron hydroxides resulting from the alteration of iron minerals under continental conditions) in the Neda Formation in Wisconsin revealed that in the Upper Ordovician the P CO2 was some 16 times higher than today.26 Well, that makes that period a prime time for karstification. Yet, the alleged paleokarsts described in North America for the entire Ordovician are rather poor—at most, karst only reached the proto-karstification stage. 27 This is strange: there were limestones and dolomites up to 1,200 m thick and exposed to karstification in a very CO2-rich atmosphere for alleged millions of years. Yet only a few metres to 140 metres of the surface was removed! 28 The arid to semi-arid climate is no excuse for the absence of any significant karstification over such a long period of time. The ratio of denudation (ROD) on limestones in the Sahara has been determined at 6 mm/ka under present conditions.29 Given the previously mentioned PCO2 values calculated for the Ordovician,27one may parsimoniously consider a ROD of 100 mm/ka for that period. What happened then? Why was there such a poor rate of denudation? Or maybe those alleged millions of years of karstification did not exist!Let us now look at the paleokarsts of the Devonian/Carboniferous which were almost global. According to standard geology, the continents were much closer to each other than today; there was an important vegetal biomass; climate was relatively homogenous and quite stable; and humidity was high. P CO2 was probably much higher than today, and we are told there were at least 20 Ma of full-throttle karstification. Considering an average of 50 mm/ka ROD— based on present day conditions30—for comparable climate conditions but a higher P CO2 , one may again estimate about 100 mm/ka for the Devonian/Carboniferous ROD. That means that at least 2,000 m should have corroded away in the 20-Ma uniformitarian time available! Nothing like that is reported from the geological archives. The highest estimates so far for the amount of carbonates removed by karstification are only 200 m. One may of course argue that the low-energy relief of the landscape never exposed the entire carbonate pile. In that case, an intricate and deep water table and phreatic type of karst 2 is expected (as all theoretical models and present examples actually require in such a setting), with extensive mazes of winding conduits that can better survive geologic events and which display unmistakable paleokarst features. Yet, there is nothing like that in the archives. As a matter-of-fact, this kind of paleokarst should occur before each marine transgression, because the water table would rise with the rise in sea level (or the subsidence of the continents). Unless of course, the transgressions were very rapid—which is not the case presented by evolutionary geology.Moving now to the Mesozoic bauxite-rich paleokarst: some very interesting bauxite deposits, containing dinosaur bones, have been discovered in Romania.30 Many unusual features are associated with these deposits,31 seriously challenging their uniformitarian interpretation. The ensemble of the mountain unit (called Apuseni Mountains) displays no reliable evidence of paleokarst features for the late Jurassic; no paleovalleys, caves, travertines or karren have been identified with an acceptable degree of certitude, although some claim bauxite accumulated in a subaerial or lacustrine paleokarst.32 The same major question arises concerning this alleged paleokarst: if there were millions of years of karstification in quite humid conditions, how is it possible that no major, clear-cut karst features, especially caves, were formed? How is it possible that in places the amount of limestone removed by dissolution is insignificant? And why are there no traces of an ancient water table and no phreatic karst? If the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary was intensely karstified, it would represent a major disconformity along which Quaternary karst, especially caves and cave systems, should have developed. After all, it was available for an alleged 98 Ma (the entire structure allegedly emerged by the end of the Albian, never to be submerged again).32 All the caves I have investigated in the area, some over 15 km long, in which the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary is present (often hardly noticeable) actually cut through it, without following it, let alone reshaping it. A dense drilling grid also revealed no significant features across the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary. In fact, except for microfacies differences inside what appears to be the same limestone,33 the usual geological practice in the area is to regard the presence of bauxite as the marker of the boundary. The same is true for the area to the east called Bihor Mountains, where the entire lithostructure emerged even earlier, at the beginning of the Albian (thus providing 112 Ma for karstification), without forming any true paleokarst features.16,33Finally, the question both geologists and karstologists seem reluctant to ask, ‘Why was there so little, if any, aerial paleokarst during the Tertiary?’ There are karstoplains (a term based on Davis’ concept of peneplain,1,34,35 also known as ‘corrosional plains’2 ) today, so why was karst so highly localised? Why did no true, extensive paleokarst surfaces form, and why weren’t they covered by sediment and preserved? The conditions for karstification during the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene were warmer, and wetter—in one word, ideal. Most karstologists and geomorphologists tend to believe that the karstoplains of today are remnants of the Early Tertiary ones, broken up by tectonics and sometimes by erosional (non-karstic) surfaces and continuously karstified until present times. In other words, 65 Ma of a different geomorphology (as compared to the pre-Tertiary one). Why then is there any limestone left? If one uses a very low ROD, 50 mm/ka, as an average for the entire Tertiary, the total removal by solution during the Tertiary should have been roughly 3,000 m. In addition to this, one must not forget that the Quaternary has contributed a great deal of mechanical and chemical erosion to whatever was left of the Tertiary relief. Furthermore, in Romania for example, in the Villafranchian (Late Pliocene-Middle Pleistocene) the Wallachian tectonism uplifted most of the relief, in some places up to 1,000 m.36 For the karst geosystem, this means a dramatic increase in the karstification processes and implicitly a higher ROD. This is another reason why we should question why there is still so much limestone left. Summary and conclusion From the Proterozoic to Mesozoic, all paleokarst features seem to have been reduced to local minor surface features.During the Mesozoic, it is claimed that major karst features formed only in some parts of Europe (namely Yugoslavia). The other regions of the earth, even when karstification conditions were much better than today, seem to have produced nothing but bauxite ore deposits in minor surface karst features.Similarly, the Tertiary produced little, if any, aerial paleokarst, even though karstification conditions were supposedly good enough and long enough to generate a complex and widely developed surface and subsurface karst.The Quaternary, the shortest era according to evolutionary geology, has managed to make up for it all. In this ‘short’ period, karstification processes have been able to generate the grandiose karst features we see all over the world today, from the equatorial to polar regions.It is clear that there must have been a major qualitative change in the genesis of landforms, especially karst landforms, at the end of the Tertiary. A logical inference from this change is that true karstification processes, like the ones we are witnessing today (which after all are the ones that inspired the very idea of karstification), only occurred in the Quaternary. All previous karst-like features represent protokarst (incipient or incomplete karst) or pseudokarst.In my view, the pattern of karst landscapes is an excellent reflection of the qualitatively different processes operating during the different stages of the worldwide Flood, and during the 4,300year post-Flood era. Glossary Karst literature abounds with terms formed by combining prefixes like pseudo, vulcano, halo (referring to halides), and thermo (referring to karst features generated by warm or hot air in ice) with the root karst. Unfortunately this terminology brings together features that are genetically very different, and leads to confusion and misunderstanding. How can one consider, for example, the morphological similarities between a cave formed from ice melted by warm air, and a cave formed in limestone by the complicated processes of chemical erosion and litho-structural control? To clarify the situation, I have used a simplified terminology in this paper, to ensure consistency of terminology, utilising as few criteria as possible. a) orthokarst: karst features generated on limestone mainly by chemical erosion. (I use the term ‘karst’ as a generic term, whenever the above-mentioned distinction is not relevant.) b) parakarst: karst features generated on karst rocks other than limestone, mainly by chemical erosion. c) pseudokarst: karst features generated on any type of rock mainly by processes other than chemical erosion.37 Pneumatolysis: the alteration of rock or crystallization of minerals by gaseous emanations from the late stages of a solidifying magma. Landforms have been classified as follows: Surface features: Small scale features: (also known as clints and grikes or lapiés), kamenitzas. Medium scale features: dolines (sinkholes or shakeholes), uvalas, shafts, ponors (swallowholes or swallets), karst springs. Large scale features: pocket valleys, blind valleys, and poljes. Sub-surface features: Caves and cave systems Potholes