Claim CH420:
The Flood's waters came from a layer of water about ten miles underground, which was released by a catastrophic rupture of the earth's crust, shot above the atmosphere, and fell as rain.Source:
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the beginning: Compelling evidence for creation
and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, pp. 87-98.
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/
Response:
- The rock that makes up the earth's crust does not float. The water
would have been forced to the surface long before Noah's time, or
before Adam's time for that matter.
- Even two miles deep, the earth is boiling hot (260 to 270 degrees C at
5.656 miles in one borehole; Bram et al. 1995), and thus the reservoir
of water would be superheated. Further heat would be added by the
energy of the water falling from above the atmosphere. As with the
vapor canopy model, Noah would have been poached.
- The escaping waters would have eroded the sides of the fissures, producing poorly sorted basaltic erosional deposits. These would be concentrated mainly near the fissures, but some would be shot thousands of miles along with the water. Such deposits would be quite noticeable but have never been seen.
References:
- Bram, Kurt et al. 1995. The KTB borehole -- Germany's superdeep telescope into the earth's crust. Oilfield Review 7(1): 4-22. http://www.oilfield.slb.com/content/services/resources/oilfieldreview/ors95/jan95/01950422.pdf
created 2003-6-8, modified 2005-4-26