I’m doing this at home, without internet access. All quoted material is from the “Dr. Walt Brown’s Hydroplate Theory” article, cited in message 1. As I said in my previous message, since no specific points were raised, I’m free to choose what I comment on. And a just before posting note: All of this message was prepared yesterday, before I saw any of the topic’s most recent messages.
The hydroplate theory is an alternate explanation of both the events of the Noahic flood, the present-day geological features of the world, and the actual mechanisms that operated then and continue to do so now. It directly challenges the current plate tectonics model of large-scale geology, and it suggests a major revamping of the geological events associated with the flood that God sent upon the world in light of a hard-line exegetical approach to the text of Genesis. It represents, then, a serious attempt at reconstructing the science of geology from the ground up.
The hydroplate hypothesis is wishful thinking to come up with a water source for the flood.
(2) Ten miles below the pre-Flood Earth’s surface were interconnected chambers of subterranean water — containing roughly half the liquid volume of today’s oceans. These chambers formed a thin, spherical shell of water with a mean thickness of 5/8 of a mile. This answers to the Biblical “waters of the deep” that burst open during the Noahic Flood. These waters contained enormous amounts of dissolved gases and minerals, particularly salt (NaCl) and carbon dioxide (CO2). A layer of basalt was situated between these waters and the Earth’s upper mantle.
OK. Doesn’t make sense from the scientific perspective, but if God wanted to create the Earth that way, so be it (for sake of discussion).
So, it seems that God created a vast reservoir of water, to have handy in case he needed to flood the Earth. Actually, the instability of this situation would seem to make the flood inevitable. One thing the paragraph doesn’t mention, is that the waters would also contain enormous amounts of heat. Can you say “pressure cooker?”
(6) Plate tectonic theory gained acceptance when an important discovery of the 1960s was misinterpreted. People were told that paralleling the Mid-Oceanic Ridge are bands of ocean floor that have a reversed magnetic orientation. At a few places, the pattern of “reversals” on one side is almost a mirror image of those on the other side. This suggested that the magnetic poles of the earth reversed in the distant past, and that molten rock spreading away from the ridge solidified, took on the earth’s current magnetic orientation, and moved outward from the ridge like a conveyor belt.
This story is inaccurate. There are no magnetic reversals on the ocean floor, and no compass would reverse direction if brought near the supposedly “reversed” bands in the Atlantic. There is, however, a fluctuation in magnetic intensity (see Figure 3 below). Someone merely drew a dashed line through these fluctuations and labeled everything below this average intensity a “reversal.” The false but widespread notion is that these deviations from the average represent the magnetic field from millions of years ago. This faulty understanding has prevented the formulation of a better explanation for these magnetic anomalies, including the added consideration that many of these bands are not parallel to the ridge, but perpendicular to it and lined up with fracture zones, contrary to plate tectonic predictions.
Offhand, I don’t know why this is important to the hypothesis, but the magnetic reversals are very real. Evidence can also be found in the continental rocks. There is even a location (IIRC, Steens Mountain in Oregon) where the volcanic pile actually records the reversal event itself.
True, from any distance you’re going to see only increases and decreases in magnetic field strength. But that is because the Earth’s current magnetic field is superimposed and largely overwhelms the rock generated magnetic field. But close up measurements can see the rocks changing magnetic polarities.
The Rupture Phase of the Noahic flood began as increasing pressure in the subterranean water stretched the overlying crust, just as a balloon stretches when the pressure inside it increases. Eventually, this shell of rock reached its failure point.
Good thing God had reason to flood the Earth. Sounds to me like it was going to happen anyway.
The temperature of the escaping subterranean waters increased by about 100°F as they were forced from the high pressure chamber. The hot water, being less dense, rose to the surface of the flood waters. There, high evaporation occurred, increasing the salt content of the remaining water.
High evaporation rate? More like boiling. Stand by to be cooked.
The Recovery Phase followed the compression event, and entailed the receding of the flood waters as the mountains were buckled and folded up from the leading edges of the sliding hydroplates.
Simultaneously, the violent force of the upward surging subterranean water was “choked off ” as the plates settled onto the floor of the subterranean chamber. Without sinking hydroplates to produce the high pressure flow, water was no longer being forced through the rupture. Instead, the deep basins between the continents became reservoirs into which the flood waters returned.
So that’s where all the water went. But all the oceans water is not enough to cover the highest mountains, even if the ocean floors were at what is now sea level. Many years ago I did some calculations. As I recall, making the oceans floors at sea level would raise sea level along the lines of a couple thousand feet.
Drainage of the waters that covered the earth left every continental basin filled to the brim with water. Some of these postflood lakes lost more water by evaporation and seepage than they gained by rainfall and drainage from higher elevations. Consequently, they shrank over the centuries. A well-known example was former Lake Bonneville which became the Great Salt Lake.
A glacial lake in a closed basin. No need to invoke the flood to explain it.
The article is a big pile of baloney, to be filed under “science fiction”. I’m now going to make whoever cares bring specific points they wish to discuss.
Moose
