At 10:40 AM 7/9/00 -0700, Diane Roy wrote:
>>> As it typical of Glenn, he only considers one part of the circumstance
-- the injection of energy into the biosphere. But, where are your
calculations for the loss of energy in a catastrophic event? You don't want
to try to figure that out because you may find that it is not nearly so bad
as you think, and you can't gloat over your brilliance and 'their'
stupidity.<<<
Allen, you are not considering the implications of what you are suggesting.
Like it or not, you are ignoring a vast literature out there about what
happens in a meteor impact. It ain't pretty and frankly, Noah would be
unlikely to survive such an impact, much less 10 of them. let me quote
Alvarez and Asaro, in a readily available, popular publication, one you
should have read before offering this silly, illogical and unworkable
meteor impact theory of the flood.
"Computer models of explosions with energies of 1,000 megatons--about 20
times the energy of the largest nuclear bombs but only 1/100,000 the energy
of the KT impact--have shown that the fireball never reaches pressure
equilibrium with the surrounding atmosphere. Instead, as the fireball
expands to altitudes where the density of the atmosphere declines
significantly, its rise accelerates and the gas leaves the atmosphere at
velocities fast enough to escape the earth's gravitational field. The
fireball from an even greater asteroid impact would simply burst out the
top of the atmosphere, carrying any entrained ejecta with it, sending the
material into orbits that could carry it anywhere on the earth."
"The impact of a comet-size body on the earth, creating a crater 150
kilometers in diameter, would clearly kill everything within sight of the
fireball. Researchers are refining their understanding of the means by
which an impact would also trigger extinction worldwide. Mechanisms
proposed include darkness, cold, fire, acid rain and greenhouse heat.
"In our original paper, we proposed that impact-generated dust caused
global darkness that resulted in extinctions. According to computer
simulations made in 1980 by Richard P. Turco of R&D Associates, O. Brian
Toon, of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and their
colleagues, dust lofted into the atmosphere by the impact of a 10-kilometer
object would block so much light that for months you would literally be
unable to see your hand in front of your face.
"Without sunlight, plant photosynthesis would stop. Food chains everywhere
would collapse. The darkness would also produce extremely cold
temperatures, a condition termed impact winter. (After considering the
effects of the impact, Turco, Toon and their colleagues went on to study
nuclear winter, a related phenomenon as capable of producing mass
extinctions today as impact winter was 65 million years ago.)
"In 1981 Cesare Emilliani of the University of Miami, Eric Krause of the
University of Colorado and Eugene M. Shoemaker of the USGS pointed out that
an oceanic impact would loft not only rock dust but also water vapor into
the atmosphere. The vapor, trapping the earth's heat, would stay aloft much
longer than the dust, and so the impact winter would be followed by
greenhouse warming. More recently John D. O'Keefe and Thomas J. Ahrens of
the California Institute of Technology have suggested that the impact might
have occurred in a limestone area, releasing large volumes of carbon
dioxide, another greenhouse gas. Many plants and animals that survived the
extreme cold of impact winter could well have been killed by a subsequent
period of extreme heat.
"Meanwhile John S. Lewis, G. Hampton Watkins, Hyman Hartman and Ronald G.
Prinn of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have calculated that
shock heating of the atmosphere during impact would raise temperatures high
enough for the oxygen and nitrogen to combine. The resulting nitrous oxide
would eventually rain out of the air as nitric acid--an acid rain with a
vengeance. This mechanism may well explain the widespread extinction of
marine invertebrate plants and animals, whose calcium carbonate shells are
soluble in acidic water.
"Another killing mechanism came to light when Wendy Wolbach, Ian Gilmore
and Edward Anders of the University of Chicago discovered large amounts of
soot in the KT boundary clay. If the clay had been laid down in a few years
or less, the amount of soot in the boundary would indicate a sudden burning
of vegetation equivalent to half of the world's current forests. Jay Meos
of the University of Arizona and his colleagues have calculated that
infrared radiation from ejecta heated to incandescence while reentering the
atmosphere could have ignited fires around the globe." Walter Alvarez and
Frank Asaro, "An Extraterrestrial Impact," Scientific American, Oct. 1990,
p. 80-82
Now lets apply the Chixulub impact to the flood. Noah is on the ark when
Chixulub hit (Chixulub struck Cretaceous limestone strata covered by a
shallow sea.)The energy is 1 billion megatons or 4.2 x 10^24 joules. THis
is more energy than I calculated for all the other craters COMBINED!!!!
Yes, some of the energy does escape from earth, especially some of the
gas. The rocks travel at a slightly lower speed and go suborbital
reentering the atmosphere with such fury that they burn those floating
vegetation mats everyone talks about down to the water line (by the way the
ark is also at risk of burning due to the incandescence of the re-entering
rocks. After the top deck of the ark burns, the darkness commences, but it
isn't a cold dark, it is a hellish dark. The water and CO2 that Chixulub
threw up into the atmosphere create blistering heat. Oxygen and nitrogen
combine and the rain water now becomes acidic. Noah and company, not having
a top to their ark, are exposed to the acid waters as they fall as rain.
(This of course is really good for the skin--like acid of olay). Given that
the vegetation has been burning, the oxygen level in the atmosphere is
severely reduced (The oxygen masks drop from the ceiling above the seats on
the ark).
Give us a break Alan, and give us a realistic flood scenario rather than
something as ridiculous as this.
>>>> The estimate of the number of impacts ranges from about 140 to 200
depending upon whose list you look at and what criteria are used to
identify sites. However, everyone (in this field) agrees that this
represent less than 1/3 of the number of impacts likely to have hit the
earth. The earth is 2/3 ocean, and the subduction of ocean floor may well
have destroyed evidence of impacts in the oceans. Also, most impact sites
are found in arid or semi-arid regions. It is proposed that impacts in
tropical, sub-tropical, and continental climes may erode impact evidence
quite quickly. Thus there could be more impact sites that are not now
observable because of vegetation and erosion. So the number of impacts has
been proposed (not by Creationists) to be somewhere in the vicinity of 600.
(this number does not take into account those impact sites buried by
succeeding layers of the geologic record.
And if you let too many impacts occur in the ocean, you will lift more than
a foot of water vapor into the atmosphere and that will cook the earth. See
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/canopy.htm
I just spent some time using some formula provided to me by Jon Leech in
1994 concerning the megatons of energy required to produce a crater of a
particular size. I added up all the megatons of all the 140 craters and
found that during the flood year there would be 1.7 billion megatons of
energy expended on the earth. An all out nuclear war would be tame compared
to this.
Once again, Alan, you have a poorly thought out scenario that is so
transparently phoney that anyone with a modicum of knowledge can see the
gaping holes and tattered remains of your theories.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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