Heat Problem?

From: Diane Roy (Dianeroy@peoplepc.com)
Date: Sun Jul 30 2000 - 01:30:59 EDT

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    In 1983, the Journal of Geological Education published an issue dealing with the threat of Creationism to science. In an attempt to show the flood impossible, Leonard Soroka and Charles Nelson co-authored "Physical Constraints on the Noachian Deluge." Soroka and Nelson basically set up a straw-man and then burn it down. However, they do provide some formulae with which to deal with heat input during the Flood. I will be using these formulae and some agreed upon figures in this article.

    Soroka and Nelson make the absurd assumption that Noah's Flood would have to over-top Mount Everest. Aside, perhaps, from some ill-informed Sunday School teachers, no Creationist proposes such a preposterous idea. The several scenario computations presented in their article are based upon this specification, so they do not address Creationary models in the slightest. The highest elevation for the pre-flood mountains are usually estimated by Creationary Catastropists to be less than 2 km. Many mountain ranges today are about 2 km high, such as the Appalachian, the Cascade and the Coast Range mountains in America.

    Of the four scenarios discussed in the article, the only one I wish to address is the second comet impact theory. One of the more current Flood Catastrophe models is one where the catastrophe was caused by a series of asteroid impacts. As the asteroids hit the earth, the resulting impact-tsunami (called seiches in their article) sweep ashore successively flooding the continents with oceanic waters until the highest mountains are covered at least from time to time. This model lowers the average sea level by the amount of water displaced onto the continents, so there is no problem with trying to dispose of extra water after the Flood.

    Soroka and Nelson propose that by computing the potential energy induced to raise the waters onto the continent we can determine the energy of the asteroid impacts and the amount of heat generated. Because of their wild assumption that the waters had to cover Everest, they compute extremely vast quantities of water and vast amounts of heat. To make things worse, they propose that all that heat had to be completely dissipated from the earth in 150 days resulting in surface temperature of 3600+ degrees F! There is no reason why the energy needs to be dissipated in such a short time. Such incredulity impugns their competence.

    I am going to compute the energy for two conditions: 1) covering the average elevation of the continents with about 10 meters of water (which is slightly more than 15 cubits -- the proposed draft of the Ark) and 2) 333 meters of water (about 1000 feet). Since the continents are not totally flat, some areas would be deeper and some shallower, but the pre-flood world is usually conceived to be mostly flatlands with some mountain regions as is now. Once water had been displaced onto the continents it would take quite some time for it to recede back off after the asteroid impacts had ceased. For ease of computation and comparison, we'll use some figures supplied by Soroka and Nelson:

    Rf = earth radius to average sea floor (6378 km)

    Ro= radius to surface of oceans (6378 + 3.8 = 6381.8 km )

    Rh= radius to height of continental average elevation. (6381.8 + 0.8 = 6381.9 km) (We will use the same continental average elevation for simplicity even though we propose that the mountains were much lower. Mountains make up only a small portion of the continental land mass anyway.)

    To compute the potential energy we need to compute how much water to be moved and how high to move it.

    The amount of water on the continents for the depths of 0.010 km and 0.333 km:

    Vc = volume of water required to cover the continents by 0.333 km (~1000 feet) of water

    = 4/3*pi* ((Rh + 0.333)3 - Rh3) * 0.29 [% of earth covered by continents]

    = 4/3 * pi * ((6381.9 + 0.333)3 - 6381.93) * 0.29

    = 4/3 * pi * ( 4.0690042046843337e+7) * 0.29 ["e+7" is the same as "*10^7"] (using Microsoft's Windows 98 calculator)

    = 4.94281943718674907995008753954996e+7 km3

    Vc = volume of water required to cover the continents by 0.010 km (~30 feet) of water

    = 4/3*pi* ((6381.9 + 0.010)3 - 6381.9 3) * 0.29

    = 4/3 * pi* ( 1.221861342871e+6) * 0.29

    = 1.48425503914130532624918453045341e+6 km3

    To get the displacement of the water we need to compute the lowering of the sea level to account for the quantity of water now on the continents.

    The oceans surface area is approximately 3.6337462111e+8 km2 (71% of earth's surface is ocean).

    Depth of ocean to provide covering of water on continents:

    d(0.333 km) = 4.94281943718674907995008753954996e+7 km3 / 3.6337462111e+8 km2

     = 1.36025444542272235076788506748916e-1 = 0.136 km ( ~ 400 ft)

    d (0.010 km) = 1.48425503914130532624918453045341e+6 km3 / 3.6337462111e+8 km2

    = 4.08464144966248142790993533195407e-3 km = 0.004 km ( ~ 12 ft)

    The total displacement for 0.333 km of water on the continents is about 0.8 + 0.136 = 0.936 km.

    The total displacement for 0.010 km of water on the continents is about 0.8 + 0.004 = 0.804 km.

    Now that we have the quantity of waters on the continents and the displacement we can compute the energy required to put it there:

    Ep = MgH
    (M=mass, g=acceleration of gravity and H=displacement) [from Soroka and Nelson, p. 139]

    E(0.333) = (4.94281943718674907995008753954996e+7 km3) (10.0e+12 kg / km3 ) ( 9.8 m/sec2 ) ( 936 m ) = 4.53394941334266119605661629827751e+24 joules

    E (0.010) = (1.48425503914130532624918453045341e+6 km3) (10.0e+12 kg / km3 ) ( 9.8 m/sec2 ) ( 804 m ) = 1.16947423044021729265825747523453e+23 joules

    Depending upon who's list you look at there are between 140 to 200 known asteroid impact craters of all sizes spread throughout the geologic record. It is usually considered that this represents the remnants of 420 to 600 impact craters expected on a global basis.

    Each impact which lands in water will generate impact-tsunami. Any surfer can tell you that rideable waves travel in sets of 3, 5 or 7. The 1968 Alaska earthquake tsunami was composed of 3 waves that crashed ashore all along the pacific rim. The last wave of each set is the largest of each successively larger wave in the set. This is because as waves travel across the water, the first wave slowly disappears and a new one forms in the rear at the same time. The energy of the wave set travels backwards through the set of waves. As the waves approach the shore, the first wave begins to slow down and break. Some of the energy is passed back to succeeding waves, each one being slightly larger than the previous ones. The run up of each succeeding wave will be further than the previous because of the higher energy levels. For a large enough wave traveling at 100 km/hr, it would take about 30 hours to travel 3000 km inland over the flat lowlands of which most of the continents would consist. It would take at least that long for the water to retreat from the run-up.

    An impact-tsunami will consist of a large set of waves, probably 7 or more. We will use 7 because that is a known amount of waves in a set. This means that we can expect somewhere in the range of 2940 to 4200 individual impact-tsunami waves for a period of 150 days. There would thus be 2.8 to 4 asteroid impacts per day and 19.6 to 28 global impact-tsunami per day. This large number of impact-tsunami per day would inhibit any large-scale run-off from the continents.

    The Bible tells us that it took 40 days before the Ark was floated on the flood waters (Gen 7:17). This would seem to indicate that the Ark was built at a fairly high elevation in the mountains. Some 800 to 1100 impact-tsunami would have swept ashore during that time, flooding higher and higher upon the continent. The highest mountains may have been flooded over just few days later. Since the asteroid impacts are not expected to all be of the same size, we might expect lulls in the energy level of the impact-tsunami. At such times, in areas that had been flooded, sedimentary depositions may have become exposed and whatever surviving animals at that time may have tried to escape across the deposits leaving trackways. Small, but dense with sediment waves, back washes, and surges may have covered the tracks, preserving them.

    The total energy expended will include the energy to put the waters ashore and the energy spent in runoff. Soroka and Nelson propose 150 run-up and run-offs in 150 days. However, with so many impact-tsunami coming ashore for 150 days, one would expect run-off to be largely postponed until after the 150 days are up. So these calculations are going to assume only 1 run-up and 1 run-off for the entire 150 days. Thus we get:

    E(0.333) = (2) (4.53394941334266119605661629827751e+24 joules)

    = 9.067898826685322392113232596554e+24 joules

    E (0.010) = (2) (1.16947423044021729265825747523453e+23 joules)

    = 2.338948460880434585316514950468e+23 joules

    Michael Oard proposes in his book, "An Ice Age caused by the Genesis Flood", that by the end of the Flood the energy stored in the waters because of the energy injected into the earth system had heated the oceans to about 30 degrees C. If the original average temperature of the pre-flood oceans were same as today then the flood waters increased in temperature 26 degrees. The amount of energy to do that is:

    Eo = (26 degrees) (1.38000152168903081740592028247446e+9 km3 ) (10e+12 kg/km3) (4.18776371e+3 joule/kg/deg C )

    = 1.50257127599126630217307881750587e+27 joules

    The energy to move 0.333 km depth of water onto the continents represents 0.0060 or 0.6% of the energy required to heat the oceans to 30 C. The energy to move 0.010 km depth of water onto the continents represents 0.00016 or 0.016% of the energy required to heat the oceans to 30 C.

    Oard has also computed that it would take about 500 years for the oceans to cool to 10 C at which point the Ice Age would begin to end and the glacial ice would begin to melt off the continents. So we are going to assume 500 years (1.5768e+10 sec.) to dissipate this energy into the atmosphere as latent heat which was used as ice storms to created the Ice Age.

    e (0.333) = (9.067898826685322392113232596554e+24 joules) / (5.11795241e+14 m2 ) / (1.5768e+10 sec.)

    e (0.333) = 1.12365712882435550243249567027078 j/m2/sec

    e (0.010) = (2.338948460880434585316514950468e+23 joules) / (5.11795241e+14 m2 ) / (1.5768e+10 sec.)

    e (0.010) = 0.0289832976994269949307704887771834 j/m2/sec

    Calculate the increase in temperature required to radiate this additional energy. (using the Stefan-Boltzmann law as per Soroka and Nelson)

    E (increase) / E (normal) = T4 (increase) / T4 (normal)

    For 0.333 km depth:

    (1.12365712882435550243249567027078 j/m2/sec) / (2.15e+2 j/m2/sec) = T4 (increase) / (2.8e+2 K)4

    T4 (increase) = 1.46336742358520716595859901244465 K4

    T (increase) = 1.09986237529831356571904157568942 K = 1.10 K

    T (new) = 1.10 K + 280 K = 281.1 K = 8.1 C = 46.58 F

    For 0.010 km depth:

    (0.0289832976994269949307704887771834 j/m2/sec) / (2.15e+2 j/m2/sec) = T4 (increase) / (2.8e+2 K)4

    T4 (increase) = 0.0377456900271607375842592411979535 K4

    T (increase) = 0.440774886499366800685339573601583 K = 0.44 K

    T (new) = .0.44 K + 280 K = 280.44 K = 7.44 C = 45.392 F

    These figures are very livable and survivable, and the heat generated poses no threat to the Ark nor the occupants safely ensconced inside.


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