On Fri, 31 Jul 1998 06:40:33 -0500, Glenn R. Morton wrote to Vernon
Jenkins:
[...]
VJ>2) It follows that a crucial battle must be fought over the nature of
>the flood and its outcome in respect of our correctly interpreting the
>geological data, as we find it. You have expressed your disillusionment
>with YEC for failing to face up to facts contrary to their beliefs. Now
>I am going to suggest to you that you are failing to meet the demands of
>simple logic. If the flood were 'local', as you so stoutly maintain,
>what was the necessity of building an ark and undertaking the subsequent
>voyage? And where are these watertight mountain ranges (which Noah would
>surely have done better walking to with family and animals in tow - he
>certainly had ample time!!).
[...]
GM>If the area flooded were the Mesopotamian basin, I would agree with you.
>But with the Mediterranean, where I put the flood, Noah et al would have
>had to march 800 km across a desert to escape the flood.
Just before I unsubscribed from the Reflector and my wife and I went on our
world trip in September-December 1997, I delivered what I thought to be the
coup de grace to Glenn's 5.5 mya Mediterranean Flood theory.
Basically, unless my maths is horribly wrong (which is always possible!), I
showed that because of the limited 1.8 sq. mile cross-section of the
Straits of Gibraltar, for the Mediterranean to be filled in a year, the water
would have to flow through the Straits of Gibraltar at greater than 3600 miles
per hour (ie. at nearly Mach 5)!! Yet Glenn had previously advised that water
cannot flow faster than 20 miles per hour.
I can't remember seeing Glenn's reply before I unsubscribed and AFAIK he has
not raised his 5.5 mya Mediterranean Flood theory since then, so I assumed he
had either admitted it was false after I unsubscribed, or had quietly abandondoned
it. The Archive wasbroken until recently and when I last checked it had August
1997 missing. However, it now appears that Glenn still believes in his 5.5 mya
Mediterranean Flood.
Therefore here is the relevant part of my post in August 1997 which I believe
is fatal to Glenn's 5.5 mya Mediterranean Flood theory:
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Re: More problems for Glenn's Mediterranean Flood theory 2B
On Tue, 12 Aug 97 05:45:40 +0800, Stephen Jones wrote:
[...]
SJ>Assuming the infilling took 100 years, this would be an average
>rise of only 100 feet a year, or about 3 1/4 inches a day. If it
>took 1,000 years, it would be an average rise of only 10 feet a
>year, or about 1/3rd an inch per day. Either way, it wouldn't drown
>anyone.
GM>No body really knows how long it took to fill. It could have
>filled in a year if the break in the Gibraltar Dam was big enough.
>Hsu says it was less than a 1000 years.
It would have to be a "filled in a year" if this was the Biblical
Flood. According to the Bible, the Flood began "In the six hundredth
year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month" (Gn
7:11) and ended "By the twenty-seventh day of the second month" (Gn
8:14), which is a "year and ten days" (Kidner D., "Genesis:", 1967,
p98).
Since Hsu says it would take "more than 100 years" to fill the
Mediterranean "at a rate of 10,000 cubic miles per year" (Hsu, 1972,
p33), to fill it "in a year" would require a rate of 1,000,000 cubic
miles per year! That is 2,739.7 cubic miles a day, 114.1 cubic miles
an hour or 1.9 cubic miles a second.
Since the straights of Gibraltar at its narrowest point is 8 miles
wide and its average depth is 1,200 feet (0.23 mi):
"Gibraltar, Strait of, ancient FRETUM HERCULEUM, STRAIT OF
HERCULES,
channel connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean,
lies between southernmost Spain and northwesternmost Africa. It is
36 mi (58 km) long and narrows to 8 mi wide between Point Marroqui
(Spain) and Point Cires (Morocco). The strait's western extreme is
27 mi wide between the capes Trafalgar (north) and Spartel (south);
and the eastern extreme is 14 mi wide between the Pillars of Hercules
(that marked the end of the classical world)-identified as the Rock
of Gibraltar (north) and Mt. Acho, just east of Cueta, a Spanish
enclave in Morocco (south). The strait is an important gap,
averaging 1,200 ft (366 m) deep in the arc formed by the Atlas
Mountains of North Africa and the high plateau of Spain."
("Gibraltar, Strait of", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1984, iv:531-532)
in cross-section it looks like:
--- ---
| |
| | 0.23 mi
------------------
8 mi
That is, 8 mi x 0.23 mi = 1.8 sq. mi. Now for it to be
"filled in a year" that would require a whole mile of water
flowing through *each second*, ie. 3600 miles per hour! And
remember this is the *average*. The first water would have
had to flow much faster than this, because as the basin
filled, the existing water in the basin would slow the flow.
So for it be "filled in a year", it would require an initial
rate of flow of far greater than 3600 miles per hour. Yet you
pointed out that "Water has NEVER been observed to flow faster
than 20 miles per hour":
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Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 06:12:24 -0500
To: Dario A Giraldo <giraldo@wln.com>, evolution@calvin.edu
From: grmorton@psyberlink.net (Glenn Morton)
Subject: Re: As people become Christians
[...]
Water has NEVER been observed to flow faster than 20 miles per hour.
Consider this:
"The mean velocity of rivers in flood varies from 4 to 10 feet
per second. the mean veleocity attained in large rivers tends to
be slightly higher than that in small rivers. There are, of
course, many local situations where, owing to constrictions or
rapids, velocity attains greater values. The figures cited above
include a large majority of river channels in reaches that have no
unusual features. For rivers of moderate size (2 to 100 square
miles of drainage area), the flow at bankfull stage will ordinarily
have a mean velocity on the order of 4 feet per second. If one had
to make a guess without any measurement data, that figure would be
a usable approximation.
"the U.S. Geological Survey has analyzed individual velocity
measurements made by current meter at the point of maximum velocity
in river cross sections. The data were from routine measurements
at 48 gaging stations on 27 large rivers throughout the country.
A frequency table of 2,950 maximum values was compiled. Analysis
showed the mean to be 4.84 feet per second, the medial 4.11, and
the mode 2.76 feet per second. Data on the Mississippi river
constituted 13 percent of the sample and had a median value of 8.0
feet per second.
"Less than 1 percent of the total measurements exceeded 13
feet per second. The highest velocity known to have been recorded
with a current meter by the U.S. Geological Survey was 22.4 feet
per second in a rockbound section of the Potomac River at Chain
Bridge near Washington, D.C., on May 14, 1932. Velocities of 30
feet per second (20 miles per hour) have been reported but were not
measured by current meter. No greater values are known."
Luna B. Leopold, A View of the River, (London, England: Harvard
University Press, 1994), p. 33
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But even if it was "filled in a year", this would be an average rise
of only 3 1/4 inches x 100 = 325 inches or 27.1 feet a day, or 1.13
feet an hour. If Noah's countrymen lived on a river delta, they
could easily escape such a flood by walking to higher ground upriver.
But let's assume that the water was flowing through at your maximum
rate of "20 miles per hour". That would be 8 mi x 0.23 mi x 20 mi =
36.8 cu. mi per hour, or 322,368 cu. mi per year, which is 30 times
Hsu's rate. Since "The Mediterranean abyssal plains are more than
10,000 feet deep and the basin holds almost a million cubic miles of
water" (Hsu 1972, p29), it would take 3.1 years to fill. That
averages out at 3,225.8 feet a year, or 8.8 feet a day, or 0.37 feet
(4 1/2 inches) an hour. This would not be suffcient to drown human
beings.
[...]
====================================================================
Steve
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Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ senojes@hotmail.com
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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