DELUGE
Gordon, in this quote from Mike,
a meteorite swarm, associated with the first bombardment population of Moon craters, collapsed Earth's thick vapor canopy ... the sole source of water for the Great Flood. Members of the meteorite swarm falling into the ocean led observers on land to mistakenly call the resulting water jets "fountains of the great deep". Note that these started and ended at the same time as the rain deluge, I'm not sure what he meant by the canopy as sole source of Flood water, but he seems to have made a very similar conclusion as you about the fountains. He seems to add that the meteors caused the heavy rain. But I thought the meteors continued to fall for 5 months altogether. What do you think?
DRAFT
I'm working on the draft at
http://funday.createaforum.com/1-10/1-71
Here's the main argument so far.
FLOOD CATASTROPHISM: PART 1. MEGATSUNAMIS DEPOSITED THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
A major geological observation is that most sedimentary strata are fairly horizontal & conforming, mostly sorted into one or two kinds of sediment in each stratum.(i)
1. Gradual erosion & deposition (GED) cannot form horizontal sedimentary strata, but can only form sloped alluvial & delta fans.(1)
_a. Turbulent floods can sort and deposit horizontal strata, as found at the Mt. St. Helens volcanic site in the 1980s.(1a) <<____
_b. The larger a flood is, the larger is the area over which it deposits strata.
_c. Most sedimentary strata cover very large areas of continents or of a former supercontinent.(1c) <<____
_d. This requires a continent- or supercontinent-wide flood or floods.
2. GED cannot sort sediments into different broad horizontal beds.(2) <<____
_a. There cannot have been thousands of years of gradual erosion depositing only one kind of sediment, such as clay, in a shallow inland sea, then thousands of years depositing only another kind of sediment, such as sand, over the clay, and then more millennia depositing just lime or growing shells etc.
3. GED cannot fill basins with strata that conform with the shape of the basin walls & floor.
_a. It can only form sloped fan and floor strata.(3a) <<____
_b. But most basins have contoured strata.(3b) <<____
4. GED cannot produce sorted, conforming strata that show little to no signs of erosion between strata.(4) <<____
_a. It can only produce sloped strata on lake or sea floors or banks over relatively small areas.(4a) <<____
5. GED cannot bury & preserve delicate or large fossils.
_a. Local turbulent floods can bury large organisms in small areas, but the burial does not keep out bacteria & small organisms that decompose the remains.(5a) <<____
_b. Only great overburden pressure or heat can prevent decomposition and allow fossilization.(5b) <<____
_c. A turbulent flood cannot preserve delicate fossils.
_d. Delicate fossils required gradual burial over minutes to days, followed by increasing overburden.(5d) <<____
_e. Examples of delicate fossils are tracks, burrows, feeding traces, sea lilies & jellyfish.
6. What could cause major flooding of a continent or supercontinent?
_a. Precipitation flooding would be insufficient: if the atmosphere were much larger than now and it held a large percent of water vapor, if something caused most of the water vapor to precipitate, it would likely only raise sea level a few meters.(6a) <<____
_b. Natural dam break flooding is insufficient: the Missoula flood is the largest one known and it only produced a small amount of strata.(6b) <<____
_c. Sea level rise is improbable from glacial melting and would also be insufficient and not turbulent enough.(6c) <<____
_d. Normal tsunamis, caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, or small impacts, are too small to flood whole continents.(6d) <<____
_e. But megatsunamis could do the job.(6e)
7. What could cause megatsunamis?
_a. Large impacts in the ocean could, or a close approach of an asteroid could also, by tidal effect.
_b. Sedimentary strata are divided into six megasequences with disconformities between them.(7b) <<____
_c. The disconformities were apparently caused by minor erosion on the upper surface of each lower megasequence by rain over short periods of time.
_d. Thus there must have been six major ocean impacts every few weeks or months apart, or there must have been six close approaches of one or more asteroids, weeks or months apart.
_e. It seems more probable that an asteroid on a temporary elliptical orbit around the Earth would cause repeating tsunamis.
_f. Calculations show that dust and gases in space ejected during impacts would cause an elliptical orbit to circularize within decades.(7f) <<____
_g. An asteroid the size of the Moon would raise tides 2.5 km high, if it were ____ km from Earth at its perigee.(7g) <<____
8. Megatsunamis meet all of the requirements for a source of Earth's geologic column.
_a. The tide from an asteroid's close approach to Earth would start to rise gradually, stirring up and raining down light sediment on delicate organisms, traces and ripple marks etc for a few hours.
_b. Due to loss of much atmosphere, CO2 would degas in the oceans, forming lime.(8b) <<____
_c. As the asteroid approached perigee the tides would reach maximum velocity and great amounts of clay, silt and sand from the ocean floor and continental shelf would flow over and deposit on large areas of continents or the supercontinent.(8c) <<____
_d. The sediments would separate largely according to grain size, forming horizontal or contoured beds of strata.(8d) <<____
_e. Many organisms would be buried and the overburden would increase to many meters thick.
_f. As the asteroid moved away and the tide receded, water would drain from the sediments, gradually removing buoyancy of sediments around entombed organisms, thus allowing them to gradually compress.(8f) <<____See Taylor re Ohio sharks<<
_g. Lime from the ocean waters would help cement and lithify the sediments.(8g) <<____
_h. Each return of the asteroid to and past perigee would have formed another megasequence of strata.
9. Exceptions. Sedimentary strata are not horizontal in basins and in mountain ranges.(9) <<____
_a. Some basins seem to have formed as impact craters.(9a) <<____
_b. 25 basins from around the Mediterranean to eastern China and a few in the Americas apparently contain the entire geologic column.(9b) <<____
_c. Basins would have filled in during the 6 megatsunamis, with sediments conforming largely to basin contours.(9c) <<____
_d. If frequent tremors or tides or something caused the sediments to spread out across the floor of a basin, the sediments should have gone to the bottom as flat layers, instead of as conforming layers.(9d) <<____
_e. Some of the sediments on higher ground washed off as megatsunami tides receded, leaving many continental areas missing some or many strata.(9e) <<____
_f. 25% of continent surfaces have no sedimentary strata: i.e. N & E Canada - Greenland - Scandinavia and E South America - Southern Africa - E India - W & N Australia - Antarctica.(9f) <<____
10. Calculations. John Baumgardner calculated how large megatsunamis would have been to deposit the geologic column.(10) <<____
_a. They would have been about 2.5 km high.(10a) <<____
_b. Each one would have deposited about .4 km of sediments to make a megasequence of strata, so six of them would have deposited an average of 1.8 km after sheet-eroding some of it away.(10b) <<____
_c. They could have occurred a few weeks or months apart over a few months' or years' time.(10c) <<____
_d. The flooding would have occurred for a few days during each orbital cycle.(10d) <<____
_e. The rest of the time the floods would have receded before the next cycle repeated
_f. To produce waves 2.5 km high, a body the size of the Moon would have been ____ km from Earth, center to center.(10f) <<____
_g. A smaller body would have come closer; a larger body would have come less close.