Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
1. “About 16% of near-Earth asteroids larger than 200 meters in diameter [those detected by Earth-based radar] may be binary systems.” J. L. Margot, “Binary Asteroids in the Near-Earth Object Populations,” Science, Vol. 296, 24 May 2002, p. 1445.
u www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/asteroidmoons.html.
2. D. T. Britt et al., “Asteroid Density, Porosity, and Structure,” Asteroids III, editors W. F. Bottke et al. (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 2002), pp. 485–500.
3. www.minorplanetcenter.org/iau/MPCORB.html
4. “A common misconception is that asteroids are the remains of a large planet that mysteriously exploded long ago. Today there is hardly enough material in the asteroid belt to make a small moon.” Derek C. Richardson, “Giants in the Asteroid Belt,” Nature, Vol. 411, 21 June 2001, p. 899.
5. Jupiter’s gravity is often given as a simplistic reason a planet did not form. If that were true, why didn’t Jupiter prevent even dust or the tiniest grains of sand from forming big rocks? Actually, Jupiter’s gravity flings asteroids from the asteroid belt at a rate that is rapid relative to the evolutionist’s age for the solar system—4,600,000,000 years.
u One of the big problems in the current story on how asteroids evolved is: “How do gas and dust in a hypothetical solar nebula condense into dense boulders (asteroids, planetesimals, and meteoroids)?” As one expert on meteorites admitted,
even Earth’s most evolved brains still haven’t grasped why space dust condensed into boulders. William Speed Weed, “Philip Bland: Meteor Man,” Discover, Vol. 22, March 2001, p. 46.
6. “Although Jovian perturbations are widely invoked to explain [why asteroids failed to grow to become planets in] the asteroid belt, the precise mechanism that halted planet formation is still a subject of some dispute.” Jack J. Lissauer and Glen R. Stewart, “Growth of Planets from Planetesimals,” Protostars and Planets III, editors Eugene H. Levy and Jonathan I. Luine (London: The University of Arizona Press, 1993), pp. 1080–1081.
These authors then explain why the several explanations proposed are unsatisfactory.
7. “The predicted mean time between major asteroid collisions [for each asteroid] is about 5% of the age of the solar system. All asteroids should already be highly fragmented unless their origin is relatively recent, as in the exploded planet theory.” Tom C. Van Flandern, Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 1993), p. 216.
8. The estimated mass of all asteroids is 2.6 x 1021 grams. [See page 534.] About 90% of all asteroid mass is in the main belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
9. Erik Asphaug, “The Small Planets,” Scientific American, Vol. 282, May 2000, p. 48.
10. P. C. Thomas et al., “Differentiation of the Asteroid Ceres as Revealed by Its Shape,” Nature, Vol. 437, 8 September 2005, pp. 224–226.
11. Some of this water vapor also condensed as frost in permanently shadowed craters on the Moon, Mercury, and Mars.
12. Some asteroids, called C-type asteroids, are darker than coal! They typically lie in the outer part of the asteroid belt. Lighter-colored, S-type asteroids are generally in the inner part of the belt. Darker asteroids have both hotter hot sides and colder cold sides. [See Figure 171.] Therefore, opposite sides of darker asteroids have greater temperature differences that would have produced greater thrust and moved those asteroids farther from the Sun—accounting for their present location.
13. The size, shape, and inclination of a body’s orbital path around the Sun is described by three numbers:
a (the semimajor axis or size of the orbit),
e (the eccentricity or shape of the orbit), and
i (the inclination or tilt of the orbital plane with respect to Earth’s orbital plane).
In other words, in a special three-dimensional coordinate system (a, e, and i), every point represents a different orbit. The initial orbits of the hundreds of thousands of asteroids can be represented by hundreds of thousands of widely scattered points in an a-e-i coordinate system.
The forces that acted on asteroids were gravity, drag, and thrust. (Today, the drag and thrust are zero.) Although gravity is easy to model, it is virtually impossible to determine what the drag and thrust were and how they diminished in the years after the flood, because so many experimentally determined relationships are involved. Also, the amount of water vapor placed in orbit will probably never be known—even approximately. However, drag and thrust can be described with just a few simplifying parameters. (For example, drag is equal to some parameter times velocity squared. That parameter depends on several unknowns, including the density of water vapor which diminishes over time according to a second parameter.)
In the simulation, I scattered hundreds of points in the a-e-i coordinate system. By fine tuning several parameters for drag and thrust and then simulating the changing orbits as time progressed, I could watch on a computer monitor all those points simultaneously migrate toward the single point (a = 2.8 AU, e = 0, i = 0) representing today’s asteroid belt.
While these functional relationships for drag and thrust are not derivable, they are consistent with the way drag and thrust generally act. It was remarkable that with only a few parameters, nearly an infinite number of points could be “mapped” almost into one point. In physical terms, almost all simulated asteroids, regardless of their initial orbit somewhere in the inner solar system, slowly migrated into the asteroid belt.
14. The radiometer effect is more complicated than appears at first glance, and for decades incorrect explanations were given by respected scientists. Thrust occurs at the black edges of the spinning vane, but on average the black side provides more thrust than the white side. How wide is the black edge? About the width of the mean free path of the impinging gas molecules, which in outer space is quite large. For a detailed explanation, see
v Philip Gibbs, “How Does a Light Mill Work?” 1996 at
http://johanw.home.xs4all.nl/PhysFAQ/General/
LightMill/light-mill.html
v Arthur E. Woodruff, “The Radiometer and How it Does Not Work,” The Physics Teacher, October 1968, pp. 358–363.
In applying this radiometer effect to a large swarm of rocks, ice, and gas orbiting the Sun and absorbing solar energy, the thrust acts primarily on the hot edges of individual solid particles, not the swarm itself.
u Two other effects acted on asteroid swarms to spiral them away from the Sun. The first effect involves solar heating. The swarm would act as a giant Carnot engine and deliver thrust. A large, slowly spinning swarm absorbs great solar heat on its hot (day) side as the Sun’s energy evaporates (sublimates) frost. One-half rotation (cycle) later, on the cold (night) side, some of that heat radiates into space, causing the water vapor to condense as frost. The difference between the heat absorbed and the heat rejected becomes work (thrust acting through a distance). Therefore, a weak “atmospheric pressure” always produced thrust on the day side, but “shut off” on the night side. This effect also added orbital angular momentum, allowing the swarm to spiral outward. For details, see: Ralph D. Lorenz and Joseph N. Spitale, “The Yarkovsky Effect as a Heat Engine,” Icarus, Vol. 170, 2004, pp. 229–233.
The second effect involves photon momentum. A large swarm would also act as a solar sail by which photons (light particles) from the Sun transfer momentum to an orbiting object. Solar sails are now propelling some spacecraft and may someday go to a nearby star. Solar sails are not much larger than a living-room rug, but a swarm of rocks, ice, and gas which later merged to become an asteroid could have been thousands of times larger—and provided thousands of times more thrust that steadily accelerated the swarm.
Each individual transfer [of a photon’s momentum to a solar sail] amounts to no more than a mosquito’s breath, but over time that breath accumulates to a steady wind that a spacecraft can ride just as a sailboat rides the wind on Earth. After 100 days, a solar sail could reach 14,000 kilometers per hour; after three years it could be zipping along at 240,000 kilometers per hour. At that rate it could get to Pluto in less than five years, rather than the nine years [normally required.] Alexandra Witze, “Flying on Sunshine,” Science News, Vol. 18, 10 September 2011, p. 19.
Swarms that became asteroids slowly lost their heated gas. What would have happened to swarms that were so much more massive that they prevented their gas from escaping? Where might they be today, and would they have moons?
15. “Five of the numbered periodic comets are in fact also listed alternatively as numbered minor planets.” Brian G. Marsden and Gareth V. Williams, Catalogue of Cometary Orbits, 17th edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Minor Planet Center, 2008), p. 6.
16. O. Richard Norton, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Meteorites (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 186.
17. Sunlight would quickly break down a free water molecule into hydroxyl (OH) and atomic hydrogen (H). Other gases would also be present.
18. As explained in Figure 169 on page 323, asteroids typically have earthlike spin rates. The hottest “time of day” on a spinning asteroid was not “high noon,” but “several hours after noon,” as it is on Earth. Therefore, the thrust acting on asteroids had a tangential component as well as a radial component. The tangential component steadily added angular momentum to each asteroid’s orbit, allowing it to spiral outward.
19. Consider two gravitational forces acting on a mass, m, at the Earth’s surface. The first, FE, is caused by the Earth’s mass, ME, acting, in effect, from the Earth’s center—a distance DE (4,000 miles) away. The second gravitational force, FS, is caused by the Sun’s mass, MS, acting from a distance of DS (93,000,000 miles). Letting G be the gravitational constant, these forces are:
The Sun is 332,900 times more massive than Earth. Dividing the left equation by the right gives:
This means that a steady, 1-pound force could lift and accelerate a rock away from the Sun if the rock weighed 1,600 pounds on Earth and the rock were more than 93,000,000 miles above the Sun and far from Earth.
20. Temperatures probably reached 3,000°F (1,650°C). [See "Chondrules" on page 376.] If so, as temperatures steadily rose, quartz would have been the first major mineral in granite to melt. Much of it would have dissolved in the hot, subterranean water.
21. Claims are sometimes made that radioactive decay generated the heat, but standard calculations that would support those speculations are never shown.
22. “... we lack compelling scenarios leading to the origin of iron meteorites ... Early solar system collisions have been called upon to excavate this iron [from the cores of the largest asteroids], although numerical impact models have found this task difficult to achieve, particularly when it is required to occur many dozens of times, yet not a single time for asteroid Vesta.” Erik Asphaug et al., “Tides Versus Collisions in the Primordial Main Belt,” October 2000, www.aas.org/publications/baas/v32n3/dps2000/545.htm.
23. “[NASA’s model] predicts a dust concentration in the asteroid belt about an order of magnitude higher than the dust density near earth.” J. S. Dohnanyi, “Sources of Interplanetary Dust: Asteroids,” Interplanetary Dust and Zodiacal Light, editors H. Elsässer and H. Fechtig (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1976), p. 189.
24. J. M. Alvarez, “The Cosmic Dust Environment at Earth, Jupiter and Interplanetary Space: Results from Langley Experiments on MTS, Pioneer 10 and 11,” Ibid., p. 181.
u “It can be seen, Fig. 2, that the number density of interplanetary dust inferred from the penetration data is a slowly decreasing function with heliocentric distance [R] ... a distribution that varies as R-1 [for 1 AU < R < 4 AU].” Dohnanyi, p. 190.
25. “Eros, indeed, has no detectable magnetic field. That’s puzzling because meteorites, which are believed to be fragments of asteroids, possess magnetic fields. How could a chip of an asteroid be magnetic if the parent asteroid isn’t?” Ron Cowen, “Asteroid Eros Poses a Magnetic Puzzle,” Science News, Vol. 159, 2 June 2001, p. 341.
26. Kazushige Tomeoka, “Phyllosilicate Veins in a CI Meteorite: Evidence for Aqueous Alteration on the Parent Body,” Nature, Vol. 345, 10 May 1990, pp. 138–140.
27. Why could almost no one have imagined this energy source? They visualized phenomena by reasoning only from effects we see today back to their possible causes. Had they also reasoned from cause to effect—from water in the subterranean chamber to its consequences (such as tidal pumping to supercritical water)—they might have realized that large rocks would have been launched from Earth during the flood.
28. Why could almost no one have imagined this energy source? They visualized phenomena by reasoning only from effects we see today back to their possible causes. Had they also reasoned from cause to effect—from water in the subterranean chamber to its consequences (such as tidal pumping to supercritical water)—they might have realized that large rocks would have been launched from Earth during the flood.
29. Olivine is a class of minerals that includes perhaps half the minerals in the Earth’s crust and upper mantle. Olivine consists of tiny tetrahedra (three-sided pyramids), each composed of a silicon atom surrounded by four oxygen atoms at the pyramid’s corners. The pyramids are tightly stacked together and further strengthened by iron and/or magnesium atoms that fit snugly between the pyramids. In pallasites, the olivine is strictly the magnesium variety, a mineral called forsterite.
At atmospheric pressure, forsterite melts at almost 1900°F., one of the highest melting temperatures of all minerals. The iron variety of olivine, called fayalite, melts at about 1200°F. An iron-nickel mixture melts at about 1300°F. Deep in the Earth, pressures are greater, so melting temperatures are somewhat higher, depending on depth.
The fluttering hydroplates and pounding pillars crushed rock and generated frictional heat along the sliding surfaces. Near those surfaces, minerals that had low melting temperatures, including minerals containing iron and nickel, melted quickly. The dense iron and nickel drained down cracks and displaced upward melted material that was less dense. Even after the large rocks were launched and cooling had begun on their outside surfaces, the extremely hot molten material deep inside the rocks continued to melt other minerals. Before forsterite could melt, the molten iron-nickel steadily froze while forsterite crystals were suspended in a weightless environment within the melt. Pallasites formed.
Notice in Figure 173 that the forsterite crystals are of similar size and uniformly distributed. This is because each microscopic pyramid, drifting weightlessly in the iron-nickel “soup,” had unbalanced electrical charges which pulled nearby pyramids together into a crystalline arrangement.
30. “These three different techniques show the MG [main group] pallasites cooled below 975 K at significantly diverse rates. Since samples from the core-mantle boundary should have indistinguishable cooling rates, MG pallasites could not have cooled at this location.” Jijin Yang et al., “Main-Group Pallasites: Thermal History, Relationship to IIIAB Irons, and Origin,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 74, 2010, p. 4471.
31. “These pallasites record substantial magnetic fields, with intensities ranging up to nearly twice that of Earth today.” Benjamin P. Weiss, “A Vitrage of Asteroid Magnetism,” Science, Vol. 338, 16 November 2012, p. 898.
32. Alan E. Rubin, “What Heated the Asteroids,” Scientific American, Vol. 292, May 2005, pp. 80–87.
33. The following concerns Vesta, the second-most-massive asteroid, whose mean diameter is 326 miles (525 kilometers).
“Spectroscopic observations of Vesta’s surface indicate that it is covered with volcanic basalt, leading researchers to conclude that Vesta’s interior once melted. The cause of the heating cannot be long-lived radioisotopes; given the primordial concentrations of the isotopes and the expected rate of heat loss, calculations show that the radioactive decay could not have melted Vesta or any other asteroid. Another heating mechanism must therefore be responsible, but what is it? This question has dogged planetary scientists for decades.” Alan E. Rubin, “What Heated the Asteroids,” Scientific American, Vol. 292, May 2005, p. 82.
“It is thus clear that many asteroids were once quite hot. But what mechanism could have raised the temperatures of the asteroids to this extent if the rocky bodies were too small to retain the heat from long-lived radioisotopes?” Ibid., p. 84.
34. “However, up until recently, the general paradigm has been that asteroids are ‘rocky,’ inner-solar system objects and comets are ‘icy’ outer-solar system objects. A number of recent observations and models have significantly muddied the waters (so to speak). While ice is not found at the surface of Ceres [the largest of all asteroids], there is evidence [the low density of Ceres] that a large ice ocean is present in its subsurface ... .” A. S. Rivkin and J. P. Emery, “Water Ice on 24 Themis?” 2008. www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/acm2008/pdf/8099.pdf
35. “We conclude that 65 Cybele is covered by fine anhydrous silicate grains, with a small amount of water-ice and complex organic solids.” Zoe Landsman et al., “Asteroid 65 Cybele: Detection of Small Silicate Grains, Water-Ice and Organics,” Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, 2010, p. 1035.
36. Humberto Campins et al., “Water Ice and Organics on the Surface of the Asteroid 24 Themis,” Nature, Vol. 464, 29 April 2010, pp. 1320–1321.
u Andrew S. Rivkin and Joshua P. Emery, “Detection of Ice and Organics on an Asteroidal Surface,” Nature, Vol. 464, 29 April 2010, pp. 1322–1323.
37. “The surprise is the wide extent of ice on the surface of Themis. The average temperature of asteroids (about 150–200 kelvin) at this distance from the Sun should cause surface ice to sublimate away in a matter of a few years or less, which is inconsistent with the billions of years that Themis is thought to have spent at its current location.” Henry H. Hsieh, “A Frosty Finding,” Nature, Vol. 464, 29 April 2010, p. 1286.
38. “Earth is thought to have formed dry owing to its location inside the ‘snow line,’ which is the distance from the Sun within which it was too warm for water vapour in the nascent Solar System to condense as ice and be swept up into forming planetesimals. Therefore, the water that now fills our oceans and makes life possible must have been delivered to Earth from outside the snow line, perhaps by impacting asteroids and comets.”Hsieh, p. 1287.
39. “Meteorites and probably all meteoroids contain the same materials as those contained in the earth itself.” Franklyn M. Branley, Comets, Meteoroids, and Asteroids: Mavericks of the Solar System (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1974), p. 38.
u “Modern mass spectrometry techniques had revealed that the isotopic compositions of many of the more refractory elements in meteorites, including a primitive class of meteorite called chondrites, are, within error, identical to those found on Earth itself.” Alex N. Halliday, “Inside the Cosmic Blender,” Nature, Vol. 425, 11 September 2003, p. 137.
u “The thousands of meteorites that strike the earth each year are generally believed to be either fragments of a disrupted planet (or planets) that originally resembled the earth, or bits of cosmic “dust” such as originally were gathered together to form the earth.” Gordon A. Macdonald et al., Volcanoes in the Sea, 2nd edition (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), p. 325.
40. W. J. Merline et al., “Discovery of a Moon Orbiting the Asteroid 45 Eugenia,” Nature, Vol. 401, 7 October 1999, pp. 565–568.
41. Some have claimed that mining asteroids could be profitable. [See John S. Lewis, Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1997).]
42. Besides iron meteorites, which were once 1,300°F, chondrules were once about 3,000°F. [See page 376 and Figure 172 on page 326.] Also, the matrix material encasing chondrules shows thermal metamorphism requiring temperatures of at least 750°F. [See O. Richard Norton, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Meteorites (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 92.]
43. “The water content (by weight) of the meteorites is about 11 percent for type 1 chondrites, about 9 percent for type 2, and 2 percent or less for type 3.” Ibid., p. 83.
44. “... every metamorphosed ordinary chondrite has been shocked and subsequently heated, some of them multiple times.” Ibid., p. 86.
45. “First, a single impact cannot raise the global temperature of an asteroid-size body by more than a few degrees. Second, the high surface-to-volume ratios of such bodies promote heat loss, so they cool quickly between successive impacts. Third, a typical impact generates minuscule amounts of melted rock relative to the volume of the impact-generated debris. And last, the low escape velocities of asteroids allow much of the most strongly heated material to escape.” Ibid., p. 86.
46. Tristan Ferroir et al., “Carbon Polymorphism in Shocked Meteorites: Evidence for New Natural Ultrahard Phases,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Vol. 290, 15 February 2010, pp. 150–154.
47. The following prediction was made on page 222 of the 7th edition of In the Beginning.
Ceres, the largest asteroid, will be found to have a very earthlike spin.
It is now known that Ceres rotates once every 9.075 hours and its spin axis points 31° from true north. [See P. C. Thomas et al., p. 224.] The Earth rotates once every 23.93 hours and its spin axis points toward true north. This prediction missed the mark more than I expected.
I selected Ceres because it is the most massive asteroid, having about 1.28% of the mass of the Moon. Therefore, Ceres is least likely to have its spin rate and spin direction altered much by the inevitable impacts within the asteroid belt. Using random guesses for the orientation of Ceres’ spin axis, one could have done better 7% of the time.
48. Almost all astronomers mistakenly visualize moons of asteroids forming from an impact, in which case only a small “chip” could be expelled and, in extremely rare circumstances, placed in orbit around the main asteroid by the gravitational attraction of other debris. For example:
What was particularly surprising was that it [asteroid Hermes] was binary with equal components. Jean-Luc Margot, as quoted by K. Ramsayer, “Out of Hiding,” Science News, Vol. 164, 1 November 2003, p. 277.
u “I’m stunned and astonished [at seeing a double asteroid].” Planetary physicist Jay Melosh, as quoted by Richard A. Kerr, “Double Asteroid Puzzles Astronomers,” ScienceNOW, 21 September 2000.
49. R. P. Binzel and T. C. Van Flandern, “Binary Asteroids: Evidence for Their Existence from Lightcurves,” Science, Vol. 203, 2 March 1979, pp. 903–905.
50. “The most primitive meteorites, the carbonaceous chondrites, are primarily mixtures of many distinct materials that reflect a variety of solar nebular environments as well as planetary processing.” Qingzhu Yin et al., “Diverse Supernova Sources of Pre-Solar Material Inferred from Molybdenum Isotopes in Meteorites,” Nature, Vol. 415, 21 February 2002, p. 881.
Why do they say “a variety of solar nebular environments”? Had the solar system and the molybdenum isotopes found in meteorites come from the debris of one exploded star and millions of years of mixing, these different isotopes should be spread somewhat uniformly in meteorites. They are not. Therefore, many exploding stars are needed. Furthermore, evolutionists must maintain that molybdenum isotopes avoided mixing for millions of years. Every statistician knows that with enough variables (in this case, enough stars exploding in different ways for millions of years), many untestable explanations can be proposed.
51. The smaller moons of the giant planets tend to have irregular orbits. For example, Jupiter has at least 31 irregular moons, the largest, Himalia, is 150 kilometers (93 miles) in diameter. Their orbits generally have high inclinations and eccentricities. Many are retrograde. These characteristics show that they were captured.
To capture an asteroid, much of its orbital energy must be removed (or dissipated), so the planet’s gravity can hold on to the asteroid. Captures rarely result from chance gravitational encounters with other large bodies. An easy way to dissipate an asteroid’s energy is by friction with an atmosphere: the planet’s, the asteroid’s, or both. This is called aerobraking. Based on the hydroplate theory, bloated atmospheres existed for only a few centuries after the flood, so the key evidence for these captures is absent today. However, dozens of other evidences are now available, all pointing to the fountains of the great deep.
52. “At present it is practically impossible for Jupiter to capture satellites permanently because no efficient dissipation mechanism exists.” Scott S. Sheppard and David C. Jewitt, “An Abundant Population of Small Irregular Satellites Around Jupiter,” Nature, Vol. 423, 15 May 2003, p. 261.
53. “... the amount of tidal energy being injected into [Enceladus today] falls short of the energy coming out of Enceladus’ south pole by a factor of five.” Carolyn Porco, “The Restless Worlds of Enceladus,” Scientific American, Vol. 299, December 2008, p. 60.
So why is Enceladus expelling five times more energy than tidal pumping is putting in? Answer: Tidal heating was greatest right after Enceladus was captured by Saturn. Since then tidal heating has diminished, and Enceladus hasn’t had time to cool off. (To understand tidal heating using an example closer to home, see “Tidal Pumping” on page 120 and pages 532–533.)
54. Joanne Baker, “Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright,” Science, Vol. 311, 10 March 2006, p. 1388.
u The plume escaping from Enceladus contains methane (CH4) and a smattering of other organics, such as propane (C3H8), ethane (C2H6), benzene (C6H6), and formaldehyde (CH2O). [See Porco, p. 58.] To understand their likely origin, see pages 110–145.
55. “Finding such active geology on such a tiny moon is a big surprise. ... tiny Enceladus produces a plume large enough to drench the whole Saturn system. The origin of Enceladus’ internal heating is also still a major puzzle.” Baker, p. 1388.
u “Enceladus has been found to be one of the most geologically dynamic objects in the solar system. Among the surprises are a watery, gaseous plume; a south polar hot spot; and a surface marked by deep canyons and thick flows.” Jeffrey S. Kargel, Enceladus: Cosmic Gymnast, Volatile Miniworld,” Science, Vol. 311, 10 March 2006, p. 1389.
u Ten other papers in the 10 March 2006 issue of Science, pages 1391–1428, report on these observations from the Cassini spacecraft.
56. “[German scientists] reported the clear detection of sodium in [Saturn’s] E ring’s ice particles. Six percent of the particles are rich in sodium and contain salts such as sodium chloride and sodium bicarbonate, along with smaller amounts of potassium. Cassini has traced the ice grains to a towering plume rising from Enceladus’s south pole. ... The salts—resembling terrestrial [Earth] sea salt ...” Richard A. Kerr, “Tang Hints of a Watery Interior for Enceladus,” Science, Vol. 323, 23 January 2009, pp. 458–459.
u “... although all the [ice] grains are dominated by water ice, about 6% of them are quite salty, containing roughly 1.5% of a mixture of sodium chloride, sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate.” John Spencer, “Enceladus with a Grain of Salt,” Nature, Vol. 459, 25 June 2009, p. 1067.
u Frank Postberg et al., “Sodium Salts in E-Ring Ice Grains from an Ocean below the Surface of Enceladus,” Nature, Vol. 459, 25 June 2009, p. 1098–1101.
u Frank Postberg et al., “A Salt-Water Reservoir as the Source of a Compositionally Stratified Plume on Enceladus,” Nature, Vol. 474, 30 June 2011, pp. 620–622.
57. Margaret Galland Kivelson, “Does Enceladus Govern Magnetospheric Dynamics at Saturn?” Science, Vol. 311, 10 March 2006, pp. 1391–1392.
58. “The interior of Mars’ moon Phobos could be as much as 30 percent empty space, new observations suggest.” Sid Perkins, “Martian Moon Is Probably Porous,” Science News, Vol. 177, 5 June 2010, p. 11.
59. “The surface of Phobos shows some spectral similarities to those of various asteroid types.” T. P. Andert et al., “Precise Mass Determination and the Nature of Phobos,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 37, 7 May 2010, p. L09202–3.
60. “It’s also unlikely Phobos is made solely of Mars’ crust blasted into space by an impact and then reassembled, because the spectral features of the moon’s rocks don’t match those of the Red Planet.” Perkins, p. 11.
61. Paul Schenk and the Cassini Imaging Team, http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080331.html, 31 March 2008.
62. “Although none of the present models is fully satisfactory, neutral gas emission through water loss by Deimos at a rate of about 1023 molecules per second, combined with a charged dust coma, is favored.” K. Sauer et al., “Deimos: An Obstacle to the Solar Wind,” Science, Vol. 269, 25 August 1995, p. 1075.
u “Such events were detected, for example, at the crossing points of the spacecraft with the orbit of the martian moon Phobos.” Ibid.
63. Craig Covault, “Historic Japanese Asteroid Data Amaze Researchers,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 March 2006, p. 28.
64. Alexander N. Krot, “Bringing Part of an Asteroid Back Home,” Science, Vol. 333, 26 August 2011, pp. 1098–1099.
u Tomoki Nakamura et al., “Itokawa Dust Particles: A Direct Link Between S-Type Asteroids and Ordinary Chondrites,” Science, Vol. 333, 26 August 2011, pp. 1113–1116.
65. An orbit is a perfect circle if its eccentricity is 0.000. Earth’s orbital eccentricity about the Sun is 0.017 and Earth’s moon has an orbital eccentricity of 0.054. Having a moon’s orbit lie in its planet’s equatorial plane also demands a physical explanation for how that happened. Table 17 contains a listing of 40 moons whose orbits lie within two degrees of its planets equatorial plane and are remarkably circular. Therefore, those moons are probably asteroids captured shortly after the flood. [The Astronomical Almanac for the Year 2012 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2011), pp. F2, F4.]
66. For a given atmospheric mass, the lower its density, but thicker the temporary atmosphere, the more its energy and momentum will transfer (time integrated drag) to a potential moon entering that atmosphere. Gas molecules within 360 Mars’ radii of Mars (360 times the radius of Mars) are more gravitationally attracted to Mars than the Sun. During the flood, an ocean of gas molecules were distributed throughout the inner solar system, so Mars’ atmosphere, as a first approximation, was about 360 Mars’ radii thick. Phobos currently orbits 2.77 Mars’ radii from Mars’ center of mass, well inside what was once a thick atmosphere.
67. “Could the MBCs [main belt comets] be comets from the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud that have become trapped in asteroid-like orbits? Published dynamical simulations suggest not, having failed to reproduce the transfer of comets to main-belt orbits.” Henry H. Hsieh and David Jewitt, “A Population of Comets in the Main Asteroid Belt, Science, Vol. 312, 28 April 2006, p. 562.
68. “... there is an excess of Earth-approaching asteroids with diameters less than 50 m, relative to the population inferred from the distribution of larger objects.” D. L. Rabinowitz et al., “Evidence for a Near-Earth Asteroid Belt,” Nature, Vol. 363, 24 June 1993, p. 704.
69. “[Based on the numbers of larger asteroids] ... current theories can’t adequately explain why so many of these small bodies should follow such circular routes.” D. L. Rabinowitz, as quoted by Ron Cowen, “Rocky Relics,” Science News, Vol. 145, 5 February 1994, p. 88.
70. “We find that these asteroids can also undergo solar collisions, through several dynamical routes involving orbital resonances with the giant planets, on timescales of the order of 106 years.” Paolo Farinella et al., “Asteroids Falling into the Sun,” Nature, Vol. 371, 22 September 1994, p. 315.
71. Tony Phillips, “Corkscrew Asteroid,” http://science.nasa.gov/ headlines/y2006/09jun_moonlets.htm.
72. Paul A. Wiegert et al., “An Asteroidal Companion to the Earth,” Nature, Vol. 387, 12 June 1997, pp. 685–686.
u Steven J. Ostro et al., “Radar Detection of Asteroid 2002 AA29,” Icarus, Vol. 166, 2003, pp. 271–275.
73. Ron Cowen, “Hidden Companion,” Science News, Vol. 152, 12 July 1997, p. 29.
74. “Curiously, there are many more [asteroids] in the leading Lagrange point (L4) than in the trailing one (L5).” Bill Arnett, “Asteroids,” www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/asteroids.html.
u Data provided by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics on 17 February 2005. See
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/JupiterTrojans.html.
75. Franck Marchis et al., “A Low Density of 0.8 g cm-3 for the Trojan Binary Asteroid 617 Patroclus,” Nature, Vol. 439, 2 February 2006, pp. 565–567.
u Ker Than, “Asteroids Near Jupiter Are Really Comets,” Science & Space, 1 February 2006, www.cnn.com/2006/ TECH/space/02/01/jupiter.comets/index.html.
76. Birger Schmitz et al., “Sediment-Dispersed Extraterrestrial Chromite Traces a Major Asteroid Disruption Event,” Science, Vol. 300, 9 May 2003, pp. 961-964.
77. Jonathan Gradie and Joseph Veverka, “The Composition of the Trojan Asteroids,” Nature, Vol. 283, 28 February 1980, pp. 840–842.
78. Asphaug, “The Small Planets,” p. 46.
79. Joshua L. Bandfield et al., “Spectroscopic Identification of Carbonate Minerals in the Martian Dust,” Science, Vol. 301, 22 August 2003, pp. 1084–1087.
u “Two Phoenix [Mars Lander] experiments identified calcium carbonates and clays in soil samples scooped up by the crafts robotic arm. On Earth, both minerals are associated with the presence of liquid water.” Ron Cowen, “More Clues to Martian Chemistry,” Science News, Vol. 174, 25 October 2008, p. 13.
80. “[A sample of dirt from an asteroid] could finally explain why the most common type of asteroid looks different—spectroscopically more red—from the most common type of meteorite. Apparently, some sort of ‘space weathering’ is reddening the surface of S-type asteroids.” Richard A. Kerr, “Beaming to Itokawa,” Science, Vol. 309, 16 September 2005, p. 1797. [Yes, most asteroids were “weathered” (rusted) by oxygen gas in the inner solar system soon after the flood. Since then, that gas has dispersed.]
81. Michael E. Zolensky et al., “Asteroidal Water within Fluid Inclusion-Bearing Halite in an H5 Chondrite, Monahans (1998),”Science, Vol. 285, 27 August 1999, pp. 1377–1379.
82. “... crystals of sylvite (KCl) are present within the [meteorite’s] halite crystals, similar to their occurrence in terrestrial evaporites [salt deposits on Earth].” Ibid., p. 1378.
83. George Cooper et al., “Carbonaceous Meteorites As a Source of Sugar-Related Organic Compounds for the Early Earth,” Nature, Vol. 414, 20/27 December 2001, pp. 879–883.
The sugars in these meteorites (Murchison and Murray) were rich in heavy hydrogen, another indicator that they came from the subterranean chambers. [See pages 293 and 302.]
84. James Whitby et al., “Extinct 129I in Halite from a Primitive Meteorite,” Science, Vol. 288, 9 June 2000, p. 1821.
u Ulrich Ott, “Salty Old Rocks,” Science, Vol. 288, 9 June 2000, pp. 1761–1762.
u “An H3–6 chondrite called Zag fell in the Moroccan Sahara desert five months [after the Monahans meteorite] that also had halite crystals with water inclusions.” Norton, p. 91.
u John L. Berkley et al., “Fluorescent Accessory Phases in the Carbonaceous Matrix of Ureilites,” Geophysical Research Letters,” Vol. 5, December 1978, pp. 1075–1078.
u D. J. Barber, “Matrix Phyllosilicates and Associated Minerals in C2M Carbonaceous Chondrites,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 45, June 1981, pp. 945–970.
85. Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Lifecloud (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978), p. 112.
86. Magnus Endress et al., “Early Aqueous Activity on Primitive Meteorite Parent Bodies,” Nature, Vol. 379, 22 February 1996, pp. 701–703.
87. “The exact mechanism of terrestrial amino acid incorporation and retention by meteorites is not known.” Jeffrey L. Bada et al., “A Search for Endogenous Amino Acids in Martian Meteorite ALH84001,” Science, Vol. 279, 16 January 1998, p. 365.
u A. J. T. Jull et al., “Isotopic Evidence for a Terrestrial Source of Organic Compounds Found in Martian Meteorites Allan Hills 84001 and Elephant Moraine 79001,” Science, Vol. 279, 16 January 1998, pp. 366–369.
u M. H. Engel and S. A. Macko, “Isotopic Evidence for Extraterrestrial Non-Racemic Amino Acids in the Murchison Meteorite,” Nature, Vol. 389, 18 September 1997, pp. 265–267.
u Daniel P. Glavin et al., “The Effects of Parent Body Processes on Amino Acids in Carbonaceous Chondrites,” Meteoritics & Planetary Sciences, Vol 45, 15 December 2011, pp. 1948–1972.
88. Richard B. Hoover, “Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI-1 Carbonaceous Meteorites,” The Journal of Cosmology, Vol. 13, March 2011, pp. 1–39.
89. Michael Callahan, “NASA Researchers: DNA Building Blocks Can Be Made in Space,” NASA press release, 8 August 2011 at:
www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/dna-meteorites.html
Various tests on these meteorites ruled out contamination.
90. Ian D. Hutcheon, “Signs of an Early Spring,” Nature, Vol. 379, 22 February 1996, pp. 676–677.
u “The salts we found mimic the salts in Earth’s ocean fairly closely.” Carleton Moore as reported at www.cnn.com on 23 June 2000. For details, see Douglas J. Sawyer et al., “Water Soluble Ions in the Nakhla Martian Meteorite,” Meteoritics & Planetary Science, Vol. 35, July 2000, pp. 743–747.
u “... a variety of minerals in three nakhlite meteorites, including a fragment of the Nakhla meteorite collected within days of its fall, seem to have precipitated from a brine.” Richard A. Kerr, “A Wetter, Younger Mars Emerging,” Science, Vol. 289, 4 August 2000, p. 715.
91. E. Deloule et al., “Deuterium-Rich Water in Meteorites,” Meteoritics, Vol. 30, September 1995, p. 502.
u Ron Cowen, “Martian Leaks: Hints of Present-Day Water,” Science News, Vol. 158, 1 July 2000, p. 15.
u Laurie Leshin Watson et al., “Water on Mars: Clues from Deuterium/Hydrogen and Water Contents of Hydrous Phases in SNC Meteorites,” Science, Vol. 265, 1 July 1994, pp. 86–90.
Although Cowen and Watson believe that these meteorites came from Mars, page 338 explains why this is unlikely.
92. “Some different microbial species, derived from samples of [two] meteorites, have been cultured, cloned and classified by 16S rDNA typing and found to be not essentially different from present day organisms [here on Earth]; they also appear sensitive to growth inhibition by specific antibiotics.” Giuseppe Geraci et al., “Microbes in Rocks and Meteorites,” Rendiconti Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Vol. 12, No. 9, 2001, p. 51.
These DNA studies also rule out contamination, because the bacteria recovered and cultured from the meteorites were sufficiently different from modern strains.
u “Bruno D’Argenio, a geologist working for the Italian National Research Council, and Giuseppi Geraci, professor of molecular biology at Naples University, identified and brought back to life extraterrestrial microorganisms lodged inside [a supposedly] 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite kept at Naples’ mineralogical museum.” Rossella Lorenzi, “Scientists Claim to Revive Alien Bacteria,” Discovery News, www.discovery.com, 10 May 2001.
93. “The foregoing analysis, sketchy as it is, seems to strengthen the grounds of the old speculation—that meteorites are disrupted fragments of a planet of the terrestrial type.” Reginald A. Daly, “Meteorites and an Earth-Model,” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol. 54, 1 March 1943, p. 425.
Because meteorites are so similar to the material inside Earth, many researchers believe that the Earth formed from infalling meteoroids. One should also consider whether the Earth produced meteoroids. Failure to consider both possibilities is the same logical fallacy described in Endnote 3, page 309. Much evidence opposes the former.
94. “Unfortunately, Mars spent its youth in a bad neighborhood near the asteroid belt, and, being small, was especially susceptible [to asteroid impacts and the loss of its atmosphere]. Given the expected size distribution of impactors early in a solar system’s history, the planet should have been stripped of its entire atmosphere in less than 100 million years.” David C. Catling and Kevin J. Zahnle, “The Planetary Air Leak,” Scientific American, Vol. 300, May 2009, p. 42.
“For decades, scientists have pondered why Mars has such a thin atmosphere, but now we wonder: Why does it have any atmosphere left at all?” Ibid., p. 36.
95. Alfred S. McEwen, “Mars in Motion,” Scientific American, Vol. 308, May 2013, p. 60.
96. Christopher D. K. Herd et al., “Origin and Evolution of Prebiotic Organic Matter as Inferred from the Tagish Lake Meteorite,” Science, Vol. 332, 10 June 2011, p. 1304.
97. “The complex suite of organic materials in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites probably originally formed in the interstellar medium and/or the solar protoplanetary disk, but were subsequently modified in the meteorites’ asteroidal parent bodies. The mechanisms of formation and modification are still very poorly understood.” Ibid., p. 1304.
98. Ibid.
99. “This apparently facile transformation is unexpected. It is most likely caused by hydrothermal alteration, as is observed in experiments involving hydrous pyrolysis of reaction with water at elevated temperature and pressure ... .” Ibid., p. 1305.
u “The conditions of hydrothermal alteration inferred by analogy with experiments, especially temperature, are at odds with the [observed] mineralogy and preservation of volatile organic compounds.” Ibid., p. 1307.
100. “Amino acid concentrations and enantiomeric excesses in the Tagish Lake specimens provide further evidence of the influence of parent body aqueous alterations on SOM [soluble organic matter].” Ibid., p. 1306. [Note: enatiomers are mirror images of each other.]
101. “Sub-micrometer scale carbonaceous globules that are often substantially enriched in 15N and D [hydrogen-2] and are thought to have formed in the interstellar medium ... .” Herd et al., p. 1304.
102. Pure liquid water cannot exist for long at temperatures below 32°F or at pressures below 6 mbar (0.0888 psia). This pressure-temperature combination, called the triple point, allows water to exist simultaneously in three states: solid, liquid, and gas. Because the average surface temperature of Mars is colder than -80°F and the atmospheric pressure is 6–10 mbar, liquid water would quickly freeze on Mars.
Actually, the water on Mars is saltwater, which can remain liquid far below water’s so-called freezing point. One must ask, “Where did the liquid water come from that dissolved the salts?” Answer: the subterranean water chamber on the preflood Earth.
u Michael C. Malin et al., “Present-Day Impact Cratering Rate and Contemporary Gully Activity on Mars,” Science, Vol. 314, 8 December 2006, pp. 1573–1577.S. W. Squyres et al., “Ancient Impact and Aqueous Processes at Endeavour Crater, Mars,” Science, Vol. 336, 4 May 2012, pp. 570–575.
103. “The presence of brines [in these groundwater discharges] is the most realistic scenario for Mars, requiring modest quantities of water and no geothermal heat. Furthermore, the brine model exhibits a dependence of discharge on season and favors equator-facing slopes in the middle to high latitudes ...” Alfred S. McEwen et al., “Seasonal Flows on Warm Martian Slopes,” Science, Vol. 333, 5 August 2011, p. 742.
104. “The evidence disturbed the scientists in more than one respect. First, conditions on Mars are such that any water reaching the surface supposedly would not remain liquid for very long but would boil, freeze, or poof into vapor. Second, from the absence of craters, sand dunes, or anything else on top of the [eroded] gullies, they appeared to have formed very recently, possibly as recently as yesterday. ... Most of the evidence was found, strikingly, in some of the coldest places on the surface—on shadowed slopes facing the poles, in clusters scattered around latitudes higher than 30 degrees—rather than at the warmer equatorial latitudes. ... And proposals for other substances that might behave as liquids on the martian surface raised so many other questions that they failed to solve the problem.” Kathy Sawyer, “A Mars Never Dreamed Of,” National Geographic, Vol. 199, February 2001, p. 37.
105. “The surface of Mars is so cold—on average -70° to -100°C [-94°F to -148°F]—that any water within 2 or 3 kilometers of the surface, never mind a meter or two, should be permanently frozen, they noted.” Kerr, “Rethinking Water on Mars and the Origin of Life,” Science, Vol. 292, 6 April 2001, p. 39.
u Many Mars researchers cling to the belief that Mars once had oceans or considerable subsurface water. Why? If Mars once had liquid water, they argue, life might have evolved, because life (as we know it) requires liquid water. Notice their faulty logic.
Instead, if A (life) requires B (water), the presence of B does not demand the presence of A. (Water is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for life.) Ignored is life’s extreme complexity. [Pages 14 – 20 explain why life is so complex that it could not have evolved anywhere in trillions upon trillions of years.] When scientists hold out hope of discovering life on Mars, funding for their research is more likely. Also, an excited media will sensationalize and publicize that research, raising hopes that life may be found on Mars.
Most scientific researchers are in a perpetual hunt for money to fund their work and pay their salaries. If asteroids and comets placed water on Mars recently, few evolutionists would expect that life evolved on Mars. Therefore, a major reason for funding the exploration of Mars disappears.
106. “Carving them, researchers calculated, would take water gushing at 10 million to 1 billion cubic meters per second.” Richard A. Kerr, “An ‘Outrageous Hypothesis’ for Mars: Episodic Oceans,” Science, Vol. 259, 12 February 1993, p. 910.
107. “... near the poles, Mars Odyssey [spacecraft] has shown, as much as 50 percent of the upper meter of soil may be [water] ice.” Arden L. Albee, “The Unearthly Landscapes of Mars,” Scientific American, Vol. 288, June 2003, p. 46.
108. Shane Byrne et al., “Distribution of Mid-Latitude Ground Ice on Mars from New Impact Craters,” Science, Vol. 325, 25 September 2009, pp. 1674–1676.
109. “Such streams typically originate in steep-walled amphitheaters rather than in ever smaller tributaries.” Arden L. Albee, p. 50.
110. “But the limited amount of erosion suggests that it wasn’t the result of a ‘warm and wet’ early Mars.” Richard A. Kerr, “Running Water Eroded a Frigid Early Mars,” Science, Vol. 300, 6 June 2003, p. 1497.
111. “Most of the tens of thousands of gullies identified to date occur on slopes in craters, pits, and other depressions at latitudes > 30°; a few exceptions occur at latitudes of 27° to 30°.” Malin et al., p. 1575.
112. Crater-producing impacts often leave peaks in the center of the crater as the crater floor rebounds from the impact. Seconds later, it grows upward from the inward pressure exerted by the crater walls.
u “On the other hand, Edgett has noted a central peak of an impact crater replete with gullies. Where would the water come from to feed a seep high on a central peak, he wondered.” Kerr, “Rethinking Water” p. 39.
113. On 9 July 2000, after the 30 June 2000 (Volume 288) issue appeared containing pictures of erosion channels on Mars, I wrote the following letter to Science magazine. My letter was titled “Comets Carved the Mars’ Gullies.”
Dear Editor:
Why aren’t comets considered as the source of the water that carved Mars’ erosion features? Impact energy would convert a comet’s ice to liquid water. A typical comet, perhaps 1016 grams and 85% H2O, could easily provide the volume of water estimated in Endnote 35 on page 2335.
Assume that large rocks are in the center of comets (a point I will not try to justify here). Those rocks, decelerating less than the surrounding ice as the comet passes through Mars’ thin atmosphere, strike the ground an instant earlier than the ice and create the crater. The ice, suddenly converted to liquid and splattered onto the crater walls, carves the gullies.
The typical ground temperatures of -70°C (or colder) in the gully regions is fatal to claims that large volumes of liquid water suddenly “seeped” from several hundred meters below Mars’ surface. Straining to overcome this fact by imagining saline solutions, unusually high heat flow on Mars, exotic liquids, lower than expected thermal conductivities, and Mars tipped on its axis is speculation on top of speculation. Why not consider the simple possibilities first?
If the water could not come from below, maybe it came from above.
Science magazine did not print this letter.
Today (2008), after the Deep Impact space mission to comet Tempel 1, the best estimate for the amount of water on a comet is 38% by mass.
114. Richard A. Kerr, “Signs of Ancient Rain May Stretch Mars’ Balmy Past,” Science, Vol. 305, 2 July 2004, p. 26.
u “... episodes of scalding rains followed by flash floods.” Teresa L. Segura et al., “Environmental Effects of Large Impacts on Mars,” Science, Vol. 298, 6 December 2002, p. 1979.
u “... great craters appear to have been filled to overflowing by rain on early Mars.” Richard A. Kerr, “A Smashing Source of Early Martian Water,” Science, Vol. 298, 6 December 2002, p. 1866.
115. Richard A. Kerr, “Minerals Cooked Up in the Laboratory Call Ancient Microfossils into Question,” Science, Vol. 302, 14 November 2003, p. 1134.
116. R. O. Pepin, “Evidence of Martian Origins,” Nature, Vol. 317, 10 October 1985, pp. 473–475.
117. Richard L. S. Taylor and David W. Mittlefehldt, “Missing Martian Meteorites,” Science, Vol. 290, 13 October 2000, pp. 273–275.
118. “... parts of ALH84001 show signs of having melted and reformed ...” Lisa Grossman, “Martian Meteorite’s Age Reduced,” Science News, Vol. 177, 8 May 2010, p. 10.
u Indeed, “one Mars meteorite, Nakhla, shows evidence it was immersed in an ancient brine.” Peter H. Smith, “Digging Mars,” Scientific American, Vol. 305, November 2011, p. 55.
What is the more likely source of the glass nodules, melted rocks, and brine? Supercold Mars or in the superhot subterranean chamber?
119. “... we estimate that the probability of finding on Earth a fragment ejected from Mars is about 10-6 to 10-7.” James N. Head et al., “Martian Meteorite Launch: High-Speed Ejecta from Small Craters,” Science, Vol. 298, 29 November 2002, p. 1753.
120. “... there remains the question of whether we should not be up to our necks in lunar meteorites—that is, what would be the expected relative fluxes of objects from the Moon and Mars and why have we seen so few from the Moon?” Pepin, p. 474.
121. Joseph L. Kirschvink et al., “Paleomagnetic Evidence of a Low-Temperature Origin of Carbonate in the Martian Meteorite ALH84001,” Science, Vol. 275, 14 March 1997, p. 1629.
122. “About 20% of the ejecta are rock vapors; most of the rest is melt.” Segura et al., p. 1977.
123. “... if summer temperatures are warm enough to melt briny ice, then the ice should disappear over time.” McEwen, p. 65.
Yes, frozen ice below Mars’ surface is disappearing. But since so much saltwater was deposited so recently (soon after Earth’s global flood a few thousand years ago), some still remains.