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 material.
Why Did the Flood Water Drain So Slowly?
After the Ark landed on the mountains of Ararat, 74 days passed before the tops of surrounding mountains were visible (Genesis 8:3–5). Shouldn’t most of the flood water have quickly drained off the high, thickened continents and into the new, deep ocean basins? And why did all passengers (except a few birds) stay on the Ark for 222 days after the Ark landed? Surely, the humans on board wanted to leave that noisy, smelly boat, breathe fresh air, stretch, stand on solid ground, cease caring for the animals, and explore the new earth.
First of all, the earth was still a hostile place. Secondly, powerful forces were being slowly unleashed deep inside the earth. Those forces were producing elevation changes at the earth’s surface. Let’s briefly review pages 110–180.
Review. During the flood phase, the escaping subterranean water widened the rupture, so the chamber floor directly below steadily bulged upward—similar to that shown in Figures 63 and 65 on pages 126 and 127. This upward arching increased stresses and melting below that bulging floor. Deep fractures resulted in slippage, friction, instantaneous melting (lubrication) along vertical faults, which produced even greater slippage. This, in turn, triggered deeper stresses, plastic deformations, melting, and uplift.
As a result, the hydroplates eventually began sliding downhill, away from the rising bulge that would become the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This removal of weight provided orders of magnitude more lift and slippage—and, near the center of the earth, melting. Within hours, the entire Atlantic floor was rapidly rising; that, in turn, pulled down the Pacific plate and shifted surface water toward the Pacific side of the earth. The subsiding Pacific plate and the rising Atlantic floor steepened the slopes on which the hydroplates slid away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Gravitational settling of dense magma deep in the earth released more heat than did frictional sliding along faults. [See Endnote 28 on page 173, and "Melting the Inner Earth" on pages 513–516.] The more the melting, the greater the heat released by gravitational settling, so even more melting occurred. Melting near the center of the earth began, forming the earth’s liquid outer core.
Drainage. For years after the flood, the melting in the core made the earth’s terrain increasingly irregular and generally caused the flood waters to slowly drain. First, when rock below the crossover depth melts, its volume decreases. [See “Magma Production and Movement” on page 151.] Therefore, as the inner-earth shrank, the solid mantle and crust were slowly compressed and deformed. As a result, elevations at the earth’s surface became increasingly varied in the years after the flood—much like the wrinkling skin of a drying apple.
Second, imagine a unique water bed. Rather than its water being a liquid, it is a uniform layer of ice. Resting on the bed are two types of blocks: wood (representing continents) and bricks (representing the denser magma from the upper mantle that had spilled onto the new Pacific basin in the months and years after the flood). As the ice (representing the deep inner earth) melts, the bricks slowly settle downward, and the wood rises. Increasingly, the denser ocean basins (density ~3.0 gm/cm3) and the mantle below them sank into this growing liquid foundation—the outer core. As they did, the lighter crust (density ~2.7 gm/cm3) and the mantle below the crust rose in compensation. This also allowed the flood waters to drain into the new, deepening ocean basins. So it took a few months before the tops of mountains surrounding the Ark could be seen—just as Genesis 8:3–5 states.
Summary and Perspective. On the 150th day of the flood, the accelerating hydroplates, sliding away from the rising Mid-Atlantic Ridge on a layer of water, crashed, crushed, and buckled. Seashells were then on every major mountain range on earth. [See “Seashells on Mountaintops” on page 49.] Within hours, the Ark landed on the thickened crust. [See page 426.] For a few years, internal melting enlarged earth’s liquid outer core, so elevations on earth became more irregular: denser ocean basins slowly sank, lifting the lighter continents, so most of the flood waters drained into those new ocean basins. As ocean basins sank below today’s levels, submarine canyons were carved, and tablemounts formed. [See "The Origin of Tablemounts" on page 163.]
Also, immediately after the flood, the new continents were not at their equilibrium levels relative to the mantle. During the compression event, the hydroplates had been crushed, buckled, and thickened, so each hydroplate’s mass was concentrated on a smaller base. [See Figure 50 on page 113.] Therefore, continents settled very slowly into the solid, but deformable, mantle. In compensation, the ocean basins gradually rose to almost today’s levels. Also, magma spilling up onto the Pacific floor raised sea level about 4,500 feet. Pages 422–432 explain why all but the last several hundred feet of the rise took a few centuries. While sea levels were lower, animals and humans could migrate between the temporarily connected continents.
Years were required to approach equilibrium levels in the newly formed liquid outer core, but centuries-to-millennia were needed for the continents to sink into the solid mantle. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and very slow shifts of blocks of crust toward the Pacific still occur [Figure 91 on page 165], demonstrating that perfect equilibrium has not been reached. Consequences of the flood, at times catastrophic, are still with us.