This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, 8th Edition (2008), by Dr. Walt Brown. It is designed to be read online.
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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. A brief review of pages 108–168 is needed.
Review. During the flood phase, the escaping subterranean water widened the rupture, so the chamber floor directly below steadily bulged upward—similar to what is shown in the quarry sketch on page 124. This upward arching increased shearing stresses far below that bulging floor. Deep fractures resulted in slippage, friction, and instantaneous melting along vertical faults. This, in turn, triggered deeper fractures and greater 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 on the opposite 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 within the melted rock (magma) deep in the earth released more heat than did frictional sliding along faults. [See “Melting the Inner Earth” on pages 446–449.] The more the melting, the greater the heat released by gravitational settling, so even more melting occurred. Runaway melting near the center of the earth began, and the earth’s liquid outer core started to form.
Drainage. For years after the flood, this melting of the inner earth continued and the liquid outer core grew. For two reasons, this made the earth’s terrain increasingly irregular and allowed the flood waters to slowly drain. First, when rock below the crossover depth melts, its volume decreases. [See “Magma Production and Movement” on page 149.] Therefore, as the inner-earth shrank, the solid mantle and crust were slowly compressed and crushed. 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. On top of the bed are two types of areas; in one are blocks of wood (representing continents) and in the other are bricks (representing 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 into the mattress, 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 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 page 47.] Within hours, the Ark landed on the thickened crust. [See page 368.] For a few years, internal melting enlarged earth’s liquid outer core, so elevations on earth became more irregular, the lighter continents rose, the denser ocean basins slowly sank, and 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 155.]
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 49 on page 112.] 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. Pages 370–372 explain why all but the last several hundred feet of the rise took a few centuries. While sea levels were lower, animals and humans migrated between the temporarily interconnected 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 86 on page 157], demonstrating that perfect equilibrium has not been reached. Consequences of the flood, at times catastrophic, are still with us.