In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - Details Relating to Brown’s Proposal (Hydroplate Theory)

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[ The Fountains of the Great Deep > The Origin of the Grand Canyon > Details Relating to Brown’s Proposal (Hydroplate Theory) ]

Details Relating to Brown’s Proposal (Hydroplate Theory)

1. Layering, Fossils. Pages 170–181 explain how the flood produced sharp, parallel, generally uniform sedimentary layers, each with different mineral and fossil contents. If the Canyon’s strata formed over millions of years, irregular surface erosion by wind and water would now be seen between all these layers.

Figure 108 on page 188 accurately shows how relatively cut up the top layer (Kaibab Limestone) is, relative to all the smooth, parallel, generally softer layers below. Despite the hardness of Kaibab Limestone, its exposure to erosive elements has been much greater than that of the layers below, which some people mistakenly believe were each top layers for millions of years.

2. Limestone. As pages 224–229 explain, way too much limestone exists on earth to have been produced by processes and chemistry at the earth’s surface. Almost all limestone came from the subterranean water chamber (including the relatively pure Hualapai Limestone) and was deposited during the flood, before the Grand Canyon and Colorado River existed.

3. Why Here? Forces, Energy, and Mechanisms. At the end of the flood, crashing hydroplates lifted mountains and thickened continents. As the flood waters drained off these continents, basins were left full of water. Therefore, lakes were abundant immediately after the flood. Later, many lakes breached their banks and carved relatively small canyons. Massive mountain ranges settled into the upper mantle, hydraulically lifting adjacent regions, forming plateaus.

Atop the Colorado Plateau were two very large lakes: Grand Lake and Hopi Lake. They had great potential energy relative to the base of the plateau and, therefore, great potential erosive power. (The higher the water, the greater its potential energy.) That energy was “cashed in” as Grand and Hopi Lakes breached and discharged down a near (western) edge of the mile-high Colorado Plateau. Also released were large volumes of high-pressure subsurface water surrounding Grand and Hopi Lakes and the freshly cut canyons. Because of the high postflood water table, the volume of subsurface water released into the Grand Canyon may have exceeded the water in Grand and Hopi Lakes combined. The resulting 216-mile “gully” extending down through the western edge of the Colorado Plateau is the Grand Canyon.

Table 5. Evidence vs. Proposals for the Origin of the Grand Canyon
		Proposals
		Brown page 191 (Hydroplate) 1989		Powell page 190 1869		Gilbert page 190 1875		Emmons page 190 1897		Blackwelder page 190 1934		McKee page 190 1964		Hunt page 190 1976		Lucchitta page 190 1978		Meek/ Douglass 2000
Evidence to Be Explained	Layering		1		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Limestone		2		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Why Here?		3		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Why So Relatively Recent?		4		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Forces, Energy, and Mechanisms		3		19		27		36		44		53		62		71		80
	Marble Canyon		5		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Side Canyons		6		18		26		35		43		52		61		70		79
	Barbed Canyons		6		18		26		35		43		52		61		70		79
	Distant Cavern Connection		6		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Slot Canyons		7		18		26		35		43		52		61		70		79
	Missing Mesozoic Rock		8		21		30		37		45		56		63		73		82
	Perpendicular Faults		9		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Arching		9		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Inner Gorge		9		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Missing River		10		20		28		38				54		64		74
	Missing Talus		11		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Kaibab Plateau		11				29						55				72		81
	Unusual Erosion		12		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Nankoweap Canyon		12		17		25		34		42		51		60		69		78
	Missing Dirt		13		20		28		38						64		74
	Fossils		1		22		31		39		46		57		65		75		83
	Tipped Layers below Unconformity		14		23		32		40		47		58		66		76		84
	Time or Intensity?		15		24		33		41		48		59		67		77		85
	Other		16								49–50				68				86–87



Key:		The proposal explains this item.
		The proposal has moderate problems with this item.
		The proposal has serious problems with this item.
Numbers in this table refer to amplifying information on pages 200–208.

Although lakes at high altitudes experience high evaporation, the newly formed Rocky Mountains intercepted the moist eastward-moving winds generated by the warm Pacific Ocean, which was heated by extensive flood basalts for centuries after the flood. [See pages 144–167.] This produced considerable precipitation and drainage west of the Rockies, feeding lakes on the western slopes.

Grand Lake’s breaching triggered the breaching of Hopi Lake. (Spillage from other lakes higher in the Rocky Mountains or other topographic changes produced by the rising Colorado Plateau, including earthquakes and volcanic activity, probably contributed to the final breaching of Grand Lake.) Surging water from both giant lakes quickly swept off the Mesozoic sediments from at least 10,000 square miles south and west of the funnel.

4. Why So “Recently”? Did the Grand Canyon form during the last one-thousandth of the earth’s history? Only if one accepts radiometric dating and assumes that the Colorado River carved the canyon. Both of these ideas are problematic for other reasons already explained in this book. [See especially “The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity” on pages 323–363.] Besides, so many earlier rivers, having more time to flow, should have carved many deeper and longer “Grand Canyons.” Actually, the Grand Canyon was carved several centuries after the flood.

5. Marble Canyon. Marble Canyon began as a tension fracture. Therefore, Marble Canyon has narrow vertical walls and follows a fairly straight path. (The Nankoweap Canyon region, at the southwestern end of Marble Canyon, is an exception that is explained in item 12 below.) Marble Canyon ends where Hopi Lake breached—at “Hopi Falls”—where today the Little Colorado River intersects the Colorado River. Notice in Figure 107 on page 187 that the torrent flowing away from “Hopi Falls” eroded and smoothed out the region south of the yellow perimeter.

All the thin strata in the walls of Marble Canyon and in Echo and Vermilion Cliffs rise to the south, because so much mass was rapidly removed from the south—the region occupied by the Grand Canyon. These strata also rise toward Marble Canyon, because the spillage from Grand Lake stripped off so much mass above what is now Marble Canyon. Also, Marble Canyon is a deep vertical crack and, thus, a line of bending weakness and uplift. Had these 2,800⁺ (2,000⁺ + 800) cubic miles of debris been removed over millions of years, rather than in weeks, the slow buildup of stresses would have been distributed over a wider area, resulting in less dramatically tipped layers.

6. Side Canyons, Barbed Canyons, Distant Cavern Connection. Subsurface water—released by faulting and the rapid downcutting of Marble Canyon and Grand Canyon far below the high postflood water table—carved dozens of large side canyons. They, in turn, released groundwater on their flanks. Some subsurface drainage flowed counter to today’s flow of the Colorado River, thereby carving barbed canyons.

PREDICTION 13: After the flood, hydraulic pressure 10 miles below the earth’s surface produced thousands of vertical fractures and lifted the Colorado Plateau. Drainage of ground water through those cracks eroded slot canyons. Therefore, cracks up to 10 miles deep should be found below slot canyons. Slot canyons are slowly filling up with sediments deposited by wind, intermittent streams, and flash floods.

7. Slot Canyons. See Figure 125.

Figure 125: Slot Canyons. Slot canyons have rugged, vertical sandstone walls and can be hundreds of feet deep but only a few feet wide. They are usually found on the Colorado Plateau, along tributaries that feed into the Colorado River. The above pictures (in true color) were taken in Antelope Canyon, 3 miles east of Glen Canyon Dam. Conventional thinking says that slot canyons were carved by streams or flash floods eroding down from the surface. However, that would produce V-shaped canyons with relatively smooth walls, not extremely narrow, vertical canyons with jagged walls (as seen, for example, at the black arrow). Also, why would slot canyons be cut primarily through warped sandstone layers on the Colorado Plateau? Why are slot canyons not more uniformly scattered worldwide?

“Plateau Uplift” on page 194 explains why hydraulic uplifting of the Colorado Plateau warped horizontal layers and produced vertical fractures through those sedimentary layers. After Grand Lake breached, thin, vertical fractures that had penetrated wet layers of porous sand (aquifers) would have become drainage channels if drainage could occur down to the Colorado River. Drainage along those fractures eroded slot canyons and exposed warped, curved layers that were later cemented into sandstone by the silica-rich subsurface water. These vertical fractures produced slot canyons and streams; streams did not produce slot canyons. If all this happened millions of years ago, slot canyons would be much wider and shallower.

8. Missing Mesozoic Rock. Sheet flow from the sudden breaching of Grand and Hopi Lakes could easily sweep 99% of the Mesozoic sediments (at least 1,000 feet thick) off the hard, flat Kaibab Limestone. On the Colorado Plateau, these sediments are generally missing southwest of Grand Lake’s basin and west of Hopi Lake’s basin, but almost nowhere else. Millions of years of rainfall and meandering rivers would not do the job and would leave meandering erosion patterns.

9. Perpendicular Faults, Arching, Inner Gorge. With so much material removed by the eroding waters of Grand and Hopi Lakes and by escaping subsurface water, the basement rock, directly below all the flood-deposited sedimentary layers, arched upward and cracked. This opened the deep, steep, narrow, and rough inner gorge of the Grand Canyon, allowing even more erosion and removal of sediments above the crack. Hydraulic pressure, driven by the sinking Rocky Mountains, uplifted deep blocks, whose tops were then eroded by the violent water, thereby continuing the uplift. (These blocks were fractured along the vertical planes of greatest weakness—perpendicular to the 216-mile long axis of the canyon.)

PREDICTION 14: The inner gorge is a tension crack. Acoustical and/or seismic instruments should be able to detect this deep V-shaped crack far below the bed of the Colorado River.

The Colorado River seldom turns and follows these faults, because the violent, draining waters had already carved most of its channel down off the western rim of the Colorado Plateau before the faults formed.

10. Missing River. There is no evidence for a precanyon Colorado River, because the river never existed before the Grand Canyon was excavated. The river is a consequence of that excavation, not its cause.

11. Missing Talus, Kaibab Plateau. The torrent of water spilling southward from Grand Lake swept away much of the talus that would otherwise be at the base of Echo and Vermilion Cliffs. That torrent undercut Hopi Lake’s northwestern boundary, releasing a wide, powerful waterfall. (It was roughly thirteen times higher than Niagara Falls and, for a few weeks, discharged more than a hundred times more water each second than Niagara Falls.) The resulting deep excavation caused the layers below to buckle upward. (Figures 61 and 64 on pages 121 and 123 explain this well-understood engineering phenomenon—the buckling of a plate on an elastic foundation.) The violent flow of water to the west eroded a path through the rising land that would become the Kaibab Plateau. John Wesley Powell correctly explained this process, although he had no idea that the Kaibab Plateau rose rapidly and contained so much water. Nor did he know about Hopi Lake or the forces, energy, and mechanisms involved. Thus, he invoked the standard “explanation”—millions of years.

12. Unusual Erosion, Nankoweap Canyon. Had the water that carved Nankoweap Canyon and its side canyons originated from one locale, such as a lake, multidirectional erosion would not have occurred. Had rainfall, over long periods of time, provided the water that carved these canyons, the erosion would not have been concentrated in the relatively small region of unusual erosion. [See Figure 107 on page 187.] However, subsurface water inside the rapidly rising Kaibab Plateau would drain from many directions, but Marble Canyon would act as a gutter, preventing spillage onto the lower terrain east of the Colorado River.

The vast volume of subsurface water in the Kaibab Plateau could excavate Nankoweap Canyon and its tributaries, support humans and their agriculture for decades, carve a channel through thick mud deposits (thereby exposing rounded boulders 200 feet high along Nankoweap Creek), deposit slumps, landslides, and rockfalls on top of what later became Nankoweap Mesa, and create the largest delta along the Grand Canyon portion of the Colorado River. (Because all of this happened only a few thousand years ago, the Colorado River has not yet removed Nankoweap Delta.) Humans left Nankoweap Canyon when their water source could no longer support them.

13. Missing Dirt. At least 2,000 cubic miles of Mesozoic sediments were stripped off the layers surrounding and above what is now the Grand Canyon, and then 800 cubic miles of sediments were removed from inside the Grand Canyon. All that dirt was spread downstream from the Grand Canyon, primarily into the northernmost 220 miles of the Gulf of California.

A smaller fraction of those downstream sediments are exposed along the Colorado River as it flows south toward the Gulf of California. Rounded boulders mixed with sand and clay are often seen where today’s side streams have cut channels 100–200 feet deep. Rounded boulders show that they were tumbled and transported by high-velocity water. Unsorted mixtures of sand, clay, and boulders show that the turbulent, muddy water suddenly slowed, depositing the unsorted mixture. [See Figures 126 and 127.]

Figure 126: High-Velocity Flow. After the Colorado River exits the Grand Canyon, it turns sharply south and travels 310 miles to the Gulf of California. Much of the land east and west of the river resembles a wide, flat floodplain, but the volume of sediments there falls far short of the 2,800 cubic miles excavated to form the Grand Canyon. Here, south of Bullhead City, Arizona, 1 mile east of the Colorado River and 100 feet above it, are well-rounded boulders whose transport required extremely high-velocity water. But where is all the dirt?

Figure 127: Here’s the Dirt. It’s right where we would expect it, if we understood the Grand Canyon’s rapid and violent formation. Hidden beneath the flat floor of the Gulf of California’s Northern Basin are at least 6,000 cubic miles of sediments. That basin, bounded on the south by the largest islands in the Gulf, has an area of 15,000 square miles (220 miles long and 60–100 miles wide). Sediment depths are up to 1.2 miles thick!⁷³ About half the basin’s sediments were rapidly transported from the Grand Canyon (on the figure’s northern horizon), along the path now occupied by the Colorado River.

Why is the Northern Basin’s 15,000-square-mile floor so flat? Within weeks, a few thousand cubic miles of sediments were swept into the basin. The larger particles settled out first, near today’s shoreline. Finer particles settled out last, but until they did, the muddy water, because it was denser, flowed to the basin’s deeper regions where the mud eventually settled—flattening the seafloor.

At the end of the global flood, draining surface water swept sediments to lower elevations. For years afterward, swollen rivers, flowing down to the lowered sea level, cut channels and small canyons into these deposits. Over the next few centuries, sea level rose and covered some of these channels; today, they are called submarine canyons. [For details and evidence, see the Hydroplate Overview chapter that begins on page 185.] The Gulf of California has many submarine canyons, but all are in the southern end of the Gulf.⁷⁴ Why? The submarine canyons that were cut into the Northern Basin were later buried by sediments that were swept into that basin as the Grand Canyon formed, centuries after the flood.

Had the relatively shallow Colorado River—which today flows slowly in its 310-mile southward journey—deposited these sediments over millions of years, we would see a river delta hundreds of miles long rising slightly out of the water. Waves and tides would have formed many fan-shaped channels. The delta that has built up since the Grand Canyon formed is the tiny dot shown by the arrow at the extreme northern end of the Gulf.

14. Tipped Layers below the Great Unconformity. This tipping is explained on pages 176–177, beginning with the section entitled “Liquefaction During the Compression Event.”

15. Time or Intensity? Intensity: The sudden release of the mile-high water in Grand and Hopi Lakes quickly produced a tremendous amount of erosion, beginning with the Great Denudation. Also, the volume of subsurface water released into the Grand Canyon might have exceeded that of all the lake water. The deeper the erosion, the more subsurface water was released.

16. Other. The Colorado River and its tributaries flow through and cut the rims of many basins upstream from the Grand Canyon. This strongly suggests that lakes breached after the flood waters drained. The breaching of one lake would suddenly add water to a lower lake, causing it to breach. Many lakes probably breached sequentially, like falling dominoes. Two of the Colorado Plateau’s last big lakes to breach were Grand and Hopi Lakes.