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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The Hydroplate Theory: An Overview
New evidence shows that the earth has experienced a devastating, worldwide flood, whose waters violently burst forth from under the earth’s crust. Standard “textbook” explanations for many of earth’s major features are scientifically flawed. We can now explain, using well-understood phenomena, how this cataclysmic event rapidly formed so many features. These and other mysteries, listed below and briefly described in the next 11 pages, are best explained by an earthshaking event, far more catastrophic than almost anyone has imagined. Later chapters are devoted to topics highlighted below in blue.
- Mid-Oceanic Ridge
- Earth’s Major Components
- Earthquakes
- Magnetic Variations on the Ocean Floor
- Submarine Canyons
- Coal and Oil
- Methane Hydrates
- Ice Age
- Major Mountain Ranges
- Overthrusts
- Volcanoes and Lava
- Geothermal Heat
- Metamorphic Rock
- Plateaus
- The Moho and Black Smokers
- Salt Domes
- Jigsaw Fit of the Continents
- Changing Axis Tilt
Each appears to be a consequence of a sudden, unrepeatable event—a global flood whose waters erupted from interconnected, worldwide subterranean chambers with an energy release exceeding the explosion of 300 trillion hydrogen bombs.1 The hydroplate theory, explained later in this chapter, will resolve all these mysteries.
But first, what is a hydroplate? Before the global flood, considerable water was under the earth’s crust. Pressure increases in this subterranean water ruptured that crust, breaking it into plates. The escaping water flooded the earth. Because hydro means water, those crustal plates will be called hydroplates. Where they broke, how they moved, and hundreds of other details and evidence—all consistent with the laws of physics—constitute the hydroplate theory and explain to a great extent why the earth looks as it does.