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.
Copyright © 1995–2008, Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
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A Few of the Mysteries
The Grand Canyon and Other Canyons. See Figure 42 and pages 187–219.
Mid-Oceanic Ridge. One of our planet’s most dramatic features, the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, was discovered in the 1950s. It wraps around the earth and is the world’s longest mountain range—46,000 miles. [See Figure 43 on page 109.] Unlike most mountains, it is composed of a type of rock called basalt. Because most of the ridge lies on the ocean floor, relatively few people know it exists. How did it get there? Why is it primarily on the ocean floor? Why does it intersect itself in a Y-shaped junction in the Indian Ocean? The portion in the Atlantic Ocean is called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Is it just a coincidence that it splits the Atlantic from north to south and is generally perpendicular to and bisected by the equator? If Europe, Africa, and the Americas were once connected, how did they break apart?
Figure 43: World Ocean Floor. Notice the characteristic margins of each continent. Seaward from each ocean beach is a shallow, gradually sloping continental shelf, then a relatively steep drop, called the continental slope. This strange pattern is worldwide. Why? For a better look at the typical shape of this margin, see Figure 46 on page 109. Also notice the different characteristics of (1) the continents and ocean basins, and (2) the Atlantic and Pacific basins. Ninety East Ridge is so named because it lies almost exactly along 90šE longitude. Its straight, 3,000-mile length, and curious north-south orientation aimed at the Himalayas are important clues to past events on earth. (Note: As one moves toward polar regions on this type of map projection, distances are stretched and do not reflect true distances.)
Figure 44: “Unlevel” Sea Level. An amazing technological development reveals details on ocean floors. The U.S. Navy’s SEASAT satellite measured with a radar altimeter the satellite’s distance above the ocean surface with an accuracy of several inches! “Sea level” is far from level. Instead, the ocean surface “humps up” over mountains on the ocean floor and is depressed over trenches. The gravitational attraction of the Hawaiian Islands, for example, pulls the surrounding water toward it. This raises sea level there about 80 feet higher than it would be otherwise. The satellite’s data have been color coded to make this spectacular “picture” of the ocean surface. Darker areas show depressions in sea level. Notice that the ocean surface is depressed over long scars, called fracture zones, running generally perpendicular to the Mid-Oceanic Ridge. Which theory explains this—the plate tectonic theory or the hydroplate theory? Also consider the nearly intersecting fracture zones in the South Pacific. Which theory explains them?
Plate tectonics, currently the most popular theory in earth science, offers unsatisfactory answers to these and other questions. According to this theory, earth’s crust is composed of many plates,2 each 30–60 miles thick. They move relative to each other, about an inch per year—at the rate a fingernail grows. Continents and oceans ride on top of these plates. Sometimes a continent, such as North America, is on more than one plate. For example, different parts of North America, separated by the San Andreas Fault running up through western California, are sliding past each other. Supposedly, material deep inside the earth is rising toward the crest of the entire Mid-Oceanic Ridge. Once it reaches the crest, it moves laterally away from the ridge. This claimed motion is similar to that of a conveyor belt rising from under a floor and then moving horizontally along the floor. However, many little-known problems, discussed below, accompany plate tectonics.
Cutting across the Mid-Oceanic Ridge at almost right angles are hundreds of long cracks, called fracture zones. Whenever the axis of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge is offset, it is always along a fracture zone. [See Figure 44 on page 109.] Why? According to plate tectonics, plates move parallel to fracture zones. But fracture zones are not always parallel. Sometimes they are many degrees “out of parallel.”3 How then can solid plates be bounded by and move in the direction of these fracture zones? Can a train move on tracks that aren’t parallel? Notice the white arrows in Figure 44 showing nearly intersecting fracture zones.
In at least eight places on the Atlantic and Pacific floors, segments of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge overlap for about 10 miles. These are called overlapping spreading centers.4 [See Figure 45.] If plates are moving away from the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, then the distance between overlapping segments must be increasing. However, overlapping regions are always near each other.
Two of the most perplexing questions in the earth sciences today are barely verbalized in classrooms and textbooks: “What force moves plates over the globe? What is the mechanism and energy source?” The hydroplate theory gives a surprisingly simple answer. It involves gravity, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and water—lots of it.
Figure 45: Overlapping Spreading Centers. Bold lines represent the axes of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge. According to plate tectonics, the ocean floor is moving in the direction of the hollow arrows—away from the Mid-Oceanic Ridge. If so, in which direction is point B moving? If B is stationary, and A is moving east, why is there no fault between them? What could possibly be happening at C and D if the plate tectonic theory is correct?
Earth’s Major Components. What accounts for earth’s crust, mantle, and core (inner and outer) and earth’s oceans and continents and their boundaries (shelves and slopes)? Why are all continental shelves and slopes so similar? [See Figures 43 and 46 and on page 149.]
Figure 46: Continental Margin. The typical shape of ocean-continent boundaries is shown here. The actual continental boundary is generally considered to be halfway down the continental slope. Compare this figure with Figure 43 on page 109, and notice that Asia and North America would become connected by a wide land bridge if sea level were lowered about 300 feet. Australia and Asia would be almost connected. Sediments and sedimentary rock are shown in yellow.
Ocean Trenches. Ocean trenches are long, narrow depressions on the ocean floor, some of which are several times deeper than the Grand Canyon. They can be seen in the western Pacific in Figures 43, 44, and 80. Plate tectonics claims that a trench forms when a plate dives down into the mantle at a 35°–60° angle below the horizontal, a process advocates call subduction. How this dive begins is never explained. This would be similar to pushing a 30-mile-thick shovel into the ground. What pushes a continental-size plate down at such a steep angle? If subduction occurs, why do instruments detect almost no distortion of the horizontal sedimentary layers in trenches? Worse yet, if any plate reached a depth of only several miles, the pressure would be so great that frictional forces would exceed the rock’s strength. Therefore, large-scale sliding of a slab by pushing, pulling, or dragging should be impossible. [See page 438.] This is similar to trying to push our 30-mile-thick shovel, now squeezed in the jaws of a vise, down farther. It may break, buckle, deform, or crush, but it will not slip.
Earthquakes. A major goal of earthquake research is to predict earthquakes. Normally, the best way to predict something is to understand how it works. However, earthquakes are poorly understood. Consequently, much effort is spent trying to learn what precedes an earthquake. Earthquakes are frequently preceded by an abrupt change in water depth in wells, swelling of the ground, and sudden irregularity in local geyser eruptions.5
Plate tectonic theory claims that earthquakes occur when plates rub against each other, temporarily lock, and then jerk loose. If so, why are some powerful earthquakes far from plate boundaries?6 Why do local earthquakes sometimes occur when water is forced into the ground after large water reservoirs are built and filled?7
Shallow earthquakes sometimes displace the ground horizontally along a fault, as occurred along the San Andreas Fault during the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Western California slid northward relative to the rest of North America. Because the San Andreas Fault has several prominent bends, this movement could not have been going on for millions of years, as advocates of plate tectonics claim. Just as two interlocking pieces of a jigsaw puzzle cannot slip very far relative to each other, neither can both sides of a curved fault. Furthermore, if slippage has occurred along the San Andreas Fault for millions of years, friction should have greatly heated the sliding surfaces. Drilling into the fault has not detected that heat.8 Evidently, movement has not occurred for millions of years and/or the walls of the fault were lubricated.
Deep earthquakes occur at depths of 250–400 miles where pressures are so great that cracks should not be able to open. Also, temperatures should be so uniformly high that rock would not break, but would deform (like putty). So, any concentrated stress that might trigger a deep earthquake should deform rocks instead, slowly and quietly. How then do deep earthquakes occur?9
Magnetic Variations on the Ocean Floor. At a few places along the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, magnetic patterns on one side of the ridge are almost a mirror image of those on the other side. The plate tectonic theory gained wide acceptance in the 1960s when this surprising discovery was misinterpreted.
Some people proposed that these variations were caused by periodic reversals of the earth’s magnetic poles, although there is no theoretical understanding of how that could happen. Supposedly, over millions of years, molten material rises at the ridge, solidifies, and then divides and moves in opposite directions away from the ridge. As the magma solidifies, its magnetic orientation locks in the orientation of the earth’s magnetic field at the time. Thus, a record of past “flips” of earth’s magnetic field is preserved in the rocks at different distances from the ridge.
Figure 47: Magnetic Anomalies. Notice the fluctuations in magnetic intensity as one moves across the Mid-Oceanic Ridge. The so-called reversals are simply regions of lower magnetic intensity. Why should the intensity usually be greatest along the crest of the ridge?
That explanation is wrong, as detailed magnetic maps clearly show. There are no magnetic reversals on the ocean floor, and no compass would reverse direction if brought near an alleged reversed band. However, as one moves across the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, magnetic intensities fluctuate, as shown in Figure 47. Someone merely drew a line through these fluctuations and labeled everything below this average intensity as a “reversal.” The false but widespread impression exists that these slight deviations below the average represent magnetic fields that reversed millions of years ago. Calling these fluctuations reversals causes one to completely miss a more likely explanation.
Although textbooks show these so-called “reversals” as smooth bands paralleling the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, there is nothing smooth about them. Some “bands” are even perpendicular to the ridge axis—the opposite of what plate tectonics predicts. Also, the perpendicular “bands” correspond to fracture zones.10 The hydroplate theory offers an explanation for these magnetic anomalies.
On the continents, rapid but limited changes in earth’s magnetic field have occurred. Lava cools at known rates, from the outside of the flow toward its center. Magnetic particles floating in lava align themselves with the earth’s magnetic field. When the lava cools and solidifies, that orientation becomes fixed. Knowing this cooling rate and measuring the changing direction of the magnetic fields within several solidified lava flows, we can see that at one time the orientation of the earth’s magnetic field changed rapidly—by up to 6 degrees per day for several days.11
Submarine Canyons. The ocean floor has hundreds of canyons, some that exceed the Grand Canyon in both length and depth. One submarine canyon is ten times longer (2,300 miles), so long it would stretch nearly across the United States.12 Many of these V-shaped canyons are extensions of major rivers. Examples include the Amazon Canyon, Hudson Canyon, Ganges Canyon, Congo Canyon, and Indus Canyon. How were canyons gouged out, sometimes 15,000 feet below sea level? Did ancient rivers (or major drainage paths) cut these canyons when the ocean floor was higher or sea level was lower? If so, why did those elevations change? Swift rivers supposedly cut most continental canyons. However, currents measured in submarine canyons are too slow, generally less than one mile per hour. Frequently, the flow is in the wrong direction. Submarine landslides that produce dense, muddy currents sometimes occur. However, they would not form the long, tributary patterns that characterize river systems and submarine canyons. Furthermore, experiments with thick, muddy water in submarine canyons have not demonstrated any canyon-cutting ability.
Coal and Oil Formations. Large fossilized trees are found near the North and South Poles.13 In Antarctica, some fossilized trees are 24 feet long and 2 feet thick! Nearby are 30 layers of anthracite (or high-grade) coal, each 3–4 feet thick.14 Buried redwood forests, with trees more than 100 feet long and root structures showing that they grew in place, are found on Canadian islands well inside the Arctic Circle.15 Much oil is also found inside the Arctic Circle. Was it once warm enough for trees to grow in Antarctica or inside the Arctic Circle? If so, how could so much vegetation grow where it is nighttime 6 months of the year? Were these cold lands once at temperate latitudes? Not according to plate tectonics, which places both regions near their present latitudes when their now-fossilized forests were growing.16
Methane Hydrates. Some bacteria live without oxygen. They feed on organic matter and produce methane gas, a combustible fuel. Since 1970, methane has been discovered in ice lying on, or hundreds of feet below, the deep ocean floor off coastlines. The ice molecules form tiny cagelike structures encasing one or more methane molecules. The total energy value of this methane-ice combination, called methane hydrate, is at least twice that in all the world’s known coal and oil combined!17
Figure 48: Flaming Ice. This ice contains methane, a flammable gas. Water will freeze at slightly warmer temperatures if it is under high pressure and contains dissolved methane. Such temperatures and pressures exist 2,000 feet or more below sea level. There, vast methane deposits are found trapped in ice on and under the deep seafloor, primarily along coastlines. How did so much methane get there?
Why is so much methane buried along coastlines? How did all those bacteria get there, and what was their gigantic source of food? The largest single deposit known, named “Hydrate Ridge,” lies off Oregon’s coast. According to plate tectonics, that part of the seafloor is sliding under North America. If so, why is so much methane hydrate along Oregon’s coast, just as it is along other coasts worldwide where seafloors are not supposedly subducting? [See Figure 48.]