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.
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Tidal Pumping: Two Types
The water layer under earth’s preflood crust largely decoupled it from the mantle. That gave the crust (a spherical shell), much greater flexibility than if it had been anchored and bonded over the entire mantle’s surface as it is today. In other words, almost no shearing stresses acted on the base of the crust, allowing it to flex more easily from a sphere to a prolate ellipsoid during each tidal cycle. Also, as the Moon’s gravity lifted the crust at 12 o’clock, the crust was depressed (pinched in) at 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock. So, confined subterranean water was always pumped by increasing pressure from low to high tide. (Today, the crust is tightly anchored to the mantle, so only small ocean tides are produced by a very slight gravity gradient. Before the flood, this gravity flow in the subterranean chamber also lifted the crust at 12 o’clock.)
Figure 232. Tidal Pinch. (Not to scale.) Before the flood, the Moon’s gravity not only lifted the largely decoupled (and, therefore, relatively flexible) crust at 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock, it pinched the crust inward at 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock. Both actions pumped the confined subterranean water toward high tide. Twice a day for centuries, tidal pumping also generated immense amounts of heat as the massive crust compressed the pillars near 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock and stretched those near 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock.These pillars were portions of the sagging crust that touched the chamber floor, not tall cylindrical pillars used today in buildings. [See pages 434–439.]
On page 474, the Hebrew word raqia, which means a hammered-out or pressed-out solid, was identified as the earth’s crust. As one visualizes centuries of tidal pumping—and pillars compressing (being hammered or pressed out) twice a day—raqia seems an apt, descriptive word.
The pillars were compressed and stretched twice a day—a second form of tidal pumping. What force compressed the pillars, and how much strain occurred? The pillars were compressed by a sizable fraction of the gigantic weight of the crust. Today, even without a decoupling layer of subterranean water, the Global Positioning System can measure solid tides on Earth up to 0.4 meters (1.31 feet).1 At mid-latitudes, solid tides are about a foot,2 but with a decoupling layer of water, the crust’s preflood deflections would have been greater. If the average pillar’s strain were only a foot, repeatedly compressed and hammered pillars would have produced enormous amounts of heat.3
Of course, some energy expended in compressing pillars was recovered elastically during the expansion half-cycle. However, a fraction of that energy was dissipated as heat and would have steadily raised the water’s temperature, although some of the water’s heat would have been lost by conduction into the chamber’s floor and ceiling. (Later, we will combine these fractions into an “efficiency factor,” e.)
How rapidly did the subterranean water become supercritical? Let Q be the heat generated in pillars that raised the subterranean water’s temperature. Two tidal cycles occur for each of N days. The subterranean water’s mass, volume, and density are m, Vw, and rw, respectively, and the granite crust’s volume and density are Vg and rg. Let the specific heat of water at the pressure in the subterranean chamber be cp and the temperature rise needed for that water to become supercritical be DT. The pillars are compressed by an average of d centimeters and e is the efficiency factor mentioned above. Therefore,
If
Vg / Vw = 12.33, rg/rw = 2.7 / 1.14 = 2.37,
cp = 0.9 cal / gm C, d = 30.48 cm (1 foot),
DT < 374°C, g = 980 cm/sec2, e = 0.25,
and because 1 cal = 41,868,000 gm cm2/sec2, the water became supercritical in less than
The greatest uncertainty in these numbers is the variable e.4 However, even if e were an order of magnitude smaller, the subterranean water would become supercritical long before the flood began.
Two moons in the solar system, Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa, are unusual, because they emit so much heat—far more heat than can be explained by radioactive decay.5 Enceladus’ heat produces a jet of water plasma that the orbiting Cassini spacecraft passed through and measured several times. [See Figure 177 on page 332.] A layer of water under the crusts of both moons explains the great heat produced.6,7 Other evidence also supports the presence of those layers of liquid water.8 [See page 332.]
Heat on Enceladus and Europa is generated by the flexing of their floating ice crusts. Because Earth’s preflood crust was composed not of floating ice, but granite, pillars would have been present. [For details on why, how, and when pillars formed, see pages 434–439.] Therefore, the second form of tidal pumping would have acted continuously on pillars before the flood and produced much more heat than that produced in the deflecting crust.
By understanding how tidal pumping produced supercritical water (SCW), perplexing questions can now be answered, including:
- the source of the SCW that has been discovered still jetting up in black smokers on the ocean floor,
- the origin and nature of the Moho,
- the origin of vast salt, limestone, and dolomite deposits,
- the source of the cementing agents that hold sedimentary rocks together, and
- the origin of most ore bodies.
For a few details, see pages 115–125.
Without knowing that SCW was present before the flood or how SCW was produced, these rarely addressed topics would continue to seldom be discussed, and the gigantic energy released by all the fountains of the great deep would not be understood.