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.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other material.
Rocket Science
Figure 217: Extreme Velocity. Shown (not to scale) is a cross section of the earth’s crust and the jetting supercritical water (SCW) hours to weeks after the rupture. The left and right dashed lines are the vertical center lines of a hydroplate and the rupture, respectively. A mirror image of this figure (not shown) would lie to the left and right of each center line. Because of this symmetry, the dashed lines can be thought of as barriers beyond which matter will not flow. The Moho marks the bottom of the porous, spongelike region under the chamber’s floor.
Here, SCW acts like a rocket’s propellent escaping with a velocity ve to the right of the rocket’s nozzle (represented by the yellow line). The “rocket” (shown in silhouette) cannot move to the left, since an identical jetting rocket (because of symmetry) is pushing to the right with an equal force.
For centuries before the flood, the powerful ability of SCW to dissolve certain minerals opened up a myriad of twisting, spaghetti-thin channels throughout the chamber’s floor and ceiling. Once the flood began, weeks of steady heating from nuclear reactions in the fluttering crust continuously pressurized the SCW in those miles of long, thin, interconnected channels. That, in turn, greatly elevated the pressure in the subterranean chamber, thereby accelerating the escaping subterranean water even more, not just while it was under the crust but also as it was accelerating upward in the fountains.
Today, SCW is still coming out of what was the porous floor of the subterranean chamber. [See Figures 55 and 56 on pages 123 and 123.] The hot water in the spongelike pockets, which absorbed much of the nuclear energy, also heated the solid structure containing the tiny water pockets. Today, that heat—geothermal heat—accounts for the increasing temperatures as one drills deeper into the earth or descends into deep caves. The Moho, explained on pages 115 and 129 and in Figures 65 and 67, lies about 3 miles below the ocean floor—the former chamber floor.
Jet fuel in a high-performance aircraft contains about 20,000 BTU of chemical energy per pound. Greater aircraft speed might result if the energy content could be increased or the metals in contact with the hot gases could be strengthened to withstand even higher combustion temperatures and pressures. In comparison, SCW has many orders of magnitude more energy per pound, and its container (earth’s thick crust) was much stronger than an aircraft’s combustion chamber. Obviously, the exit velocities and expansion rates of the supercritical water far exceeded those of any jet aircraft, and the volume of the jetting fluid was trillions upon trillions of times greater.
The next time you see contrails in the sky, recognize that escaping, hot, high-pressure gases (primarily water vapor) from a jet aircraft expand downstream so much that they cool, condense and sometimes freeze. The fountains of the great deep experienced vastly greater expansion and cooling in an environment much colder than where jet aircraft fly. Recall that billions upon billions of tons of supercold ice crystals suddenly fell from the fountains and buried many mammoths—and at least much of Alaska and Siberia. [See pages 244–274.]
The temperature, T, in an expanding supersonic flow is determined by the Mach number, M, stagnation temperature, T0, and the ratio of specific heats, k, which for a perfect gas is about 1.4.1
The stagnation temperature for the situation in Figure 216 is the temperature in the subterranean chamber. Chondrule temperatures reached 3,000°F (page 365) and iron-nickel meteorites exceeded 1,300°F (Figure 166 on page 316). Because both chondrules and meteorites came from the subterranean chamber, T0 was about 3,000°F. Launch velocities of at least 32 miles per second were required to place near-parabolic comets in retrograde orbits.2 [See page 292.] If the sonic velocity in the downstream flow was 0.2 miles per second, then
where absolute zero on the Fahrenheit scale is -460°F. Although M, T0, and the effective sonic velocity can only be estimated, the flow’s temperature after expansion was so cold, it can be considered to be nearly absolute zero!
The fountains, unlike a jet aircraft’s exhaust, did not collide with and transfer much of their kinetic energy to the atmosphere. Except shortly after the rupture and at the relatively thin boundary layer shown in blue, the water in the fountains escaped into the vacuum of outer space where it collided with almost nothing that would make contact with earth’s atmosphere. In other words, almost all the energy in the SCW became kinetic energy, not heat. The thin boundary layer must be compared with the great width of the rupture which, as explained in Endnote 94 on page 379, was initially about 6 miles and then grew to hundreds of miles. Some water within the boundary layer was slowed enough to limit its maximum altitude and cause that water to fall back to earth as rain or ice.
We can estimate these huge velocities and expansion rates another way. The expanding SCW, whose total mass is m, created such a powerful back pressure that it took almost 40 days for most of the SCW to escape. (If you prefer a different time period than the 40 days given three times in the Bible’s flood account,3 substitute any number you think is reasonable.) This gives us the average mass flow rate (dm/dt) of “the propellent,” and therefore, “the rocket’s” average thrust (T). Newton’s second law states that force (F) is the rate of change of momentum (mv).
If we apply this to “the rocket” represented by the subterranean water, the rightmost term above is zero, because the rocket does not move (v = 0). Newton’s third law states that for every force there is an equal and opposite force. Therefore, the thrust (T), pushing the rocket to the left is
At the nozzle’s throat, the back pressure from the thrust pushing to the left approximately balances the pressure (p) from the SCW pushing to the right. However, p is composed of two parts: the pressure produced by the weight of the crust (r g h), and the pressure due to the release of nuclear energy in the lower crust (pnuc). This allows us to estimate the velocity (ve) of the escaping SCW (and its gigantic expansion) to the right of the yellow line.
where g is the acceleration due to gravity, and A is the total area of the “nozzle” at its throat, which in this case is the decreasing thickness of the subterranean water (x) at the plate’s fluttering edge times twice the rupture’s length (L) around the globe. (The factor of two is required, because the rupture is bounded by two sides.) Therefore,
Unfortunately, we don’t know how much water was in the subterranean chamber; we do know the amount of water on the earth today (me) and have estimated that half of it was in the chamber. Some of that subterranean water (mspace) ended up in space and is now in comets, asteroids and various other places in outer space. (While mspace is unknown, it must exceed the water in comets, asteroids, and irregular moons. See Table 31 on page 508.) Therefore,
m = 0.5 me + mspace
To estimate ve, let’s assume mspace and pnuc are zero, and use average values for x and dm/dt.
then, the exit velocity at the throat was
ve = 1.88 × 107 cm/sec = 117 miles/sec
This jetting velocity just beyond the throat is comparable to our earlier estimate of at least 32 miles per second from earth. One thing is certain: the fountains were extremely cold.