Could the Genesis flood have ejected large rocks into space

Maybe we will just have “incorruptible” bodies that aren’t as fragile.

It’s an interesting question to me when thinking about the New Creation, will there be animal death? Will we eat meat? A lot of what is good and beautiful about creation and embodiment depends on life cycles.

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Hitler’s mega-cannon would actually be better at launching mass than any natural explosion because the barrel of a cannon is specifically engineered to maximize efficiency. The size of the earth is irrelevant here except for its gravity; the relevant factor is that steam explosions resulting from water contacting magma are not well-confined and thus have very lousy efficiency in terms of directing the energy. Assuming a steam explosion launched some rock, the moment the rock came loose from the ground the steam would escape around the edges of the rock and no further impetus would be imparted.
So the adjective “pissy” actually applies to the ability of a natural steam explosion to launch much of anything.
For illustration, consider the geysers at Yellowstone: Those are the result of steam explosions that are fairly well confined by the channel they erupt through, and that channel is measured in kilometers, not mere feet. So the geyser is “launching” water through a “barrel” two orders of magnitude longer than Hitler’s mega-cannon, yet the water in a geyser rarely reaches a height twice the length of Hitler’s gun.
At base, steam explosions are a lousy way to propel anything well (Mythbusters did an episode about Archimedes’ steam cannon that showed some of the limitations).

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if that is the case, then why the following…

The kinetic energy of a Space Shuttle orbiter moving at 7,900 meter/sec is very great. It has a mass of approximately 100,000 kg, and therefore it has kinetic energy of about E = (1/2) * (m) * (V^2), or 3,120,500,000,000 Joules. That is the equivalent of almost 900,000,000 Watt-hours of energy, and that is the electrical energy used by about 300,000 homes in one day. All of that kinetic energy came from burning rocket fuel during the launch. The space shuttle burns almost 720,000 kg of liquid fuel and 500,000 kg of solid rocket fuel in order to accelerate and elevate the orbiter into space. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/2007/faq-shuttlereentry.html

The NASA example would suggest to me that is not earth destroying to get a space shuttle into orbit…so why not a large rock? (i recognise that the space shuttle is not being shot out of a gun barrel, but the source we are talking about has a barrel to diameter of projectile ratio far less than a gun ( the dia of the earth is 8,000 miles and the major part of the atmosphere that produces the most friction is what about 60 or so miles after that the air resistance drops off significantly?)

See the one thing i do know about engineering mechanics is that this energy is not needed in a manner that i think most people here believe. For example, one can heat a nail red hot (over 1000 degrees celcius) and immerse it into a breakfast bowl of water and hardly change the overal temperature of the water in the bowl. So the energy contained in the iron nail, whilst extremely hot, isnt that much compared with the volume of water in the bowl. I have this suspicion that the model posted earlier is not considering the vast size of this planet compared with its own atmosphere.

i know that we take the example of volcanoes and use those to place restrictions on what earth destroying might be, however, this does not consider a global rain event at the same time…i mean absolutely pelting down rain for months on end at the same time as a major series of volcanic events.

In your example, it takes a huge rocket to get a relatively small and light spacecraft into orbit, and has to be launched with the rotation of the earth for assistance, and in the right direction as even then it does not have enough velocity to escape gravity. Anything launched straight up, would come straight down unless it reached escape velocity. And if somehow a rock was launched from the surface at 25,000 mph, remember what happens to meteorites when they hit the thin atmosphere at less speed than that? The rocks would immediately turn into fireballs at the launch surface.

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That is 10^5 kilograms

Adam, if you have any feel for orders of magnitude, you understand shuttle launches are essentially zero energy by comparison.

Even the dino killer asteroid packed much less energy at 4.2×10^23 Joules

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There is also the fact that asteroids are of markedly different material that the Earth’s crust.

All is not lost however. If you liked hydroplate catastrophism, you will love it that there actually is a celestial body which does match up to the Earth’s crust, and very likely includes ejecta from our planet. That would be of course the moon, formed in the collision of two nascent planets.

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Well let’s do the actual calculations shall we, Adam.

The total amount of water on Earth is 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometres. That much water has a mass of about 1.386 x 1021 kilograms. Or approximately half the mass of the asteroid belt.

This fact alone means that your analogy is invalid, because the reason why the red hot nail doesn’t affect the breakfast bowl of water is because the breakfast bowl is far larger than the nail.

But let’s see what would be the effect on the temperature of the water on Earth. The specific heat capacity of water is 4,200 joules per kilogram per Kelvin.

If you release 3 x 1029 joules of energy into all the water on Earth, that means that every kilogram of water would receive 2.16 x 108 joules of heat energy, which is enough to raise its temperature by more than 51,500 Kelvins.

Even if you allow for the fact that the specific heat capacity of water varies with temperature and pressure, you’re still going to end up heating it to tens of thousands of degrees.

In any case, even if it had happened that way, the amount of heat energy released would be much greater than that, because blasting stuff into space, whether by a rocket or by a volcanic explosion or by the fountains of the great deep, is not a thermodynamically efficient process by a long shot.

See the one thing the rest of us know about engineering mechanics that you don’t is that you have to do the calculations for what you are actually proposing, and not some hand-waving analogy. Because when you do the calculations for what you are actually proposing, you might well find that your analogy is off by a factor of a thousand.

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Yes, don’t get me going on my meatball-plant hypothesis… :wink:

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Exceed it.
9.8m/s^2 works in reverse as well.
Plus drag from the atmosphere.

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Anybody got a diagram of the set up before detonation? I’m not finding any with the article.

I am also thinking about the differences between a pressure cooker (with regular use, or pan-in-pan, and the problem of different substances staying separate within the pan but without a barrier), a water cannon, a gun and a space shuttle.

A diagram of the concept of earth involved would help.

[edit — ok I found this image:

image
Which is not all that helpful.

I checked on the temperature of Earth’s Mantle, which currently varies between 1000C (1273 Kelvin) near the crust and 3700C (3973 Kelvin) near the core.

I wonder where the additional energy would come from to heat the water enough expell asteroid sized chunks of pillars.

I wonder how much of that additional energy disappated into the outer crust and what effect that would have had things on the surface.

How long did the pressure take to build and what effects did it have on other parts of the planet or atmosphere? How hot and turbulent was it, before detonation and how did that effect living things in particular. Why is there no record of it, assuming there the heat just below the surface made a difference?

I wonder how the earth’s crust didn’t develop stress fractures that released the water pressure more slowly, before detonation could occur — still thinking about my pressure cooker.

I wonder what filled the void created by the loss of mass of water and pillar chunks? Are there enormous, gaping holes between the earth’s crust and the mantle? I mean, an asteroid belt has a lot of mass! What filled it in, if anything?

I’m sure I haven’t even scratched the surface of reasonable questions a school kid could ask.

In the image I found there is also a nice layer of basalt insulating the water from the mantle.

The image I found doesn’t show if there are vents for the subterranean water, and if so how many or how big. So far this is sounding like pan in pan pressure cooking.

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The argument would be that earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, lightning were not present before the flood. The flood was the cause of such things. Physical laws were the same before and after the flood.

The scenario envisioned is a loss of containment event. The whole thing is one big fantasy, but among the showstoppers is that containment would never have been possible to begin with, for reasons I discuss in this forum post.

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An explosion ejecting a rock is not going to instantly send the rock at 25000mph…its going to accelerate from 0mph over quite a distance. The point is, one has to think of the scale of the “smoking gun” vs our stmosphere…its a tiny distance by comparison. I would argue the bigger the rock the better …because its the scale of the earth, the scale of the rock, vs relatively thin atmosphere that has to be kept in mind.

Are you now claiming no water from the flood was also ejected into space? Why would you make such a claim exactly? I do not subscribe to the idea everything that was here, still is here and always will be here…As a Christian im not a steady state subscriber. the bible doesnt make such a claim…it says the opposite actually. What if our armosphere is not tye same thickness as before…is there any reason why it cannot be different given that before the flood many scholars claim it did not rain.

Your thinking is fundamentally different to what i am suggesting here. Your mind is running away with the claim that the entire water aquifer must have went off under pressure all at once. I did not make that claim…and why would I. Such an uncontained explosion certainly would be problematic…but we are talking asteroids being ejected not the entire surface of the earth. I was thinking of confined areas of pressure and subsequent explosions and given the gun barrel type analogy i have already referenced (ie the gustav) im not unconvinced this could really work.

I think you need to do some explosives testing…have you ever actually blown anything up…i spent time in the army reserves as a combat engineer…a small amount of explosive confined can produce enormous results and thats the key to success. We are talking about a contained underground explosion which is vastly different in its power when compared to an uncontained one. Even Chernoble saw a small amount of steam produce an enornous explosion large enough to blow hundreds of tons of roofing and containment concrete off a reactor high into the air…thats minscule by comparison to the sheer size of this earth.

The other question is, what other methods of ejecting rock could also been atributed to this…steam doesnt have to be the only available mechanism.

Btw…im wondering, are you Christian and do you believe God created this earth or is He not capable of Creation of the earth?

How do you say God made this earth exactly…as i have this feeling you think all the rocks pre existed and collided forming the earth?

Outside of magma, fluids kilometers underground such as gas, oil and water exist in porous rock and fissures, and not as caverns with large subterranean lakes. Tidal stress and seismic activity guarantee such structures would not be stable, as lighter fluids were displaced by heavier rock.

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Thats what we observe now, but how can you prove that was the case at the time of the flood? I dont agree with steady state theory…i think its antibiblical.

No.

Once propelled, the rock is on a ballistic path and no longer accelerating.

Yes. The shock from any such event would set off any and all others in rapid succession.

You are ignoring the math. I suppose it was all wasted effort.

In any event, Genesis relates the story of the flood as water rising. Who said anything about blowing up the planet? None of this has anything to do with scripture or science.

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Gravity is antibiblical?

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There is no acceleration or compression in your mind…but you cannot ignore those things. Nothing goes from zip to 25000 mph instantaneously and even rocks will compress …thats how the form in the first place is it not? So did the asteroids start out as highly compressed rocks or did that happen as they were ejected out of the ground?

Water rising or the “fountains of the deep bursting forth”, “great earthquakes” …seems to me that it was a lot more significant that just a volcanoe here or there.

I tend to look at things a little more in terms of scale. For example, if i hit a golf ball with a table tennis bat as hard as i can, it wont travel anywhere near as fast or as far as i can hit it with a golf club with a 1m long flexible shaft. Its quite easy for an A grade golfer to hit a golf ball 250m with a driver, but try to get even 40m with a table tennis bat…its really difficult.

So the question for me is how…not “it cant be done”. That is the point here.

Are you claiming single use for each litre of water?

I fly paragliders and paramotors and have over 1,000 hours airtime. In order to fly cross country without a motor, the non-powered aircraft pilot must understand the way in which thermal activity works and be able to use that knowledge to help search for areas of lift and maintain altitude flying thermals cross country in a paraglider. So, given my elementary flying knowledge regarding weather patterns and thermals…and a small amount of explosives experience in the Army reserves years ago:

If we take a litre of water, heat it by exposing in a small space with hot magma, obviously pressure builds up and a steam explosion is a likely result…ejecting everything out through the weakest point. However, once the steam explosion has occurred and material (including the steam) is ejected outside into the atmosphere, it [the steam] begins to cool down and eventually reaches a layer within the atmosphere where it condenses enough to form cloud. The cloud eventually becomes saturated given enough of this kind of activity and then it does not have enough energy to support the quantity of moisture it contains and so it rains. That water then flows straight back into the ecosystem and the cycle may repeat itself over and over again.

The point is, I do not agree that there isnt enough water on the earth to eject the volume of rock in the asteroid belt as i believe that would only be the case in a single use scenario…the water used in the steam explosions need not be single use and the Bible does not claim (or at least i dont think it does) that all of the fountains of the deep and any catastrophic seismic activity all occurred at once…the flood went on for a year and it rained for 40 days and nights…so this kind of activity could have happened for a lot longer than just an hour or two or even a few days or weeks leaving plenty of time for cooling of and recylcing of the water in order to produce new steam explosions when exposed to new magma chambers into which it may eventually flow.

The other thing that has always puzzled me is the landmass of the earth. There doesnt seem to me to be enough dry land above the water level for there to have ever been a super continent of the sort that a designer might make into a beatiful environment…to me it would be extremely lop sided (the ratio of water to land would be out of whack by a huge margin so to speak and we would have even bigger oceans which doesnt seem to fit the bible narrative of creation).

I realise that we have plate tectonic movement and subduction, but the volume of the earh isnt going to change such that we have a supercontinent that is more than about 1/3 of the surface of the earth…anyway, it doesnt make sense that God would create it this way. That is another reason why i wonder about the volume of material that potentially could have been ejected into space and the more that was ejected the better i feel about the idea of a supercontinent without massive oceans of water over most of the globe after creation. I know some YEC scientists talk about floating forests…i have no problem with this idea, but im not sure that could make up the shortfall in landmass that is currently modelled if existing continents are moved together.