Creation Moment 2/27/2025 - Salty Oceans Undermine Long Age Chronology

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. 

1 Corinthians 3:19

"Salt is pouring into the sea much faster than it is escaping. 

The sea is not nearly salty enough for this to have been happening for billions of years. 

Even granting generous assumptions to evolutionists, the seas could not be more than 62 million years old—far younger than the billions of years believed by evolutionists. 

Again, this indicates a maximum age, not the actual age. 

CMI

Creation Moment 8/24/2024 - Earth's Geobattery

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 

Genesis 1:6

"Scientists Say They've Detected a Strange Source of Electricity at the Bottom of the Ocean.....researchers have found evidence of a natural O2 factory that needs neither the Sun nor the lifeforms that harness its power. The source is a chemical reaction taking place in rocks lying on the lightless seafloor thousands of feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, releasing what the researchers have dubbed "dark oxygen."

It appears that we discovered a natural 'geobattery,'" said study co-

author Franz Geiger, a professor of chemistry at Northwestern University, in the statement. "These geobatteries are the basis for a possible explanation of the ocean's dark oxygen production."

Now, with the revelation that polymetallic nodules could be causing seawater electrolysis, tampering with the region could also mean destroying what could be an essential source of oxygen for our planet — though of course, future studies will need to determine how significant a source it actually is." 

TheByte

Creation Moment 6/26/2023 - Water Tells Us....

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God...

Hebrews 11:3

 

"Our solar system is designed in such a way that life on Earth would

flourish, “The question about what exactly makes it [Earth] so special that it harbors life is still a good question.” 

Indeed, the surface of our planet being covered with 73% life-giving water is—according to evolutionists—unusual: “According to [secular] models of Solar System formation, Earth, as an inner Solar System planet, should have little to no water.”

 (Peslier, A. 2020. The Origins of Water. Science 369)/ICR

Creation Moment 12/18/2021 - God didn't Create Everything With Color --that's cool

 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life.... Genesis 1:20

"Macropinna microstoma is a deep-sea ray-finned fish in the barreleye family Opisthoproctidae.

The species was discovered and described in 1939 by the U.S. marine biologist Wilbert McLeod Chapman.

It occurs at lower mesopelagic depths beneath temperate and subarctic waters of the North Pacific from the Bering Sea to Japan and Baja California, Mexico.

Macropinna microstoma measures around 15 cm (6 inches) in length.

It has a tiny mouth, most of its body is covered with large scales, and its eyes are capped with bright green lenses.

It also has a highly unusual transparent, fluid-filled shield on its head. This protects its sensitive eyes from the nematocysts (stinging cells) of the siphonophores, one of the apparent sources of its food.

 The barreleye lives in the ocean’s twilight zone, at depths of 600 to 800 m (2,000 to 2,600 feet." SciNews

What LIPs say about the Flood

"Dubbed ‘The Tamu Massif’, it is located about 1,000 miles east of

Japan, and is the largest feature of an underwater mountain range called Shatsky Rise.

Reports noted the unusual shape of the huge lava deposit. It’s low and broad, a shield volcano. Most other volcanoes that erupt under the ocean are small with steep sides. The seafloor is dotted with thousands of such steep-sided underwater volcanoes, or seamounts.

The broad, flat shape means that the molten lava erupted at such an enormous rate that it traveled rapidly across the ocean floor for a long distance while still molten. When it was eventually cooled by the seawater, it began to solidify and become gummy.

This eruption was one of many similar eruptions all over the planet

around the time when geologists say that the continents were breaking up. The volume of lava erupted was enormous, and the deposits are called Large Igneous Provinces or LIPs for short.

 

But, for it to have taken several million years to form would mean the lava would have flowed out slowly, and it would not have formed a shield volcano. There was another feature about the volcano that puzzled the researchers. Sager again:

“One interesting angle is that there were lots of oceanic plateaus (that) erupted during the Cretaceous Period (145–65 million years ago) but we don’t see them since. Scientists would like to know why.”

Even while reporting the eruption as catastrophic, they still ‘date’ it using the assumption that everything in the past happened slowly and gradually.

But a catastrophic eruption happens quickly. When we relate this to the catastrophe of Noah’s Flood, we can reinterpret the timing and we discover that the volcano would have erupted about halfway through the year-long Flood, which occurred about 4,500 years ago. And it would have taken just days and weeks, not several million years, otherwise it would have solidified before it could have spread so far. Creation geologists conclude that most rocks now exposed on earth were deposited during the Flood. It was enormous and catastrophic, meaning everything happened quickly.

So, there is a simple reason why these eruptions took place in only

one period of earth history, and we don’t see them since. The volcano's erupted mid-way through the Flood when the ocean basins began to lower and the floodwaters began to recede from covering the continents. The Flood happened once in earth history and it won’t happen again. Genesis 9:11 records God saying: I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." CMI

That Magma Pulse

"Scientists recently found evidence of a world-wide marine “massive but short-lived” volcanic event that they say led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. 

They describe a ‘pulse’ of magma, erupting through the oceanic crust on a global scale, and speculate this was initiated by the Chicxulub meteor impact. They also found evidence of “fast-spreading rates” of seafloor formation at the mid-oceanic

ridges.

A global tectonic event involving the seafloor and massive volcanism is entirely consistent with the Bible’s description of the year-long, world-wide Flood in Noah’s day, which occurred when the “fountains of the great deep” (Genesis 7:11) were opened. 

Such an event must have involved a rising of the seafloor in relation to the land. Geological formations throughout the world attest to the enormous volcanic activity that occurred alongside massive water-borne sediment deposition." CMI

Creation Moment 4/8/2021 - Salinity of the Oceans tell us......

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:10

"The salinity of our oceans can give us a ‘clock’ of sorts, because we are able to estimate the amount of salt entering our oceans as well as the amount that leaves. 

It turns out that much more is entering than leaving, so the oceans are getting saltier over time. So let’s use this as a uniformitarian ‘clock’ by assuming the processes have stayed much the same. Starting with fresh water, how long would it take for the oceans to become as salty as they are?

A study by creation scientists Steve Austin and Russell Humphreys, using the most conservative numbers available, gave an absolute upper limit (not actual age!), of 62 million years. 

----While this may seem like a long time, it is actually far too low a number to accommodate the secular age for the ocean of 3.8 billion years. And note that the oceans would have started out with some salt in them, plus a stupendous amount of salt and other minerals would have been added during the Flood from erosion and volcanism.

 

More recent estimations show even more salt entering than Austin and Humphreys accounted for, meaning the estimate should be even lower. 

---- Simply put, the oceans should be much saltier than they are

today if they were anywhere near as old as the secular timeline claims. 

The only ‘out’ for long-agers is to assume that the rates have dramatically changed—which undermines the whole idea of uniformitarianism!" CMI

IN the NEWS - Stormquakes Part of the "Roaring"?

 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring... Luke 21:25

 Q: Will these play a Role in the End times?

Could these, if they were to escalate adding more problems, be used to scare people into accepting more govt. control? Like the mark of the beast (one side says we need to appease an angry Father God while the other goes along to appease an angry mother earth?)

 

"A study published in the Geophysical Research Letters suggests that hurricanes or even just really strong storms can trigger seismic events called “stormquakes” in the nearby ocean.

 Researchers from Florida State University (FSU), the University of California, San Diego and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts analyzed more than a decade of seismic and oceanographic records. They found a strong correlation between certain hurricanes that hit the U.S. and intense seismic activity in the nearby seabed.

 

“We’re calling them ‘stormquakes,’” said lead author Wenyuan Fan of FSU’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science.

 

According to Fan, stormquakes happen when hurricanes or nor’easters (storms along the East Coast) transfer energy into the ocean as strong ocean waves. The waves interact with the solid earth and produce seismic events as strong as a 3.5 magnitude earthquake.

 

When the team further examined low-frequency earthquakes, they found that stormquakes are strongly influenced by local oceanographic features and seafloor topography, such as large continental shelves and ocean banks. 

 One productive hurricane was Hurricane Bill. Bill produced more than 300 stormquakes when it hit North America in August 2009. It originated from the Atlantic ocean and strengthened into a Category 4 hurricane before weakening as a Category 1 hurricane when it made landfall in New England. Upon Bill’s arrival, there were numerous seismic events off the coasts of New England and Nova Scotia, where transcontinental surface waves temporarily increased.

Hurricane Ike in 2008 also triggered seismic activity in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as Hurricane Irene in 2011 in the Little Bahama Bank off the coast of Florida. 

However, the researchers noted that not all hurricanes can trigger

stormquakes. For instance, Hurricane Sandy, one of the costliest storms on record in the United States, did not generate seismic activity. The team said that whether a hurricane or storm can produce stormquakes depends in part upon the geophysical features of an area. For example, the coastal region from New Jersey to Georgia did not show signs of a stormquake but other regions like the Gulf of Mexico in the U.S. are hotspots." ScienceNews

Creation Moment 10/17/2020 - Darwin's Flawed Atoll Theory

"Marine geologist and oceanographer André Droxler knows Charles Darwin’s theory about atolls is incorrect. But Droxler, who’s studied coral reefs for more than 40 years, understands why Darwin’s model persists in textbooks, university lecture halls, natural science museums and Wikipedia entries.

“It’s so beautiful, so simple and pleasing that everybody still teaches it,” said Droxler, who recently retired from Rice University. “Every introductory book you can find in Earth science and marine science still has Darwin’s model. If they teach one thing about reefs or carbonates in marine science 101, they teach that model.”

But they’re teaching a big lie. A lie that is pleasing is still a lie.

Droxler, a professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Rice for 33 years, is hoping to set the record straight with a 37-page, tour de force paper about the origins of atolls. Published this month in the Annual Review of Marine Science, the paper was co-authored by Droxler and longtime collaborator Stéphan Jorry, a marine geologist and oceanographer at the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER).

Darwin published his theory in 1842 after his Beagle voyage, 17 years before the Origin. Droxler admires Darwin’s attempt to map the atolls and come up with a hypothesis to explain them. To be sure, Droxler’s account relies on long ages, too (500,000 years), but neither Darwin nor Droxler or his colleague actually watched any atoll form.

“Cyclic changes in sea level drive atoll formation,” Droxler said. “Darwin had no concept that sea level could go up and down, because glaciation didn’t become common knowledge until the 1860s.”

Even so, Darwin would have had almost 20 years to correct his “fatally flawed” hypothesis, and yet it is still being taught in 2020. Droxler and Jorry have tossed out Darwin’s hypothesis and presented their own, more “complicated” version.

Droxler said the simplicity of Darwin’s classification

system and theory could play a role in its continued appeal. A more accurate description of atoll formation has been around since the 1930s, but it is considerably more complicated and much of the evidence to support it is more recent, coming in the past 40 years from dozens of scientific and oil industry drilling expeditions as well as from the compiled record of Earth’s climate and sea level history.

One can observe shoreline positions, glacier records and ocean cores, but no observer can watch an atoll form. All scientists can do is present scenarios of historical events that they feel match the current evidence the strongest.

…but those scenarios are invariably built on a set of worldview assumptions, such as long ages.

This story offers a lesson about non-empirical values in science. Some scientists like a theory that is simple. Some like theories that are elegant. Some prefer theories that are beauty or pleasing. Some prefer theories that are epistemically modest or methodologically naturalistic. A theory can be all of these things, yet still be false.." CEH

 In the beginning... Genesis 1:1

Plate Tectonics

...the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. Genesis 7:11

"Tang and his coauthors created a 3-D spherical model that shows

the development of massive rifts in the crust due to thermal expansion. They believe these rifts originated about a billion years after Earth formed through the heating of the lithosphere (the tectonic plate) by the hotter mantle below. In their model, this thermal expansion caused rifting into separate plates.

 

Q: But did they really solve the origin of the tectonic plates? 

Their model merely showed that cracks could develop under the conditions that they established. It is highly unlikely this was the way Earth’s plates originated. 

Q: If so, why didn’t similar-sized planets, like Venus and Mars, develop massive rifts—and eventually plates—as well?

And their model also fails to explain how the subduction process—when one tectonic plate is pulled under another—began and even how plate motion was initiated. Tang and his colleagues wrote:

The initiation of a global network of rifts, as modeled here, is distinct from plate tectonics because plate tectonics includes creation of new lithosphere at rifts and destruction of old lithosphere at subduction zones. Absent an expanding Earth hypothesis, a global rift network is unsustainable: Earth’s surface cannot extend without balancing contraction [subduction]^.

It all comes down to worldview. 

Most of the secular community denies the account of the global Flood as described in Genesis. They have had to create a

narrative—a fictional story—to try and explain the tectonic plates we observe today.

In contrast, God has told us that the Flood began with the bursting of the fountains of the great deep in Genesis 7:11.

---It seems most likely that this initiated the plates on Earth. -Movement of these newly formed plates destroyed the original ocean crust through subduction and created an entirely new seafloor. 

This new, hot and lower-density ocean crust pushed the water of the ocean higher and higher until the entire earth was covered with water. 

---Today, we merely see the residual effects of this rapid and catastrophic activity."

ICR 

Panagea, The Flood and Creation of the Oceans

...all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
Genesis 7:11

"Every day, hundreds of millions of gallons of water drain from the oceans into the Earth’s mantle, and geologists think that a dead supercontinent may be to blame.

Dubbed the “deep water cycle” or the “geologic water cycle,” this phenomenon occurs when water gets soaked up by minerals within the earth’s mantle through a process called subduction.
As the water gets closer and closer to the Earth’s core, it heats up, to the point where a large quantity of it gets expelled back into the ocean floor through undersea explosions and hydrothermal vents.

In a study published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics and Geosystems, .....Krister Karlsen, lead author of the study said this phenomenon can be traced back to one major geological event: the splitting of the supercontinent Pangaea.
“The breakup of Pangaea was associated with a time of very rapid tectonic plate subduction,” Karlsen said in an interview with LiveScience, adding that when Pangaea broke up, the resulting deep water cycle led to a drop of up to 430 feet in both Panthalassa and Tethys, the two main oceans at the time.

Experts, however, say this “water loss” is not as negative as it might sound, as it was something that led to the creation of today’s oceans. Popular Mechanics expanded on this, noting in an article that the resulting lower water levels from Pangaea’s split actually made the planet more habitable.

According to geologic records, when the supercontinent Pangaea started to split, new oceans appeared, starting with the North Atlantic followed by the South Atlantic.
The split also closed off the Tethys Ocean and triggered the formation of the Arctic Ocean from what used to be the Sinus Borealis.
The Pacific followed suit, during the Mesozoic era, formed from the remains of the Panthalassa. Continued tectonic movement meanwhile, led to the formation of the “youngest” of today’s oceans: the Indian and the Antarctic.

Despite the continued “draining” of the ocean’s waters into the mantle, however, Karlsen said it can’t really address issues such as continued sea level spikes, noting that even as massive amounts of water sink into the mantle, actual sea levels can spike and plummet by hundreds of feet on much shorter timescales."
ClimateNews

Psalm 104:8 & Geomorphology

"All continents (and large islands) are surrounded by a continental margin, a continuous band of mostly sedimentary rock.
This makes up some 20% of the ocean floor;
the rest is the deep ocean basins (abyssal plains).

The continental shelf is relatively flat, dipping down very gently (less than 0.1°) as it extends out from the shoreline to the shelf break or shelf edge, which is where the continental slope begins.

At the edge of the continental shelf, at a consistent average depth of about 430 ft., the slope of the seafloor suddenly increases from nearly flat to about 4°, all the way down to depths of 4,900 to 11,500 ft.. This is the continental slope, and if all the water were removed from the oceans, it would be the most conspicuous geomorphological boundary on Earth.

The sedimentary rocks within the continental margin can be extremely thick—over 12 miles deep in places, especially in buried basins.

Geomorphologist Lester King sum-marized:

There have been repeated tectonic episodes: always in the same sense—the lands go up and the sea floor down…

This is consistent with Psalm 104:8, describing the draining of the Flood water: “The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them”.

Although few scientists address this issue, the continental shelf and slope are very difficult to explain within the uniformitarian (slow and gradual) paradigm.
Non-catastrophic processes would favor a gradual descent of sediments to the ocean depths. There really should be no continental shelf or slope.
King described the problem:

“Briefly the shelf is too wide, and towards the outer edge too deep, to have been controlled by normal wind-generated waves of the ocean surface”.

Present processes would not form such a profile. Hedberg also stated, “…there is considerable controversy as to the origin in detail of continental slopes. It seems evident that there is no unique answer.”

The reason there should be a gradual descent to the deep sea is that most ocean currents are wind-generated. (Sinking of denser, salty water at high latitudes is only a minor factor, although some scientists think otherwise.) Because of the prevailing winds, ocean currents are commonly parallel to the coast, such as the Gulf Stream off the East Coast of the United States. A uniformitarian would thus expect sediments to spread out first and then slide down into the deep ocean.

Sometimes, the dip of the sedimentary rocks in the continental margin increases seaward, forming what are called delta-like features. This indicates the depositional current was flowing offshore and not parallel to the shoreline as expected from wind-generated currents.
Hedberg states: “Reflection profiling has shown that many slopes in their present form are the result of prograding sedimentation.”
Prograding means that the sediment was deposited by currents that moved perpendicularly away from the continents, unlike the typical parallel-to-shore currents we see today.

Today, when a flooding river enters a larger body of water, it deposits its sediment load in the form of a delta.
---By analogy this sheds light on the origin of the continental shelf and slope.
*The top of the delta would represent the continental shelf;
*the delta edge would correspond to the continental slope.
--Continental margins represent a global phenomenon that gives powerful evidence for the global Flood.
This speaks strongly against the idea that the world’s sedimentary layers formed slowly over ‘millions of years’."
CMI

Creation Moment 1/11/2019 - Watery Conundrum points to Young Earth

And the earth was without form, and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Genesis 1:2

"Secular science believes Earth’s oceans have existed for about four billion years. They also think the level of the ocean has remained about the same over that vast period of time.
However, a new study published in Nature creates serious problems for the uniformitarian origin of our oceans and their long-term sustainability.

Chen Cai and his colleagues from Washington University in St. Louis found that the global water flux into the mantle was three times greater than previously estimated.

Interestingly, they found that the water content in the rocks begins to change about 50 miles east of the trench, about the same distance that faulting and earthquake activity starts to occur in the ocean crust prior to subduction.

Chai and his team were also able to extend their knowledge of water volume deeper than previous studies, down to depths of 18-30 miles, about 15 miles below the base of the crust.
They concluded that at least 4.3 times more water is being subducted into the Mariana Trench than what was previously estimated.

Stepping back and taking a more global view, they further determined:

If other old, cold subducting slabs contain correspondingly thick layers of hydrous mantle, as suggested by the similarity of incoming plate faulting across old, cold subducting slabs, then estimates of the global water flux into the mantle at depths greater than 62 miles must be increased by a factor of about three compared to previous estimates.

In other words, there is a whole lot more water going back into the mantle than previously thought. And the volume being input into

the mantle is much greater than the smaller volume that is observed coming back out. This doesn’t bode well for the long-term stability of ocean levels or total volume.

Most secular scientists believe plate tectonics and subduction have been active on Earth for a few billion years at least. With more water constantly going into Earth, ocean levels should have dropped over these claimed vast amounts of geological time. The question is why not?

Douglas Weins, one of the co-authors of the study tried to explain this watery conundrum. “The estimates of water coming back out through the volcanic arc [island volcanoes] are probably very uncertain. This study will probably cause some re-evaluation.”

Our oceans still hold about 97% of the world’s total water because they are young." ICR

Jonah & Mountains

Mountains Under The Seas:"Jonah, who lived close to 3000 years ago spoke of going down to the "bottoms of the mountains".  His prayer from the stomach of the fish included the words

For You had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All Your breakers and billows passed over me.... Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, Weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever, But You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. (Jonah 2:3, 5-6 NASB)

Only in recent history has man discovered that there are mountains on the ocean floor. The tropical Revillagigedos Islands are the visible peaks of a underwater mountain chain-known as the Eastern Pacific Rise, that stretches all the way to Antarctica. The deepest part of Mariana's Trench, east of the Mariana Islands, has been measured at 35,798 feet below sea level.

Mount Everest is only 29,035 feet high."

IPS

Creation Moment 9/2/2018 - Paths of the Seas

The Paths Of The Seas:"Psalm 8:8 speaks of the "the paths of the seas"

 A path is, literally or figuratively, a well trodden road. But since there are no roads in the seas, it is more than likely that it is referring to ocean currents, which was discovered only in the 1850's. The following history of the discovery of these "paths" has been excerpted from Answers in Genesis....

Matthew Maury, (1806 -1873) was U.S. naval officer, pioneer hydrographer, and one of the


founders of oceanography. What is rarely mentioned about Maury is that he was a strong belief in God as the Sovereign Creator. And if the Bible spoke of 'paths' in the sea, there had to be 'paths' in the sea that could be found. So he set out to find them - and find them he did!  

......sea captains had recorded their daily locations, and the speed and directions of winds and currents. When Maury compiled these records he saw a pattern that he added to by asking merchant captains to make and send him more observations. Additionally, Maury set adrift weighted bottles known as drift bottles that were not affected by wind because they floated slightly below the surface of the water. Instructions sealed in each bottle directed anyone who found one washed ashore to return it with details of where and when the bottles was found. This information enabled Maury to develop charts of the ocean currents - the 'paths' of the seas, which helped captains plot the best sea lanes for their voyages.

His charts became so indispensable that at an 1853 conference in Brussels, the representatives of a dozen nations unanimously adopted them as definitive guides for international shipping.

He eventually produced charts of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans and published the first modern oceanographic text, The Physical Geography of the Sea. On page 403, he wrote

In observing the working and studying - the offices of the various parts of the physical machinery which keeps the world in order, we should ever remember that it is all made for its purposes, and that it was planned according to design, and arranged so as to make the world as we behold it, a place for the habitation of man. Upon no other hypothesis can the student expect to gain profitable knowledge concerning the physics of the sea, earth, or air.” SFB

Creation Moment 8/19/2018 - Springs of the Sea

"Springs of the Sea. An article on Phys.org marvels at an “extraordinary hydrothermal vent system” discovered in the mid-Atlantic ocean.

Hydrothermal vents were only discovered by science in recent

decades. According to Wikipedia, the first hints of them began in 1949, and the first confirmed discovery was in June 1976, less than 50 years ago.

Some people living today remember being astonished at these sites in the deep ocean where hot water not only emerges from the sea floor, but creates whole ecosystems of exotic creatures the world had never imagined.

Would ancients have even considered the existence of deep-sea springs without modern submarines with electric lights to illuminate them? Of course not; only God could know such things. Three or four thousand years ago, the book of Job records God asking Job, “Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?” (Job 38:16)." CEH

Evidence for "fountains of the great deep"?

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month,

 the seventeenth day of the month,

the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up,

and the windows of heaven were opened.

Genesis 7:11

"Two recent articles in Nature Geoscience may provide important validations of the global Flood. Did researchers find evidence of the “fountains of the great deep” that started the deluge?
Timothy Paulsen, from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and co-authors from Michigan Technological University and ETH Zurich, found evidence of a spike in volcanic activity and a rapid release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide just prior to the deposition of Cambrian rock layers.

Cambrian rocks are considered by many creation geologists to represent the first extensive Flood deposits. Cambrian sediments are the bottom-most layer in the Sauk megasequence and contain fossils of the so-called Cambrian Explosion—the first sediments with prolific numbers of hard-shelled organisms.

Paulsen and his colleagues conducted trace element analysis on zircon crystals from Antarctica and compared them to previous studies of global magmatism. They determined there is evidence of a massive outpouring of carbon dioxide and associated volcanic activity just before the deposition of the Sauk megasequence in a system called the Ediacaran. The Ediacaran is what secularists call the latest Precambrian or Neoproterozoic.
In another paper in the same issue of Nature Geoscience, Sascha Brune, and co-authors report:

“CO₂ behaves as an incompatible element and is readily transported to shallow crustal levels during melt migration. Although a certain fraction is released to the atmosphere during volcanic eruptions, recent studies indicate that much higher CO₂ release occurs due to circulation of hydrothermal fluids and degassing along normal faults without eruptive volcanism.”

These scientists claim that spikes in CO₂ are associated with continental rifting that produces normal faults and conduits for hydrothermal minerals like copper.

In North America, there is ample evidence of pre-Sauk volcanism and rifting down the middle of the continent—the Midcontinent Rift. Here, the pre-Sauk produced a tremendous outpouring of basaltic lava that split open central North America. This north-south fracture extends over 1,800 miles across what is now Lake Superior all the way to Kansas, and produced nearly 500,000 cubic miles of lava.

 The Midcontinent Rift contains far more than lava flows—over 11 billion pounds of copper were mined from the Rift in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula alone. Tremendous volumes of superheated groundwater (~430ºF, or 220ºC) followed the eruption of lava and placed the huge copper deposits within the flows.

So, whether by increased volcanic activity or increased hydrothermal activity, there appears to be significant evidence of a spike in global volcanic action and associated rifting prior to the deposition of the Sauk megasequence. Could this be evidence of the breaking up of the “fountains of the great deep” mentioned in Genesis 7:11?" ICR

Creation Moment 2/14/2018 - Salty Seas & Earth Age

"The ocean is essential for life on Earth, and also helps make the climate fairly moderate. However, although the ocean contains 334 million cubic miles of water, humans can’t survive by drinking from it—it is too salty.

Ordinary common salt is a compound formed when the metal sodium combines with the non-metal chlorine—sodium chloride. This contains electrically charged atoms, called ions, that attract each other, resulting in a fairly hard crystal. When salt dissolves, these ions separate. Sodium and chloride ions are the main ions in seawater, but not the only ones.

Many processes (see below) bring salts into the sea, while they don’t leave the sea easily. So the saltiness is increasing steadily. Since we can work out how much salt there is in the sea, as well as the rates that salts go into and out of the sea, we should be able to calculate a maximum age for the sea.
In fact, this method was first proposed by Sir Isaac Newton’s colleague, Sir Edmond Halley (1656–1742), of comet fame.
More recently, the geologist, physicist, and pioneer of radiation therapy, John Joly, (1857–1933) estimated that the oceans were 80–90 million years old at the most. But this was far too young for evolutionists, who believed that life evolved in the ocean billions of years ago.
More recently, the geologist Dr Steve Austin and the physicist Dr Russell Humphreys analyzed figures from secular geoscience sources for the quantity of sodium ion (Na⁺) in the ocean, and its input and output rates. The slower the input and faster the output, the older the ocean could be.
Every kilogram of seawater contains about 10.8 grams of dissolved Na⁺ (about 1% by weight). This means that there is a total of 1.47 x 10¹⁶ (14,700 million million) tonnes of Na⁺ in the ocean.

Water on the land can dissolve salt outcrops, and can weather many minerals, especially clays and feldspars, and leach the sodium out of them. This sodium can be carried into the ocean by rivers. Some salt is supplied by water through the ground directly to the sea—called submarine groundwater discharge (SGWD). Such water is often very concentrated in minerals. Ocean floor sediments release much sodium, as do hot springs on the ocean floor (hydrothermal vents). Volcanic dust also contributes some sodium.
Austin and Humphreys calculated that about 457 million tonnes of sodium now comes into the sea every year. The minimum possible rate in the past, even if the most generous assumptions are granted to evolutionists, is 356 million tonnes/year.

Previously, the amount of SGWD was thought to be a small fraction (0.01–10%) of the water from surface runoff, mainly rivers. But this new study, measuring the radioactivity of radium in coastal water, shows that the amount of SGWD is as much as 40% of the river flow. This means that the maximum possible age of the ocean is even smaller.

Granting the most generous assumptions to evolutionists, Austin and Humphreys calculated that the ocean must be less than 62 million years old. It’s important to stress that this is not the actual age, but a maximum age. That is, this evidence is consistent with any age up to 62 million years, including the biblical age of about 6,000 years.
The Austin and Humphreys calculation assumes the lowest plausible input rates and fastest plausible output rates. Another assumption is that there was no dissolved salt to start with. If we assume more realistic conditions in the past, the calculated maximum age is much less.

For one thing, God probably created the oceans with some saltiness, so that saltwater fish could live comfortably in it. Noah’s Flood would have dissolved large amounts of sodium from land rocks. This would have found its way into the oceans when the Flood waters retreated. Finally, the larger-than-expected SGWD would further reduce the maximum age.

The salinity of the oceans is a strong evidence that they, and the Earth itself, are far younger than the billions of years required for evolution, and is consistent with the biblical age of about 6,000 years. It is also far younger than the evolutionists’ ‘dates’ for many marine creatures. In short, the sea is not salty enough to suit the taste of evolutionists!

One anti-creationist called Glenn Morton claims that the sodium-rich feldspar called albite (NaAlSi₃O₈) would form permanently on the ocean floor, taking sodium out of seawater. He claims that such a sodium sink would invalidate the age calculations of Drs Austin and Humphreys. But Dr Humphreys answered a critic who cited Glenn Morton and gave permission for his response to be reproduced below:

No, Glenn Morton is not at all correct on this, and sincere creationists can continue using sea sodium as an evidence for a young world. Morton showed you an early letter in his correspondence with Steve Austin and me, but not our replies. He also did not show you how he terminated the correspondence.
What happens is this: indeed albite forms in mid-ocean vents and takes sodium out of the high-temperature sea water. But then when the albite gets into cooler water, it decomposes into the mineral chlorite and releases the same amount of sodium back into the sea water. That is why albite (in any significant amounts) is found only at the mid-ocean ridges and nowhere else. So his “albite sink” would change into a “chlorite source”, and the net effect on sodium in the sea would be zero.
That may seem technical to you. So here is a non-technical way you can judge for yourself whether Morton is right or not: find out whether he has published his “albite sink” theory in a peer-reviewed secular geochemistry journal. The foremost one has the Latin title Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Such journals would be overjoyed to publish his theory if it were correct, because it would solve the 75-year-old problem Steve and I pointed out, the great imbalance between ingoing and outgoing sodium. The secular science establishment would probably award Morton the Nobel Prize for it!
Moreover, Morton would be very proud to have his theory published in such a journal and would be sure to mention it prominently on his website. Let me know if you find such a citation there. If you don’t, then you know Morton is blowing smoke at you.
Smoke and mirrors are generally what you will get on skeptics’ and old-earther web sites. They shun peer review and publication. Instead they rely on the naïveté of most of their readers to protect their bad science from exposure. Anybody can say anything on a website, and they do. Psalm 1:1 promises a blessing for avoiding such company:

“How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!”

Instead, delight in the law of the Lord,
Russ Humphreys" CMI

Creation Moment - Throwing Water on Evolution Timelines

"If there was ever a coherent theory of how the earth got its oceans, it’s gone. The new reading of meteorites forbids it. Now, inventors of solar system models have to go back to square one. Whatever they come up with is bound to take more heat.

Because the early earth was pictured to be molten with volcanoes going off and meteors hitting

repeatedly, cosmogonists were forced into thinking that water arrived later. The ‘late veneer’ theory (which we call the ‘water balloon’ theory) claimed that the oceans were late arrivals, the water being delivered by comets and meteorites after things cooled down a bit.

For empirical support, they appealed to elements in chondritic meteorites, believing that elements embedded in the stones can act as “fingerprints” of conditions at the time of their formation. A new paper in Nature, however, claims that stable isotopes of ruthenium falsify the late veneer theory: “these data refute an outer Solar System origin for the late veneer and imply that the late veneer was not the primary source of volatiles and water on the Earth.” Moreover, these isotopes don’t match those in earth’s crust.

What this implies is that earth’s water had to arrive earlier somehow. In “Meteorite Studies Reveal Surprises About Earth’s Formation” on Space.com, Elizabeth Howell speaks of double toil and trouble:

Two studies published Wednesday (Jan. 25) in the journal Nature suggest that Earth’s main building blocks were rocks similar to meteorites known as enstatite chondrites, and that the planet got most of its water gradually during the formation process, rather than in one big burst toward the end.

 

“The results presented in these papers lead to the troubling conclusion that the meteorites in our collection are not particularly good examples of Earth’s building blocks,” Richard Carlson, a geochemist .. Chelsea White interprets the hidden message in the stones, concluding, “Earth’s water must have arrived here earlier than we thought.”

 

THE arrival of water on our planet is shrouded in mystery. Our leading theory says icy meteorites brought it here after most of the planet and its core had formed, about 4.5 billion years ago. But now an analysis of isotopes from meteorites seems to imply that the wet stuff got here much sooner.

 

One of the authors is sufficiently confident to declare falsification of the late veneer theory. “We can now rule out water arriving on icy comets after the planet was mostly formed.” But if, as White concludes, “Earth’s water may in fact have been part of the very dust cloud from which the planet first condensed,” a number of new demons rise out of the shroud of mystery, scaring the scientist-diviners back to reality. They know that volatiles like water would have likely escaped during the violent, hot conditions that the spirits of the meteorites tell them must have taken millions of years, with up to 20 huge impacts needed to form the moon. The dust-cloud origin theory also begs the question of how the dust cloud got its water in the first place. Not surprisingly, all the articles and papers ignore this new, larger mystery: how did water survive on a violent early earth?

New Scientist offers a new idea: the earth made its own water from scratch. Andy Coghlan quotes a Canadian who concocted a model showing how chemical reactions in the mantle could produce water.
The scientists did not see the origin of the earth or its oceans. They did not see “the arrival of water on our planet” (notice the dodge; using passive voice “the arrival of water” avoids having to explain how it arrived). Their models are emanations of their starting assumptions. The only things they can measure scientifically are elemental abundances in meteorites and earth rocks. The rest is divination.
Now read the Bible’s warnings about those who use divination instead of believing God’s word: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah. Substitute “scientists” for “prophets” since today’s secular scientists, prophesy to the people about the “arrival” of earth, its water, the moon, and everything else, using modern divination techniques." CEH
 ....and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
Genesis 1:7

Creation Moment 1/15/2017 - Oceans Testify to a Young Earth

 ....and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas:

Genesis 1:1

"According to evolutionary- uniformitarian geologists, the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. The world ocean is supposed to have formed by outgassing of water by volcanic processes early in the earth's history. By no later than one billion years ago, in the popular scheme, the ocean reached its present size and chemical condition, and primitive one-celled life forms had already evolved by chance processes from lifeless chemicals.

For a period of at least one billion years the ocean has remained at roughly constant salinity while the single-celled creatures evolved into mollusks, fish, reptiles, mammals, and, finally, man. During this vast period of time the continents have been eroding more or less continuously, with debris being steadily deposited as sediments on the ocean floor.

Deep-sea drilling and seismic surveys have provided much information about the thickness of sediments in the ocean. These data were quite surprising to early oceanographers who, assuming a great age for the ocean, expected a great thickness of sediment. The average thickness of deep-ocean sediments is less than 0.40 miles (2,100 feet). Greater thicknesses of sediments are encountered on the continental shelves and slopes. The best world average sediment thickness over the entire ocean (shallow and deep) would be about 0.56 miles or 2,950 feet. This estimate is generous and would be accepted as approximately correct by most evolutionary uniformitarian geologists.

We can now calculate the volume of ocean sediments simply by multiplying the average thickness (0.56 miles) by the area of the world ocean (139.4 mil lion square miles). The calculation shows that 78 million cubic miles of sediment are present on the ocean floor.
Next, we can estimate the mass of ocean sediments by multiplying the volume of sediments (78 million cubic miles) by the average sediment density (10.7 billion tons/cubic mile or 2.30 grams/cubic centimeter). It will be dis covered that the mass of ocean sediments is about 830 million billion tons.

The present topographic continents above sea level have a volume of about 30.4 million cubic miles and a mass of about 383 million billion tons. If the present continents were eroded to sea level, about 383 million billion tons of sediment would be deposited on the ocean floor. This mass is a little less than half the mass of sediment present in today's ocean. Stated another way, it would take the erosion of only twice our present continental mass to produce today's mass of ocean sediments!

Careful study of modern rivers on a world-wide scale shows that vast quantities of rock are being transported to the ocean. Suspended sediment, small rock particles that are carried along by river turbulence, makes up the bulk of sediment added to the ocean. The best estimate from river data suggests that 20.2 billion tons of suspended sediment enter the ocean each year.

Rivers also carry dissolved chemical substances into the ocean. The chemicals, mostly bicarbonate, silica, and salts, add about 4.6 billion tons of sediment to the ocean each year.
Glaciers at higher latitudes are presently breaking apart and adding icebergs to the ocean. When the ice melts, the entrapped sediments are deposited on the sea floor. Ice appears to be delivering about 2.2 billion tons of sediment to the ocean each year.

Although little is known about the migration of fluids at great depths in the earth, water is presently being added to the oceans through the sea floor from the continents and from springs and volcanoes on the sea floor. This water also contains dissolved chemicals. A conservative estimate suggests that 0.47 billion tons of sediment are added to the ocean each year by ground waters.
The seashore is constantly being worn by waves that deliver sediment to the sea. A good estimate suggests that marine erosion adds 0.28 billion tons of sediment annually.
Wind-blown dust, especially from desert areas, and dust from volcanoes finds its way to the sea. About 0.06 billion tons goes into the ocean each year.

Evaporation and wind remove a small amount of salts from the ocean and deposit these on the land. The amount of sediment removed in this salt spray process as aerosols is estimated at 0.29 billion tons each year.
Now that we have examined the processes that deliver and remove sediment from the ocean, we are ready to calculate the total amount of sediment going into the world ocean each year. The previous erosion estimates, added together, give a total sediment input to the ocean of 27.5 billion tons every year. This is an enormous quantity of sediment! Most evolutionary uniformitarian geologists would admit that this total is approximately correct.

For the sake of illustration, imagine that all of this yearly sediment was loaded into railroad freight cars, each having a capacity of 11 tons. We would need 2.5 billion train cars! This train would extend to the moon and back 34 times! If this train were traveling past you at 60 miles per hour, it would take 32 years to pass. The sediment total shows that 80 train cars of sediment per second are being added to the ocean!

How long would it take to deliver the present continents to the ocean if the present rate of erosion continued? There is about 30.4 million cubic miles of continental crust above sea level, with a mass of 383 million billion tons. To calculate the amount of time required to deliver the present continents to the ocean we need only divide the mass of continents above sea level by the annual rate of erosion. The calculation would be:
^{383 million billion tons}           = 14 million years
^{27.5 billion tons per year}
The continents are being denuded at a rate that could level them in a mere 14 million years! Yet, evolutionary uniformitarian geologists feel certain that the continents have existed for at least 1 billion years. During this supposed interval of time the present continents could have been eroded

more than 70 times! Yet—miracle of miracles—the continents are still here and do not appear to have been eroded even one time!

Even though the continents could be eroded and transported to the ocean in just 14 million years, assume that some mysterious uplifting process continues to raise the continents as they are eroding. How much sediment would form at present rates of erosion in one billion years? The answer is found by multiplying the annual rate of addition of sediments to the ocean (27.5 billion tons per year) by the alleged evolutionary age of the ocean (1 billion years). During 1 billion years 27.5 billion billion tons of sediment would be produced. This is enough to cover the entire ocean floor with 97,500 feet (18.5 miles) of sediment! In order to produce this colossal quantity of sediment an incredible layer of rock 200,000 feet (38 miles) thick would have to be eroded off the continents. Thus, if we assume the present rate of erosion and exposed continental volumes to have existed over the evolutionist's supposed 1-billion year history of the world ocean, we would expect a staggering layer of sediment almost 100,000 feet thick to cover the sea floor today! Since such a monumental layer does not exist, it seems that evolutionists have grossly overestimated the age of the world ocean.

Another question is in order. How long would it take to deposit the present thickness of sediments on the ocean floor, assuming constant rate of erosion? To obtain the answer we must divide the mass of sediment in the ocean by the yearly rate of sediment input. The calculation is:
^{830 million billion tons}           = 30 million years
^{27.5 billion tons per year}
In only 30 million years, assuming constant rate of erosion, all the ocean sediments could have accumulated. This age does not square with the more-than-1- billion-year age assumed by evolutionary uniformitarian geologists.

While the difficulties encountered with the evolutionary model are readily apparent, the creation model is consistent with the evidence. According to the creation model, the ocean reached its present condition only after the Noachian Flood. Some of the oldest ocean sediments appear to have been deposited rapidly from debris-laden water immediately after the Flood. These sedimentary layers do not require an associated long history of continental erosion.

The most recent ocean sediments appear to have been deposited in the centuries after the Flood when the climate was quite humid and when rates of erosion were significantly greater than at present. Most of the recent ocean sediments are probably not derived from erosion of continental granite, but from sedimentary rocks. Thus, the more re cent ocean sediments appear to be chiefly "recycled" and do not require a long history. It is eminently reasonable to believe in a young ocean with an age of 10,000 years or less.

In order to have an ocean more than a billion years old yet possessing a meager carpet of sediments, the evolutionist must have some process that constantly removes sediments from the sea floor.

The first process that comes to mind is removing sediment by uplifting the sea floor and returning ocean sediments back to the continents. This may ac count for a little ocean sediment loss, but the total amount of sediments on the continents is about equal to the amount on the ocean floor. Adding all the sediments on the present continents to those in the modern ocean would still be far short of the anticipated 100,000 feet of ocean sediments that should exist if the ocean is a billion years old. This process does not solve the evolutionist's dilemma.

The second process is very ingenious. If the major quantity of sediment is not being removed from the ocean by uplifting, then the evolutionist must suppose some process that plunges deep ocean sediments into the depths of the earth! The favorite method is called "sea floor spreading," and suggests that the ocean floor is like a conveyor belt. Ocean crust is assumed to form continuously at the mid-ocean ridges, then it accumulates sediments as it slowly moves away from the ridge, and finally both crust and sediments are destroyed by remelting when dragged below ocean trenches. The best estimates by evolutionary-uniformitarian geologists suggest that about 2.75 billion tons of sediment per year12 are being destroyed by sea floor spreading. This rate is only one tenth of the modern rate of addition of sediments to the ocean. Stated another way, ocean sediments are forming today at a rate ten times faster than they are being destroyed by sea floor spreading! Thus, sea floor spreading is not able to destroy sediments fast enough."
Stuart E. Nevins is assistant professor of geology at Christian Heritage College, San Diego, California.