Monday, February 17, 2020

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