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
Figure 263. Tidal Pinch. (Not to scale.) When considering tidal pumping, think of the Earth rotating under the Moon almost once a day, rather than the Moon orbiting the Earth about every 30 days. 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 as used today in buildings. [See pages 477–483.]
On page 541, the Hebrew word raqia, which means a hammered-out or pressed-out solid, was identified as the earth’s crust. Pillars were the thousands of contacts where the sagging crust pressed against the chamber floor and generated gigantic amounts of heat by cyclic compression twice a day. That heat engine drove the watering system for the preflood earth, as explained in “Tidal Pumping” on page 479. Therefore, raqia—a pressed out solid—seems an apt, descriptive word for the crust.
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. Therefore, almost no shearing stresses acted on the base of the crust, allowing it to flex more easily from a sphere to an ellipsoid (and back again) 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 the confined subterranean water was always squeezed (pumped) by increasing pressure from low to high tide, thereby providing additional lift to the crust at 12 o’clock. Today, Earth’s crust is tightly anchored to the mantle, so only small ocean tides are produced.
The pillars were also compressed and stretched twice a day by a second form of tidal pumping. The Moon’s gravity lifted some of the weight of the crust off the pillars at 12 o’clock and partially lifted the inner Earth off the compressed pillar at 6 o’clock. This, in turn, compressed the pillars at 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock. Today, even without a decoupling layer of subterranean water, the Global Positioning System can measure solid tides1 on Earth up to 40 centimeters (1.31 feet).2 At mid-latitudes, solid tides have amplitudes of about a foot,3 but with a decoupling layer of water, the crust’s preflood deflections would have been much greater than 40 centimeters, so the repeatedly compressed and hammered pillars would have produced enormous amounts of heat.4
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 maintained the subterranean water’s supercritical temperature that was established as the foundation of the Earth’s crust was established during the creation week. [See Figure 237 on page 486.]
Mention has frequently been made in this book about how the supercritical water steadily dissolved certain minerals in the granite crust, such as quartz crystals which constituted about 27% of the granite by volume. At some point the increasing loss of heat by the water rising by natural convection through the porous lower crust and evaporating Earth’s ground water equaled the heat generated by tidal pumping. At that point, steady state was reached and temperatures and pressures did not change. [See “Tidal Pumping” on page 479.]
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.1 Enceladus’ heat produces a jet of water plasma that the orbiting Cassini spacecraft passed through and measured several times. [See Figure 190 on page 353.] A layer of water under the crusts of both moons explains the great heat produced.2,3 Other evidence also supports the presence of those layers of liquid water.4 [See page 353.]
Heat on Enceladus and Europa is generated by the flexing of their floating ice crusts. Because Earth’s preflood crust was composed of granite, not floating ice, pillars were present. [For details on why, how, and when pillars formed, see pages 477–483.] Therefore, the second form of tidal pumping acted continuously on pillars before the flood and produced much more heat than that produced elsewhere 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 119–125.
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.