A fascinating new discovery.
Especially interesting to Christians is how this relates to the Great Flood of Noah’s day. The fact of the matter is the utter impossibility of covering the entire earth, even 40 cubits above the highest mountain, with water from the sky above. Can’t be done … even with the so-called (and, unproven) canopy of “water vapor” that supposedly surrounded the earth in Noah’s time.
However, the Bible says that the flood started like this; — “the same day were all the FOUNTAINS OF THE GREAT DEEP broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.”
If the “fountains of the great deep” refers to this massive underground ocean …. how did the author of Genesis know about that??
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Scientists discover an ocean 400 miles beneath our feet that could fill our oceans three times over
After decades of theorizing and searching, scientists are reporting that they’ve finally found a massive reservoir of water in the Earth’s mantle — a reservoir so vast that could fill the Earth’s oceans three times over. This discovery suggests that Earth’s surface water actually came from within, as part of a “whole-Earth water cycle,” rather than the prevailing theory of icy comets striking Earth billions of years ago. As always, the more we understand about how the Earth formed, and how its multitude of interior layers continue to function, the more accurately we can predict the future. Weather, sea levels, climate change — these are all closely linked to the tectonic activity that endlessly churns away beneath our feet.
This new study, authored by a range of geophysicists and scientists from across the US, leverages data from the USArray — an array of hundreds of seismographs located throughout the US that are constantly listening to movements in the Earth’s mantle and core. After listening for a few years, and carrying out lots of complex calculations, the researchers believe that they’ve found a huge reserve of water that’s located in the transition zone between the upper and lower mantle — a region that occupies between 400 and 660 kilometers (250-410 miles) below our feet. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1253358 – “Dehydration melting at the top of the lower mantle”]
As you can imagine, things are a little complex that far down. We’re not talking about some kind of water reserve that can be reached in the same way as an oil well. The deepest a human borehole has ever gone is just 12km — about half way through the Earth’s crust — and we had to stop because geothermal energy was melting the drill bit. 660 kilometers is a long, long way down, and weird stuff happens down there.
Basically, the new theory is that the Earth’s mantle is full of a mineral called ringwoodite. We know from experiments here on the surface that, under extreme pressure, ringwoodite can trap water. Measurements made by the USArray indicate that as convection pushes ringwoodite deeper into the mantle, the increase in pressure forces the trapped water out (a process known as dehydration melting). That seems to be the extent of the study’s findings. Now they need to try and link together deep-Earth geology with what actually happens on the surface. The Earth is an immensely complex machine that generally moves at a very, very slow pace. It takes years of measurements to get anything even approaching useful data. [Read: Is earthquake prediction finally a reality?]
With all that said, there could be massive repercussions if this study’s findings are accurate. Even if the ringwoodite only contains around 2.6% water, the volume of the transition zone means this underground reservoir could contain enough water to re-fill our oceans three times over. I’m not saying that this gives us the perfect excuse to continue our abuse of Earth’s fresh water reserves, but it’s definitely something to mull over. This would also seem to discount the prevailing theory that our surface water arrived on Earth via a bunch of icy comets.
Finally, here’s a fun thought that should remind us that Earth’s perfect composition and climate is, if you look very closely, rather miraculous. One of the researchers, talking to New Scientist, said that if the water wasn’t stored underground, “it would be on the surface of the Earth, and mountaintops would be the only land poking out.” Maybe if the formation of Earth had be a little different, or if we were marginally closer to the Sun, or if a random asteroid didn’t land here billions of years ago… you probably wouldn’t be sitting here surfing the web.
Very intriguing: thanks!
Stucky-If the “fountains of the great deep” refers to this massive underground ocean …. how did the author of Genesis know about that??
Because the flood happened long, maybe centuries before the author recorded it?
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig12/velikovsky3.1.1.html
Deluge
by Immanuel Velikovsky
The Immanuel Velikovsky Archive
The scriptural deluge is regarded by historians and critical exegetes as a legendary product. “The legend of a universal deluge is in itself a myth and cannot be anything else.” (1) It is “most nakedly and unreservedly mythological.”
The tradition of a universal deluge is told by all ancient civilizations, and also by races that never reached the ability to express themselves in the written symbols of a language. It is found all over the world, on all continents, on the islands of the Pacific and Atlantic, everywhere. Usually it is explained as a local experience carried from race to race by word of mouth. The work of collating such material has repeatedly been done, and it would only fatigue the reader were I to repeat these stories as told in all parts of the world, even in places never visited by missionaries.(2)
The rest of the collected traditions are also not identical in detail, and are sometimes very different in their setting from the Noah story, but all agree that the earth was covered to the mountain tops by the water of the deluge coming from above, and that only a few human beings escaped death in the flood. The stories are often accompanied by details about a simultaneous cleavage of the earth.(3)
In pre-Columbian America the story of a universal flood was very persistent; the first world-age was called Atonatiuh, or the age that was brought to its end by a universal deluge. This is written and illustrated in the ancient codices of the Mexicans and was narrated to the Spaniards who came to the New Continent.(4) The natives of Australia, Polynesia, and Tasmania, discovered in the seventeenth century, related almost identical traditions.(5)
Clay tablets with inscriptions concerning the early ages and the deluge were found in Mesopotamia. Their similarity to the biblical account, and to the story of the Chaldean priest Berosus(6) who lived in the Hellenistic age, caused a great sensation at the end of the last century and the beginning of the current one. On this sensational discovery was based the sensational pamphlet Babel und Bibel by Friedrich Delitsch (1902) who tried to show in it that the Hebrews had simply borrowed this story, along with many others, from the Babylonian store of legends.
But if here and there the story of the flood could be said to have been borrowed by the scriptural writer from the Babylonians, and by some natives from the missionaries, in other cases no such explanation could be offered. The indigenous character of the stories in many regions of the world makes the borrowing theory seem very fragile.
Geologists see vestiges of diluvial rains all over the world; folklorists hear the story of a universal flood wherever folklore is collected; historians read of a universal flood in American manuscripts, in Babylonian clay tablets and in the annals of practically all cultured peoples. But the climatologists make it very clear that even should the entire water content of the atmosphere pour down as rain, the resulting flood could not have covered even the lowland slopes, far less the peaks of the mountains, as all accounts insist that this deluge did.
References
A. Loisy, Les mythes babyloniens et les premiers chapitres de la genese (Paris, 1901).
R. Andree, Die Flutsagen (1891); Sir J.G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament (London, 1918); M. Winternitz, Die Flutsagen des Alterthums und des Natuervoelker
E.g., the Malaya story in Andree, Die Flutsagen, p. 29. s
[Cf. the Vatican Codex, first published by Humboldt, and the accounts of Ixtlilxochitl and Veytia among others.]
[Cf. A. C. Caillot, Mythes, legendes, et traditions des Polynesiens (Paris, 1914); H. H. Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood (London, 1887), pp. 455ff.]
Berosus’ story of the Deluge is quoted in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica Bk. IX, ch. 12, and in Cyril’s Contra Julianum, Bk. I.
Reprinted from the The Immanuel Velikovsky Archive.
@flash: I thought you were brighter than that? That water – if it does exist was encapsulated early in the earth’s geologic history – billions of years ago – long before humanoids.
flash
I concur.
Still, it’s pretty damn amazing that a very very long time ago, some hooman seemingly knew about these oceans under earth’s crust …. something we just (re)discovered.
Dutchman says -That water – if it does exist was encapsulated early in the earth’s geologic history – billions of years ago – long before humanoids.
And, you know this for a fact? …no civilizations existed, met natural calamities. got completely wiped out and all knowledge of their’s and their existence gone forever? Really , you should refrain from applying too much authority to your very limited intelligence.
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
–HERBERT SPENCER
Stuck, I firmly believe that there is some smidgeon of truth to be gleaned form all mythology.
Before the so-called age of information , people were forced to remember entire volumes of ancestral history, most told as epic tales, i.e. myths, in order to pass tribal lore to the next generation.We should never discount what we misunderstand as fantasy just becasue it’s being portrayed as myth. Interesting subject…glad you posted it.
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I thought the flood was because people were driving V8 engines and they melted the polar ice caps. Noah saw how they’d fucked up the Earth so he went green and only used wind power.
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Seriously though, this stuff fascinates me, just when we think we know everything, something like this surfaces while it remains far below the surface, and still remains unknown.
Out here on the Left Coast I say “Drill Baby Drill”
The bible is God’s word. What did you all expect ? Now it is archeological and historically accurate as well.You think God was bluffing about Hell o r does he once again know .
@flash: Forget about your superstitions – the earth is about 12,800 km in diameter. The water (if it does exist) is 600 km beneath the crust. That’s a huge mass – there is no way that water is going to ‘come to the surface’ and leave a void between the mantle and the earth’s core. We’re talking creation of the planet.
Do you really think god lives in the sky, sits in a big chair, is white, has a beard, wears a bathrobe?
Earth Under Fire
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/182-9699423-8096516?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=laviolette#/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=laviolette%2C+paul&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Alaviolette%5Cc+paul
Dullardman -Do you really think god lives in the sky, sits in a big chair, is white, has a beard, wears a bathrobe?
No , but that’s irrelevant and sophistry . What we don’t know is what cataclysmic events, perhaps of stellar origins shaped the the earth as we know it today…now kindly take your closed and thus immature brain and fuck off into the nether regions of your dirty diaper strewn playpen.
Thanks for sharing this Stuck.
I’ve been intrigued by the numerous across cultural/world ancient stories, many of which were co-opted by the Jews and made into God’s stories.
A few years ago there was a theory circulating that the reason the Great Flood rose so high on the earth’s mountains, especially Mt.Ararat, was that they were much, much smaller 4000 years ago.
I did a few computations and came up with the mountain would have to be growing around 1.5 feet a year at a minimum. I still cannot find historical documents to back up the “fact” that the mountain was growing at such a pace.
Whom knows what happened when Pangea split up, or how it did. This trapped water may, or may not have anything to do with it.
Such is “science.” The biggest takeaway for me is that, once again, the “proven,” “factual,” and “achieved consensus,” isn’t.
Thanks again.
This is the fabled “Shangrila” of Lost Horizon. It is entirely possible that there is a paradise below but could it also be Hell? I’m not willing to find out.
Apparently many here haven’t heard of the geological activty called “subduction.”
Fascinating article, though as a Bible believer, I do think there is another factor worth considering in addition to these underground seas. I’ve taught Genesis verse by verse on more than one occasion, and there is a potential extra-terrestrial source of at least some of the water in the Genesis flood hinted at in the scriptures. That water poured down from off the earth, and then while Noah and his family were bobbing around like a cork, somehow returned to its point of origin.
Gosh, I thought that when the polar caps and glaciers all melted from global warming it would be “Waterworld.” You mean that isn’t true? lol
I read this write-up with great interest. the matter of earth-generated water is really not as mysterious as it may be made out to appear. in the past, it has been well discussed in the scientific literature and I, for one, have written about it and researched it.
as one example of such scholarship, readers of this post are invited to refer to the article in Infinite Energy magazine (2000) on the subject matter of earth-generated water and its importance in regional security and urban planning.
a reference to Michael Salzman’s book, New Water for a Thirsty World, should understand that much has happened since the publication of that book which developments either have not been written up in the scientific literature, or, if any part of it have been written up, these write-ups are in fragments and appear in disparate parts of global research and have not been organized to reflect the current state of the related science.
[img]http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue33/breakingthroughwater.html[/img][img]http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue33/breakingthroughwater.html[/img]
http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue33/breakingthroughwater.html
morad
Water is just two gases (Hydrogen and Oxygen) that, in the right proportion and configuration, amazingly produce water. Water is wet. Sometimes it’s a solid. Sometimes it’s a gas. What else is there to know?
I must say, I’ve never given water much more thought than that.
And then I read your article. To quote First Science Officer Spock — “Fascinating!!!”. How little we know about that substance. Great read. Thanks for posting!
thank you for your kind reply. the implications of what I had written fifteen years ago is complex and complicated. I had written four CA governors in the past (Wilson, Deukmejian, Davis, and Schwarzenegger), suggesting a different approach to managing this important resource and for the benefit of the public AND private enterprise.
have sent incumbent a copy of such materials, too. doubt that it will resonate and even if it does, that there is a political will to proceed.
my suggestions appear to have fallen on deaf ears. kind regards and best wishes.