53005 research outputs found
Sort by
Did Lakes Have an Important Role in the Post-Flood Geomorphology of the Colorado Plateau?
Get PDFThe geology of the Colorado Plateau has been of interest to both conventional and creationist scientists alike because of the Grand Canyon and its implications for earth history. Irrespective of one’s philosophical views, the carving of Grand Canyon must be near the end of geological events in the area because its canyons and river systems dissect most other geological formations including purported lake deposits. There is no agreement upon a mechanism, in either camp, for the carving of Grand Canyon. In recent literature, both camps have contemplated whether Lake Bidahochi (also called Hopi Lake) may have played a role in the origin of the Canyon. The purpose of this effort is to survey some of the purported lakes of the Colorado Plateau area, especially those older than Bidahochi. Lakes can have a significant role in geomorphology as established by well-recognized dam failures of Lake Bonneville (Snake River Canyon) and Missoula (Channeled Scabland), which are just outside of the region of interest. Austin et al. (2020) summarized how Lake Bidahochi may have breached to form the Grand Canyon and Floyd (2025) theorized this lake may have been much bigger than previously thought.
The identification of lakes and their timing in the geological record has been previously considered (Whitmore 2006). As continents and mountains rose after the Flood, basins would have formed in the low spots between mountains. If these basins had no outlet, a lake would have been formed depositing its sediments near the top of the stratigraphic column. Basin-fill deposits caused by tectonics are well-documented throughout the western North American Cordillera (Dickinson et al., 1988). A lake can breach a dam in a variety of ways, including being overfilled with water, tectonic forces, and mass movements—all potential factors in an early post-Flood mountainous region. Generally, lake basins are surrounded by fluvial deposits and then filled with fine grained sediments, having a bullseye pattern of coarse to fine from the edge of the basin toward the center. Lake margins contain features like stromatolites, bird tracks, desiccation features, abundant plants, burrows, terrestrial fossils, and more poorly preserved fish fossils. Deeper waters tend to lack these features and have better preserved fish. Lake deposits generally have all the features of complete ecosystems (biology and geology) as you would expect from an in-situ deposit, which is an unexpected feature of current-transported biology and sediments during the Flood over long distances. Additionally, post-Flood lake basins would typically have unconformities below them (because of tectonic uplift), and be regional deposits compared to the more widespread marine-deposited Flood deposits below them (pre-tectonic uplift).
Using these criteria, potential candidates for post-Flood lake or lake/fluvial systems on or near the Colorado Plateau include (using basin names) San Juan Basin (Paleocene-Eocene: northwest New Mexico); Fossil Basin (Eocene: southwest Wyoming); Greater Green River Basin (Eocene: southwest Wyoming); Uinta Basin (Late Cretaceous to Eocene: northeast Utah); Piceance Creek Basin (Paleocene to Eocene: western Colorado); Claron Basin (Paleocene to middle Oligocene: southwestern Utah); Flagstaff Basin (Paleocene to early Eocene: central Utah); and Bidahochi Basin (Pliocene to Late Neogene: northeastern Arizona, western New Mexico). These basins are of various ages with multiple formations within each but note that the majority of basin-fill is Eocene in age, except for Bidahochi which may overlie some of the eroded remnants of the earlier basins.
It appears that Lakes Missoula, Bonneville, and perhaps Bidahochi had catastrophic failures cutting downstream canyons. Are the sediments of Bidahochi superimposed on previous lake failure topography, post-Flood runoff, or both? If previous lakes on the Colorado Plateau failed (cutting canyons), would there still be a basin to contain Hopi Lake
A Differential Geometry Approach to Fold Belt Reconstruction for Rigorous Flood and post-Flood Erosion Estimates and Isostasy Modeling
Get PDFRapid and regional-scale erosion remains one of the most pivotal yet debated arguments within Flood Geology (Oard and Klevberg, 2008; Whitmore, 2013). This is particularly true in the Flood/post-Flood boundary debate on the regional-scale erosion of hundreds to thousands of meters of stratigraphy across many anticlines and fold systems (Matthews and Oard, 2015; Isaacs, 2020). Even so, no previous studies of erosion of anticlines have developed a rigorous mathematical model for systematic and repeatable modeling of fold surfaces for erosion estimates in data scarce locations. This is in part because fold systems remain one of the most challenging features to mathematically model in structural geology, often requiring up to hundreds of GPS points as well as drill hole data in order to tightly define the shape of the fold (Bergbauer and Pollard, 2004; Carrera et al., 2009; Hou et al., 2023). However, this study proposes a boundary value problem approach for reconstructing symmetric and non-verging anticlines. Through this method, only a single point, the slope of that point (or bed dip), and its position between the adjoining fold maximum (anticline) and minimum (syncline) are needed, making it optimal for reconstructing symmetric and approximately non-verging folds in data scarce locations. Furthermore, the modeled fold system may then be compared to its mapped counterpart to yield margins of error, thereby providing a gauge in the quality of the estimate. In application to a fold in the Mount St. Helens region (Washington), the model described characteristics of the half-wavelength of the fold system within 15% of its mapped extent. The modeled surface resulted in a calculation of 6.16 km of vertical relief eroded from the current topography, a value that could be increased to 10.1 km when transferring the modeled surface to the outermost observed fold surface. In continued research, this approach can be applied to the Colorado Plateau. Such a reconstruction can be integrated with surface topographic data and published isostatic models to investigate the interplay of erosion and tectonics in producing the regional scale erosion of fold belts we observe today. As such, this technique represents a first step towards developing an easily deployable yet rigorous approach to model fold systems for repeatable and consistent erosion estimates.
Bergbauer, S. and Pollard, D.D., 2004, A new conceptual fold–fracture model including pre-folding joints, based on the Emigrant Gap anticline, Wyoming. Geological Society of America Bulletin 116: 294–307.
Carrera, N., J.A. Muñoz, and E. Roca. 2009. 3D reconstruction of geological surfaces by the equivalent dip-domain method: An example from field data of the Cerro Bayo Anticline (Cordillera Oriental, NW Argentine Andes). Journal of Structural Geology 31(12):1573-1585.
Hou, W., Y. Chen, H. Liu, F. Xiao, C. Liu, and D. Wang. 2023. Reconstructing Three-dimensional geological structures by the Multiple-point statistics method coupled with a deep neural network: A case study of a metro station in Guangzhou, China. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 136:105089.
Isaacs, E.A. 2020. Tremendous Erosion of the Cascade Anticlinorium near Mount St. Helens: Part 1: Structure and Calculations. CRSQ 57(1):30-44.
Matthews, J. and M.J. Oard. 2015. Erosion of the Weald, Southeast England Part II: A flood explanation of the mystery and its implications. CRSQ 52(1):22–33.
Oard, M.J. and P. Klevberg. 2008. Green River Formation Very Likely Did Not Form in a Postdiluvial Lake. Answers Research Journal 1:99-108.
Whitmore, J.H. 2013. The potential for and implications of widespread post-Flood erosion and mass wasting processes; in: Horstemeyer, M. (editor), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Creationism (technical symposium sessions), Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA
Establishing Decay Rates for Bone Collagen in Different Organisms Using Fourier Transformed Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy
Get PDFCollagen is the most abundant protein in vertebrates. Due to its compact triple helical structure, collagen is exceptionally stable; however, it is still subject to spontaneous hydrolytic reactions which break peptide bonds and ultimately lead to its degradation. In 1997, Mary Schweitzer published some of the first evidence of extant biological tissue in dinosaur bones (Schweitzer 1997). Since then, numerous studies have reported a range of surviving structures in dinosaur bones including blood vessels, osteocytes, and endogenous proteins such as collagen (Boatman 2019). Based on the assigned ages of these fossils (\u3e65 Ma), the presence of endogenous biomolecules such as collagen was surprising because of theoretical limits on the persistence of proteins through deep time. The presence of such proteins has led to speculation about the processes that regulate collagen decay, yet few studies have measured the decay rate of bone collagen.
The presence and relative abundance of bone collagen can be tested by using Fourier-transformed infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to measure spectral absorbance patterns of powderized bone samples (Scaggion 2024; Thomas 2023). Our lab has pioneered the use of FTIR to examine changes in the amount of bone collagen in artificially degraded samples. By subjecting modern bone fragments to heat, we accelerate the decay rate of bone collagen and can construct decay curves to calculate the rate of collagen degradation at paleontologically relevant temperatures. To better understand the taphonomic differences between animal taxa, we are measuring bone collagen decay in mammalian, avian, and reptilian bones.
By using this artificial degradation protocol, we have calculated the half-life for bone collagen at 25 oC in a neutral aqueous environment to be 1086 yrs and 296 yrs for mammalian and avian bone, respectively. Although it is a stable protein, under these conditions bone collagen levels will drop below 1% in less than 10,000 years. Even at lower temperatures (i.e. 10 oC), the life expectancy of collagen falls far short of the conventional ages assigned to the dinosaur bones in which it is found. While several factors impact collagen decay besides thermal properties, such as the presence of microorganisms which would accelerate decay and the presence of crosslinking which may prolong decay, our data establish a baseline with which to compare future experiments testing proposed models of preservation. If reasonable natural preservation methods cannot be identified which significantly extend the decay rate of collagen, then the assigned ages of these fossils should be re-examined.
References:
Schweitzer, Mary Higby, Craig Johnson, Thomas G. Zocco, John R. Horner, and Jean R. Starkey. 1997. “Preservation of Biomolecules in Cancellous Bone of Tyrannosaurus Rex.” Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 17 (2): 349–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.1997.10010979.
Boatman, Elizabeth M., Mark B. Goodwin, Hoi-Ying N. Holman, Sirine Fakra, Wenxia Zheng, Ronald Gronsky, and Mary H. Schweitzer. 2019. “Mechanisms of Soft Tissue and Protein Preservation in Tyrannosaurus Rex.” Scientific Reports 9 (1): 15678. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51680-1.
Scaggion, Cinzia, Maurizio Marinato, Gregorio Dal Sasso, Luca Nodari, Tina Saupe, Serena Aneli, Luca Pagani, Christiana L. Scheib, Manuel Rigo, and Gilberto Artioli. 2024. “A Fresh Perspective on Infrared Spectroscopy as a Prescreening Method for Molecular and Stable Isotopes Analyses on Ancient Human Bones.” Scientific Reports 14 (1): 1028. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-51518-5.
Thomas, Brian, Kevin Anderson, Imesha De Silva, Guido Verbeck, and Stephen Taylor. 2023. “Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR FT-IR) Spectroscopy Sensitivity to the Thermal Decay of Bone Collagen.” Applied Spectroscopy 77 (1): 53–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/00037028221135634
How was the Ocean Lithosphere Generated during the Flood Cooled to its Present State?
Get PDFAn important aspect of the earth today is the layer of basaltic crust 6-7 km in thickness that forms the igneous seafloor below the earth’s deep ocean basins. All this basaltic ocean crust across about 70% of the earth’s surface appears to have been generated at a mid-ocean ridge, where tectonic plates had pulled apart, basaltic magma had risen to the surface and had cooled and crystalized. A basic aspect of plate tectonics, of course, is that new oceanic plate is produced at mid-ocean ridges where plates are pulling apart and hot rock from below rises to fill the gap between the diverging plates.
A major finding from the 1960’s when radioisotope dating methods were first widely applied to igneous rock samples from the ocean bottom was that the igneous ocean floor rocks everywhere on earth were no older than Mesozoic. That implied that all the continental sediment record containing fossils considered Paleozoic in age had already been deposited before any of today’s basaltic ocean crust had cooled and crystallized. It implied that the entire Atlantic basin had opened since the latest Paleozoic animals had been buried and fossilized.
When understood at face value, Genesis 1-11 reveals that a global Flood cataclysm is responsible for all but the topmost portion of the fossil-bearing portion of Earth’s geological record. This automatically implies that essentially all the Phanerozoic plate motion occurred during that year-long cataclysm. The framework that understands these Phanerozoic plate motions as occurring during this brief interval is known simply as catastrophic plate tectonics (CPT).
One of the major issues that arises in the CPT framework is the need for rapid and extraordinary cooling of the newly forming ocean plates. Silicate rock is a good thermal insulator, and therefore heat diffuses through it very slowly. Using a typical value for the thermal diffusivity of mantle rock of 8x10-7 m2/s, plate cooling time t is given to good approximation by t = 0.01z2, where t is in years and z is in meters ( Sandwell, 2001). From this relation a plate 80 km thick requires 63 million years to cool from the thermal state it had at the spreading ridge from which it originated.
As pointed out in the very first paper proposing CPT (Baumgardner, 1986), extraordinary cooling is required for CPT to be viable. Without enhanced cooling of the newly forming ocean lithosphere, that lithosphere would remain hot and buoyant, the runaway process would stall, and CPT would come to an abrupt halt well before the continents reached their current locations. Since the first paper on CPT in 1986 and until recently, it has been assumed that the required enhanced cooling of the new oceanic lithosphere occurred at a steady and uniform rate and has been modeled simply by increasing the value of the thermal diffusivity by an appropriate factor during the year of the Flood.
Since in the 1960’s, however, data from the petroleum exploration community have revealed that the fossil-bearing sediment record displays a remarkable structure consisting of six massive sediment layer packages known as mega-sequences that are separated from one another by global-scale erosional unconformities. Since 2023 I have realized that a simple causal mechanism for these features exists within the CPT framework (Baumgardner and Navarro, 2023). In contrast to uniform cooling of the new lithosphere, when cooling instead occurs in discrete episodes, it yields abrupt drops in global sea level and produces the spectacular erosional unconformities. This new approach assumes episodes of cooling sufficient to cause a 600 m drop in average sea bottom height and produce the erosional unconformity observed at the base of each of the first five mega-sequences. A final, less abrupt era of cooling beginning at the top of the fifth mega-sequence results in an additional 1,500 m of sea bottom drop that allows the water that had covered the continent surfaces to drain back steadily back into the deepening ocean basins. This talk will describe the latest version of this new perspective.
References
Sandwell, David T. (2001) Cooling of the oceanic lithosphere and ocean floor topography. Retrieved Feb. 28, 2025, from https://topex.ucsd.edu/pub/sandwell/geodynamics_notes/07_1_lithosphere_cooling.pdf
Baumgardner, John R. (1986) Numerical Simulation of the Large-Scale Tectonic Changes Accompanying the Flood, Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism: Vol. 1, Article 56./= / \u3e Available at: https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings/vol1/iss1/56
Baumgardner, John and Navarro, Evan (2023) The Role of Large Tsunamis in the Formation of the Flood Sediment Record, Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism: Vol. 9, Article 13. DOI: 10.15385/jpicc.2023.9.1.22 Available at: https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings/vol9/iss1/1
Ice Sheet Texture and Fabric Reflect a Young-Earth Model
Get PDFIn this paper I analyze data taken from the GRIP ice cores in Greenland particularly in respect to their crystal texture and fabric. These aspects reveal a lot about the formation of the ice sheets, and they have a significant impact on our understanding of ice sheets from a young-earth model. The GRIP cores were taken from the ice divide of the Greenland Ice Sheet, so they show the horizontal layers of the ice sheet rather than the ice as it flows as with other locations.
The first trend worth noting, when looking at thin sections of the cores, is the texture of the grains which seem to separate into three layers. The bottom layer (below roughly 2800 meters) shows a very large grain size that fluctuates and changes rapidly. The next layer up (to a depth of roughly 2000 meters) starts with a relatively large grain size, then falls to a significantly smaller grain size near the top of this layer. The top layer shows roughly the same pattern in that near the bottom of the layer it begins with a relatively large grain size which then gets smaller near the top of the layer. Another trend that can be seen in the GRIP cores is the fabric of the grains. What we see from analyzing core thin sections is that near the bottom of the ice sheet there is generally random orientation of the grains, then the crystal grains preferentially orient toward a vertical c-axis approaching around 2500 meters depth, then they slowly get more randomly oriented up to the surface (Thorsteinsson 1997). It should also be noted that very similar trends can be seen from ice cores taken from Antarctica, however there is much less data from this area.
These layers are interesting because they do not line up with each other perfectly, nor do they line up with any conventional glacial boundaries such as between the Wisconsin and Holocene glaciation. It should be clear, however, that something had to cause these very distinct layers in the ice. Both trends show odd fluctuations at the very bottom of the ice sheet, but this is probably simply caused by interactions with the bedrock directly below the glacier. Therefore, both trends show two seemingly obvious layers, and while the boundaries do not line up exactly at the same depth, I think it still shows a series of events that reveal how the ice sheet grew. I think that the lower layer reflects the initial rapid snowfall that grew the glacier because of the increased snowfall following the Flood. This snowfall would peak around the time that the 2500-meter depth in the ice sheet was forming causing the trend in crystal fabric to that point. Then that initial snowfall continued for a short time up until the formation of the 2000-meter depth in the ice sheet causing the trend of decreasing crystal size up until that point. Then the combination of that initial very rapid snowfall as well as continued atmospheric conditions that create a cold environment caused the rest of the ice age that lasted for a longer period of time than the initial snowfall that created the rest of the ice sheet at a much slower pace in comparison to the first layer, but yet still very rapid in comparison to the conventional view of ice sheet growth. This theory also explains why the data from the upper layer is much more consistent in its trend while the data from the lower layer tends to fluctuate very rapidly.
Much more work needs to be done on this topic from a young-earth creationist perspective because there is not a good model that represents the growth of these ice sheets and accounts for the trends of texture and fabric from a young-earth perspective
Design and Testing of Additively Manufactured Parts
Get PDFAdditive manufacturing technologies have developed substantially in the last decade. More resilient materials, more advanced capabilities in precision and printable geometries, and more economical mechanisms have all been introduced to the market at the industrial scale, for hobbyists, and everywhere in between. The advent of 3D printing has not and likely will not replace traditional manufacturing, but it does complement traditional methods by facilitating the manufacture of complex parts that would be impossible or too expensive to produce otherwise. Given the availability of 3D print technology, new design options become available. New methods and rules of thumb should be developed to make the most of these technologies, to extend but also integrate additively manufactured parts into assembly designs with traditionally manufactured parts as well. This project has explored several design opportunities opened by additive manufacturing technology. In particular, bound metal deposition (BMD) technology is explored to leverage printers typically used for plastics to fabricate complex parts in stainless steel and multi-material parts with either plastics or stainless steel alloys. Extensive material-level testing provides insight into material properties for cured photopolymer resin, facilitating an optimal design study on a wing section airframe, maximizing the strength-to-weight ratio of the structure. The high geometric resolution of resin prints makes possible the fabrication of acoustical materials through printing triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) mathematically designed in Matlab. An impedance tube has been designed and built to test the absorption coefficients for several geometries. Each thrust of the project develops design capabilities unique to additive manufacturing technologies, hopefully leading to further development and testing in future work
Lexical Polysemy and Gradability of Salvation in Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Christian Contexts
Get PDFThe present study investigated the lexical polysemy of the lexeme salvation, specifically within Eastern Orthodox Christian and Protestant Christian communities. This study was conducted in two methodological stages using surveys and interviews. Surveys sought to quantitatively identify and confirm various usages of the term salvation and compare the uses between the two groups being investigated. Twelve surveys were collected from each group and usages were tagged manually based upon a developing rubric. Once all usages were tagged, the proportion of each usage between the two groups was collected and quantified. Open ended responses to the survey were analyzed inductively in order to assess and investigate patterns. In the second stage of research, interviews were conducted with members of each group who had completed a survey. The individual participants were asked specifically about the usages being investigated and their perceptions of them as a form of member checking and refining conclusions from the research. There was substantial difference in the broadness of the semantic ranges of each group– in the senses used (exemplified by the verbal contexts in which each group used salvation ), the relationship to time, and the gradability of salvation as an adjective. These findings were discussed further in regard to prototype theory and how the contexts of use create various degrees of gradability for ‘salvation’. Further research should be done with a larger sample size to further investigate the corporate versus individual senses, as well as investigating other terms shared by these two groups
To Keep In Tune So Long: Worship Wars and the Development of Anglo-American Psalmody, 1560-1800
Get PDF“To Keep In Tune So Long: ‘Worship Wars’ and the Development of Anglo-American Psalmody, 156-1800” details the cross-integration of cultural changes, class relationships, market trends, and Protestant church music through the historical lens of Anglo-American psalmody, the forerunner to the modern canon of English hymnody. This performance presentation will examine the music from a cultural, theoretical, and liturgical perspective, connecting it to the broader discussion of the “worship wars” happening in the current world of church music.
The paper begins with a discussion of the cultural background of this style of church music, especially Al such Psalmes of Dauid (1549), a publication by Thomas Sternold and John Hopkins that was the foundation of the accepted canon of metrical psalms known as the “Old Version.” Composers and publishers such as Thomas Este and Thomas Ravenscroft sought to codify the “common tunes” used in churches based on local traditions and market trends. As psalmody was brought to America, it became a symbol of class status and a tool for propaganda during the American Revolution. Even during the decline of psalmody, composers continued to innovate in word painting and harmony.
The second section will analyze the musical from a theoretical perspective, and highlight four pieces that illustrate the different styles that emerged in the history of Anglo-American psalmody. The first is “Purge Me, O Lord,” by Thomas Tallis, showing how English composers blended motet polyphony and psalm tune homophony. The second is “Cambridge Tune” by Thomas Ravenscroft, illustrating how the common Englishman sang these tunes. The third is “Creation” by William Billings, showing the rugged American style that developed in the 1700s. The final piece is “Kedron” by Amos Pilsbury, showing the intersection between folk music and harmonic development. A small ensemble will perform these pieces.
Finally, this presentation will consider the liturgical angle, connecting the historical treatment of Anglo-American psalmody with the modern “worship wars,” highlighting similarities in generational boundaries and class distinctions, showing how “there is nothing new under the sun,” (Ecclesiastes 1:9, MEV) and that shifts in culture have always impacted Protestant music