The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

Metals are good conductors of both electricity and thermal energy because their structure de-localises or “frees” electrons to readily transport energy. The relevant point is that a change in a bulk property such as thermal conductivity is a consequence of changing the molecular structure, which will inevitably cause changes in other properties such as the thermal expansion coefficient, specific heat capacity and stiffness. In effect, one is creating a new material which may expand, heat up or respond to stress quite differently. Drastically increasing lithospheric thermal conductivity would therefore inevitably cause changes, probably very large changes, in other material properties which we have kept constant in our calculations. Our “enhanced thermal conduction hypothesis” is therefore totally divorced from physical reality as well as demanding an extraordinary surface cooling mechanism. This use of multiple ad hoc hypotheses flies against the principle of Occam’s razor, and we dismiss it as the least favoured of the rapid cooling options considered here. 2. Initial conditions in the simulations For our final spreadsheet calculations (‘Results’ section, part 4) we have assumed a nonuniform temperature distribution at time t = 0 corresponding to the solution of the half space problem after 100 years. This is done in order to start with a thermal boundary layer with a thickness comparable to the mesh spacing, which in turn is intended to bring the calculation closer to mesh convergence than if we assumed a uniform initial temperature distribution.Although the 100 years of virtual ‘prehistory’ is arbitrary and cannot be justified on physical grounds, it does not significantly affect our results and certainly does not affect our main conclusions. In practice the magma rising to the surface will depressurise and cool as it does so, with one or more phase changes involving latent heat transfer and water release on the way. Given the rapidity of this process in a biblically-compatible time frame these changes are likely to be close to adiabatic. Since ocean water circulation within ocean floor basalts is important for present-day cooling, it is likely to have had even more impact during the Flood and immediate post-Flood periods. For these reasons the initial temperature profile will not be uniform. In order to run the calculations with more realistic initial conditions further investigation of the relevant literature and of the physical processes involved is needed. 3. The critical role of the thermal boundary layer Apart from the enhanced conductivity case all the short time scale models we have considered are characterized by a near-surface thermal boundary layer at early times in the simulation. Such a boundary layer is inevitable on short time scales in a heat transfer problem in a poorly conducting medium with one boundary kept at a much lower temperature than the bulk, even in the presence of a strong heat sink. The key feature of a thermal boundary layer is that it is narrow and thus sustains a high conductive heat flux while the plate is shrinking rapidly because of the heat sink. This scenario appears unavoidable in the simple kind of plate model employed here. 4. Suggested further work Even with several freely-chosen input parameters our simple plate models of ocean lithosphere formation within biblical time scales cannot reproduce key observational data. The main underlying problem is the presence of a near-surface thermal boundary layer. It is suggested that this modeling work should be developed further by using more realistic initial conditions and by incorporating several hitherto-neglected effects. These might include, for example, the heat removed by superheated water issuing from spreading centres (possibly corresponding to the ‘fountains of the great deep’, Genesis 7:11; cf. also Baumgardner 2003), phase changes and latent heat transfer during the rising and depressurizing of magma, production of water which stays within the cooling lithosphere, and hydrothermal flows. More sophisticated models accounting for these and possibly other effects may prove to be free of the problems encountered here. CONCLUSION There are some questions relating to origins, such as the origin of life, for which naturalistic scientists cannot produce satisfactory explanations. Ocean-floor cooling is the opposite: in the process of testing that our mathematical tools are fit for the purpose of modeling, we have confirmed that the long-age models are self- consistent, and agree with observations within an acceptable margin. The challenge is to produce a model consistent with observations and a biblical time scale. We have demonstrated that this cannot easily be done on the hypothesis of removing heat from freshly-generated lithosphere over a period of less than a year. The underlying general reason for this is that at early times there is an inevitable near-surface thermal boundary layer which gives rise to high surface heat fluxes, even in the presence of a strong heat sink. Such boundary layers might potentially be avoided if more realistic initial conditions were used and hitherto missing geophysical effects included in our models. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Paul Garner assisted by providing access to some of the background literature cited here. REFERENCES Austin, S.A., J.R. Baumgardner, D.R. Humphreys, A.A. Snelling, L. Vardiman and K.P. Wise. 1994. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A Global Flood Model of Earth History. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism , ed. R. E. Walsh, pp. 609–621. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship. Barnes, R.O. 1980. Thermal consequences of a short time scale for sea- floor spreading, JASA 32:123-125. Baumgardner, J.R. 2003. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: The Physics Behind The Genesis Flood. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism , ed. R. L. Ivey Jr., pp. 113–126. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship. Worraker and Ward ◀ Ocean floor cooling ▶ 2018 ICC 681 Figure 11. Illustrative plot equivalent to Figure 9 but assuming a shorter period of rapid motion, viz. 0.045 year (16.4 days) at 0.733 ms -1 . The approximate match with the reference depth profile is accompanied by an excessive heat flux across a very broad region.