So we see that these thermal expansion cracks add additional evidence to the effects of accelerated nuclear decay that must have occurred after the Day 4 creation of the Moon and Mars. The approximate temperature change can be inferred from the increase in circumference implied by the size of these thermal expansion cracks, and the temperature change needed is quite similar to the temperature change that would take place in a single pulse of approximately 4.5 billion years equivalent of accelerated radioactive decay. B. Major Volcanic Activity on the Moon and Mars There is evidence of a massive amount of volcanism that has taken place since the initial formation of the planets and moons, all of which required significant energy. On the Moon, approximately 16% of the surface is covered with massive basalts that Galileo mistakenly named “seas” or “maria”. (Figure 5) These massive eruptions require a massive amount of heat to melt and transport all of that material from the lunar mantle to the surface – approximately 5.4*1025 Joules to heat and melt all of the lava that fills the maria, according to these authors’ calculations. The most common hypothesis for how these maria formed is that there were huge impacts to form the “impact basins” on the moon, and that the energy from these huge collisions cracked the underlying rock and/or heated it up to the point of melting so that as a direct consequence of the mega impact, these massive volumes of lava came to the surface and filled the massive craters caused by these impacts. However, as we have already noted, the discovery of the thermal expansion cracks all around the perimeter of the maria strongly implies that the source of the heat to melt the lava was internal to the Moon, such as accelerated radioactive decay. Therefore the existence of extensive volcanic flood basalts on the Moon is another example of the heat from radioactive decay causing massive geological events to occur beyond the Earth at some time after Creation Day 3. Incidentally, all that is needed to explain the uneven maria distribution on the Moon is simply an initially non-uniform distribution of radioactive isotopes in the lunar mantle. Some of the largest volcanoes in the solar system are found in the Tharsis region of Mars, near Olympus Mons. (Figure 6) These volcanoes deposited huge amounts of ash in that region (Hynek et. al., 2003). The entire region is considered to be volcanic in origin, and volume of the volcanic rock in the Tharsis region has been calculated to be approximately 1021 kg (Phillips et. al., 2001), (Nimmo & Tanaka, 2005). To heat and melt that much material would require an enormous amount of energy – approximately 2.5*1027 Joules. Within a Young-Earth paradigm, the most likely source of that heat is again accelerated radioactive decay, especially considering the cracks on Mars that are most likely the result of its thermal expansion. And the Tharsis volcanoes are clearly not impact structures but instead clearly resemble shield volcanoes on Earth. This heating must have occurred no earlier than Creation Day 4 when Mars was made and could have occurred during the Flood on Earth. Another interesting feature of Mars is that the entire Tharsis region sticks out so far from the Martian surface and it is a high gravity anomaly. If Mars’ mantle was sufficiently warm during and after the eruptions that it would plastically deform, then the Tharsis region would be in isostatic equilibrium. But if the Tharsis region was in isostatic equilibrium, it would have a lower than average density given its volume. However, its gravity implies a density similar to the rest of the crust. This strongly implies that much of the mantle that it rests upon was solid and relatively cool during the eruption phase. This is consistent with the hypothesis that Mars was created cool throughout, and that an initially inhomogeneous mantle-distribution of radioactive isotopes caused only a portion of the lower mantle to melt during accelerated decay and erupt as a massive volcanic region, leaving most of the mantle cool enough to support the added weight of the lava without plastically deforming. Figure 5. Lunar Maria Figure 6. Topographic Map of Mars’ Tharsis Region STERNBERG Craters and cracks 2023 ICC 14
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