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Meteorite Impacts - 11/4/2006 11:44:42 AM
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scutus
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For those of you who think the world is geologically young e.g. <6000 years.
How do you explain meteorite impacts? There are over 150 major impact sites found on Earth, all or most of them dated by geologists to be much, much older than 6000 years. So if the Earth is only 6000 years old, then all 150 major meteorite impacts must have happened since the creation of the world. The combined impacts are powerful enough to destroy all or most multicellular life on Earth. So how did life survive?
Can't have happened pre-Fall. Obviously, the Fall was 'perfect' and you can't have apocalyptic, extremely destructive asteroids raining in on your paradise.
So some time in the last 6000 years, when man was cast out of Eden and was walking the Earth, the biggest asteroids in Earth's history were impacting.
Pff, so what you say? A little asteroid impact can't hurt. Or...can it?
The Hiroshima bomb was rated at 15 kilotons of energy and it pulverised the city.
The largest nuclear bomb ever made was the Tsar Bomba. It is the most powerful weapon humanity has ever created. It rates at 50 megatons (millions of tonnes of TNT). Nuclear weapons at about 10 megatons or less will utterly destroy any city on Earth.
The Chicxulub Crater located on the Yucatan Peninsula is at least partly responsible for the mass extinction at the end of the Late Cretaceous period. The crater is 170 km in diameter. The asteroid that created it was about 10 km in diameter. It struck with the estimated energy of 15 billion Hiroshima bombs. Or about 100 million megatons. Immediately, immense firestorms, titanic tsunamis and indescribably destructive hurricane-force winds (as well as super-hurricanes themselves) swept across the world. The energy released was so great, that the ejecta composed of billions of tonnes of rock and soil rose above the Earth's atmosphere, and covered the world. For up to 2 years, the dust blocked the sunlight. For some time, it was too dark to see anything. Imagine the immense and immediate impact it had on plants that needed photosynthesis. Imagine the impact on the phytoplankton in the seas, the basis of the marine food web. Temperatures dropped below freezing in many places around the world.
That was the K-T extinction event. And that was apparently, only 6000 years ago according to YECs.
But there were even bigger impact events.
The Wilkes Land Crater, found in Antarctica is hypothesised to be an impact crater. It is about 500 km wide. The asteroid that created this crater would need to be six times bigger than the Chicxulub asteroid. It could have contributed to the biggest mass-extinction of all time that occurred in the Permian-Triassic boundary, some 250 million years ago. Using this impact calculator: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
I get something around the order of 1.03 x 10^10 MegaTons TNT. But my maths is abhorrent. I don't think it's right. 1.03 x 10^10 is 10 300 000 000, but that can't be right.
Distance from Impact: 100.00 km = 62.10 miles
Projectile Diameter: 65000.00 m = 213200.00 ft = 40.37 miles
Projectile Density: 1500 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 20.00 km/s = 12.42 miles/s
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 1500 kg/m3
Target Type: Crystalline Rock
Still, I don't even want to think about the apocalyptic effects of this one. If this crater is the real deal of course.
But wait. There are more:
How about the Vredefort crater? The crater is 300 km wide, nearly double the Chicxulub crater's width. It is the oldest and biggest (verified) crater on Earth. At the least, it is a 100 million megaton event. More likely, it is on the order of twice that, but the impact was so long ago that it is difficult to be certain.
The second largest confirmed crater is at Sudbury in Canada. The asteroid that caused it was 10 km in diameter (similar to the K-T extinction event). The crater is 260 km wide. Still yet larger than the Chicxulub crater. It hit nearly 2 billion years ago.
These are all extremely large meteorite impacts, yet there are over a hundred other major ones that we can still observe on the Earth's surface.
So how do YECs explain all this mass devastation? How did life and more importantly, man survive the repeated impacts of a hundred and fifty major asteroids that released hundreds to tens of millions of megatons? Why have a Flood in the first place? Why not use these asteroids?
More info on the apocalyptic nature of just one of these world-screwy-uppy asteroids: http://users.tpg.com.au/users/horsts/climate.htm
The effects are GLOBAL. MASS EXTINCTIONS FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS.
We're also forgetting the impacts that hit the sea floor but were subducted under and so we cannot see their craters anymore. That boosts the numbers of impacts up, although by how much can't be said. But consider that most of the planet is covered in water.
< Message edited by scutus -- 11/4/2006 12:13:22 PM >
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/4/2006 7:34:23 PM
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Quasar6
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quote:
Why have a Flood in the first place? Why not use these asteroids?
Because we can come up with a way to survive a flood (build a big boat) but we can't come up with a way to survive half the earths surface being turned into a fiery hell hole (after the massive shockwave, which would sythe off just about everything) and a massive dust cloud blocking out all sunlight for a couple years, dropping world temperature to record breaking levels everywhere (this is after the global burning rain, by the way)...
Not to mention the tidal-waves, hypercanes (like hurricanes, but more so), radiation, etc...
You know, that is a very good question. It also raises philosophical issues about the nature of God. BOOM! BURN! FREEZE! DIE! Hardly the actions of a merciful creator.
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/4/2006 9:28:23 PM
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Quasar6
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Bump, I say to you! And Bump again!
Come on guys! Afraid?
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/4/2006 10:10:18 PM
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Quasar6
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Again with the bumping! Hooray for Zoidberg!
Seriously guys, why won't you answer?
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/4/2006 10:42:24 PM
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Quasar6
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Oh come on guys! This is just sad! Who can explain how life survived all those meteorite impacts in the last 6000 years?
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/4/2006 10:46:16 PM
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PhiloKGB
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Quasar6
quote:
Why have a Flood in the first place? Why not use these asteroids?
Because we can come up with a way to survive a flood (build a big boat) but we can't come up with a way to survive half the earths surface being turned into a fiery hell hole (after the massive shockwave, which would sythe off just about everything) and a massive dust cloud blocking out all sunlight for a couple years, dropping world temperature to record breaking levels everywhere (this is after the global burning rain, by the way)...
Not to mention that ancient Mesopotamians were quite familiar with wide-ranging floods, and had a decidedly limited concept of the world.
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/4/2006 10:49:10 PM
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shouldknowbetter
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I'm not in the young earth crowd... But your question isn't asnwerable...
All the things you list from prior to 6000 years ago simply can't have had anything to do with recent history. Since they never happened since adam then nothing had to bother surviving them...
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Seek Wisdom from God in prayer and scripture
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/4/2006 11:00:09 PM
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scutus
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Needless to say, this is just one evidence from literally thousands and thousands that go directly against a global Flood. IT NEVER HAPPENED. Geologists would know!
6000 years divided by 170 land meteorite impacts = a meteorite impact every 35 years. So every couple of decades, a big meteorite hits somewhere in the world. Every couple of centuries, a mass-extinction type asteroid hits the Earth. Organisms are set alight, broken in half, drowned, frozen and starved. The Permian asteroid kills off 95% of all living creatures.
This is what you get when you spread the asteroid impacts out evenly over 6000 years.
But that's not logical. If a major asteroid kept hitting the Earth regularly all the way to the present, we'd know about it. More importantly, the Ancient Egyptians and the Ancient Chinese and the Ancient Indians would have known about it. They lived >3000 years ago. So it must have happened in a short stretch of time when all these ancient civilisations didn't exist, but still after the creation of the Earth.
So you're looking at 2000 years of free-time for the asteroids to hit the Earth, without any major civilisations writing about it. Of course, we're forgetting the Australian Aboriginals, who lived in Australia for 60,000 years. And there's a big, BIG (claimed) crater in Australia called the Bedout crater. It is a contender for the mass extinction event at the end of the Permian. The crater is 200 km across. Still bigger than the Chicxulub. You'd think the Australian would notice that earth-shattering asteroid and pass that knowledge down through rock drawings or oral traditions. Of course, there's a high probability that they'd be DEAD. The Bedout impact would be absolutely devastating. So sometime in the last 6000 years, an impact bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs hit Australia and wiped out the Australian Aboriginals. But sometime in the last 3000 years, new Australian Aboriginals migrated over from some Pacific Islands and colonised their ancient land? Does this make sense AT ALL?
Getting back to the main point. Ignoring the Australians, we have 2000 years (at best) of free-time before someone writes or draws about the mass shower of life-ending asteroids.
That also brings up the interesting question of why all the asteroids fell in a short stretch of time but not any more. What stopped them?
Explain how life survived when all 170 major asteroids hit within a 2000 year stretch.
[edit] Actually, lets bump up those 170 asteroids to 300. We're forgetting the ocean-hitting asteroids of course.
[edit] And if it hit all at once...not much better. The effects of one mass extinction event is staggering, but add half a dozen more at the same time and...well, game over.
< Message edited by scutus -- 11/4/2006 11:08:57 PM >
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/4/2006 11:23:36 PM
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scutus
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Five impact sites are more than 100 km wide. Including Chicxulub.
Twenty impact sites are 40 km or more wide, including the five +100 km craters.
Please, oh please. Someone explain this to me.
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/4/2006 11:27:42 PM
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jmeert
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quote:
ORIGINAL: scutus
Five impact sites are more than 100 km wide. Including Chicxulub.
Twenty impact sites are 40 km or more wide, including the five +100 km craters.
Please, oh please. Someone explain this to me.
Time, my dear boy time. Along with tectonic healing.
Cheers
Joe Meert
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 1:17:34 AM
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Quasar6
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Are There Any Young Earth Creationists Out There!...
... out there ...
... out there ...
... out there ...
_____________________________
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
"If Americans descended from Europeans, why are there still Australians?" Quasar
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 1:58:37 AM
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scutus
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But wait...it's not only the meteorite impacts that happened in the last 2000 years. It was the SUPERVOLCANOES TOO! And the Deccan Flows! And the Ice Age! And the separation of Pangaea!
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 2:01:11 AM
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Quasar6
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
"If Americans descended from Europeans, why are there still Australians?" Quasar
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 2:04:06 AM
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scutus
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Woops, I should add that creationists not only believe the last Ice Age occurred within the last 6000 years, but also the many, many, many ice ages that the Earth has gone through. Don't forget the Snowball Earth scenario. That obviously happened in the last 6000 years.
quote:
The Snowball Earth hypothesis attempts to explain a number of phenomena noted in the geological record by proposing that an ice age that took place in the Neoproterozoic was so severe that the Earth's oceans froze over completely, with only heat from the Earth's planetary core causing some liquid water to persist under ice more than two kilometers thick.
If the Snowball Earth hypothesis is of course, correct.
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 2:25:37 AM
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Quasar6
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Just goes to show how powerful God truly is, if he can have protected us from all of that, and at the same time made it so that we didn't notice until now.
_____________________________
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
"If Americans descended from Europeans, why are there still Australians?" Quasar
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 3:34:07 AM
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scutus
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Lets talk a bit about supervolcanoes. Supervolcanoes are volcanoes that produce the biggest sorts of eruption on Earth. These are absolutely titanic eruptions of tens of billions of tonnes of ash, rock and sulphuric acid. It's hard to get your head around the idea of how mind-numbingly powerful these eruptions are compared to normal volcanoes. It's like comparing firecrackers to nuclear weapons.
There is a lake in Indonesia, called Toba. It is a supervolcano and it erupted 75,000 years ago.
Mount St Helens produced 0.2 cubic kilometres of ash.
The largest historical eruption was Tambora. It killed tens of thousands of people and the ash released caused the global climate to swing: quote:
The eruption created global climate anomalies in the following years. 1816 became known as the Year Without a Summer because of the extreme weather impact on North America and Europe. The global summer temperature dropped 0.5°C (32.9°F) below average, snows fell in midsummer and Europe experienced an unusually stormy winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, agricultural crops failed and livestock died. It was the worst famine of the century.[3] It produced about 40 cubic kilometres of ash.
Mount Toba produced...800 cubic kilometres of ash alone. Its effects on fledgling humanity was devastating to say the least. Even though Toba is in Indonesia, you can find ash all the way over in India that is up to your ankles. In some places, it's 6 metres.
The nuclear winter type scenario that resulted from the eruption and the amount of sulphur and ash that would block the sunlight, decreased the global average temperature by 3 to 3.5 degrees for a couple of years. Crops would die. Just one centimetre of ash can ruin agricultural crops in their growing season. Genetic evidence suggests that the human species underwent a severe genetic bottleneck at that time. It's been suggested that between 1000-10000 humans survived the event. We are all descendants of those survivors.
Geologists call the amount of matter produced 'magnitude' and the rate of magma eruption 'intensity'.
Vesuvius erupted 100,000 cubic metres of magma per second over 24 hours. That is mind-boggling. Yet supervolcanoes can produce a hundred million cubic metres per second. Like I said before, it is hard to even imagine the sheer destructive force that a supervolcano has.
So Toba punted humanity to the edge of extinction. Yet it is still small fries to larger supervolcanic eruptions that happened hundreds of thousands of years ago.
For example, the Yellowstone Caldera. It measures a staggering 72 kilometres long and 55 kilometres wide. It has undergone three seperate supervolcanic explosions, the most recent of which is 640,000 years ago.
In the latest event, 1000 cubic kilometres of material was released.
The second eruption sent up 250 cubic kilometres and it was about 1.2 million years ago.
The biggest and first eruption produced 2500 cubic kilometres about 2.2 million years ago.
All three eruptions sent up vast, vast amounts of ash that covered states as far away as California and Iowa, choking animals and plants to death. All three eruptions would release vast amounts of gases like sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, affecting the global climate. The effects would be similar to the Toba supervolcano, except even worse. If it happened now, there's a real chance that the human species could be threatened as agriculture collapses and millions (possibly a billion) people die from starvation.
Of course, we're forgetting the immediate impacts of the IMMENSE pyroclastic flows that would swallow up all living creatures in their path. Nothing living and I mean nothing, can survive these vast clouds of hot ash that can travel at 100m/s.
Gases, dust and ash reflect solar radiation back into space or absorb the heat. Global winter will arrive for years. The Toba eruption alone caused changes in the atmosphere for 6 years, which we can check with ice cores.
These are just two supervolcanoes. There are more:
quote:
Many other supermassive eruptions have also occurred in the geological past. Those listed below measured 7 on the VEI scale. Most of these were larger than Tambora's eruption in 1815, which was the largest eruption in recorded history.
* Aira Caldera, Kyūshū, Japan - 22,000 years ago (110 km³)
* Aso, Kyūshū, Japan - four large explosive eruptions between 300,000 to 80,000 years ago (Total volume 600 km³)
* Kikai Caldera, Ryūkyū Islands, Japan - 6,300 years ago (150 km³ (bulk volume))
* Lake Taupo, North Island, New Zealand - 181 AD (100 km³)
* Long Valley Caldera, California, United States - 760,000 years ago (600 km³)
* Valle Grande, New Mexico, United States - 1.12 million years ago (~600 km³)
* Bruneau-Jarbidge, Idaho, United States - 10-12 million years ago (>250 km³) (responsible for the Ashfall Fossil Beds 1,600 km to the east[1])
How do young earth creationists fit these supervolcano eruptions into 6000 years? And how did humanity survive when they had to contend with massive asteroids too at the same time?
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 4:05:45 AM
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tony.nz
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I think that their standard answer to these things is that God just created the earth (and the heavens) to make it appear really old.
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 5:22:40 AM
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shernren
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Don't be silly. Of course God created the earth with all those impact craters in place. And He made them look especially spectacular, too, so that evolution would be really believable, so that He'd have a surefire way of separating the True Christians(TM) from all the evolutionistic infidels and compromisers at the End of Time.
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... in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from sensory experiences and necessary demonstrations ...
Galileo, 1615
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 11:10:34 AM
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PhiloKGB
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tony.nz
I think that their standard answer to these things is that God just created the earth (and the heavens) to make it appear really old.
Yes, the trickster God whom Bill Hicks was so fond of.
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 4:43:06 PM
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shouldknowbetter
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quote:
ORIGINAL: unclemonkey
ORIGINAL: scutusquote:
How do you explain meteorite impacts?
Hey, this is a neat thread. True colors are showing all over the place.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/0524impact.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v13/i1/crater.asp
Inteseting but what does the Bible really say?.....
I base my belief on the Bible and I don't see YEC as valid based on the text of the creation account itself... Which by the way was never written to expound a scientific review of the event... Much of this YEC stuff going around is based on wrong assumptions about what the Bible says and not what the Bible really teaches...
How does a person account for the overwhelming stack of evidence that seems to discount the Bible story? Well it doesn't discount the real Bible account... Only what men wrongly claim is the Biblical account...
_____________________________
Seek Wisdom from God in prayer and scripture
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 5:57:21 PM
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Quasar6
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quote:
Hey, this is a neat thread. True colors are showing all over the place.
Well, what do you expect if you just leave us chat among ourselves?
PS: Neither of your two links give any explanation whatsoever for how life survived over 170 impacts (If some of them are "Verneshot explosion's", it makes no difference, they'd have much the same effect on life), AND the super-volcano's going off on the other side of the world (Its true, both craters have a period of super-volcanic activity, dated at the same time, on the opposite side of the earth. Its generally believed that the massive seismic waves created by the impact passed around and through the earth, meeting each other on the opposite side and destabilising the local volcanos).
This sounds like Armageddon type stuff, but according to you guys it happened at most 6000 years ago, and humans survived it.
_____________________________
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
"If Americans descended from Europeans, why are there still Australians?" Quasar
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 7:41:40 PM
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unclemonkey
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ORIGINAL: Quasar6quote:
This sounds like Armageddon type stuff, but according to you guys it happened at most 6000 years ago, and humans survived it.
I agree, only eight humans survived it. BTW, according to us guys it was aproximately 4400 years ago.
_____________________________
"For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me." - John 5:46
Visit my home church.
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 7:44:45 PM
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jmeert
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quote:
ORIGINAL: unclemonkey
ORIGINAL: Quasar6quote:
This sounds like Armageddon type stuff, but according to you guys it happened at most 6000 years ago, and humans survived it.
I agree, only eight humans survived it. BTW, according to us guys it was aproximately 4400 years ago.
That's a nice belief, but there is nothing in the geologic record to support your view as noted by catastrophists some 150-200 years ago. The intervening years have not been kind to your fantasy either.
Cheers
Joe Meert
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RE: Meteorite Impacts - 11/5/2006 8:02:29 PM
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Quasar6
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So... Noah built a wooden boat, got on and hoped for the best. Then:
The entire earth was literally carpet bombed with massive rocks, which caused all the supervolcano's to let off at the same time. Not only would such an event burn up the atmospheres supply of oxygen, it would create tidal waves possibly as high as Everest. The massive shockwaves would have torn apart anything exposed, the country-sized lava flows would have fried everything left and to top it all off you are then looking at possibly centuries of nuclear winter because of the global dust cloud.
All fine so far... God protected them (sort of demolishes you're "how did the plants survive" theory, though). So they go out into... well, that depends...
If the short term aftereffects are still continuing... burning rain, acute radiation poisoning, earthquakes, lava-flows...
If the short term stuff has stopped... close to absolute-zero temperatures, total darkness, ash everywhere (volcanic ash is made up of tiny, razor sharp particles, which damage the lungs and eyes, causing blindness and suffocation)... Disease from the corpses everywhere...
Need I continue?
_____________________________
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
"If Americans descended from Europeans, why are there still Australians?" Quasar
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