Today I have even less respect on AiG after checking up on the Nature article they cited in
Sedimentation Experiments: Nature Finally Catches Up! Quite frankly, they were plain silly to cite Makse
et al as support, and were either clueless or deliberately deceptive.
The abstract alone provides enough fodder for reply:
Granular materials [1-5] segregate according to grain size when exposed to periodic perturbations such as vibrations [6-12]. Moreover, mixtures of grains of different sizes can also spontaneously segregate in the absence of external perturbations: when such a mixture is simply poured onto a pile, the large grains are more likely lo be found near the base, while the small grains are more likely to be near the top [13-20]. Here we report another size-separation effect, which arises when we pour a granular mixture between two vertical plates: the mixture spontaneously stratifies into alternating layers of small and large grains whenever the large grains have larger angle of repose than the small grains. We find only spontaneous segregation, without stratification, when the large grains have smaller angle of repose than the small grains. The stratification is related to the occurrence of avalanches: during each avalanche, the grains separate into a pair of static layers, with the small grains forming a sublayer underneath the layer of large grains.
(
Spontaneous stratification in granular mixtures Hernan A Makse,
Shlomo Havlin,
Peter R King,
H Eugene Stanley.
Nature. London:
Mar 27, 1997.Vol.386, Iss. 6623; pg. 379)
Compare this to AiG's synopsis:
And what did the Nature authors discover? Makse et al.
found that mixtures of grains of different sizes spontaneously segregate in the absence of external perturbations; that is, when such a mixture is simply poured onto a pile, the large grains are more likely to be found near the base, while the small grains are more likely near the top. Furthermore, when a granular mixture is poured between two vertical plates, the mixture spontaneously stratifies into alternating layers of small and large grains whenever the large grains have a larger angle of repose than the small grains. Application—the stratification is related to the occurrence of avalanches.
Now, this clearly depends on reader ignorance to work. Firstly, Makse did not "find" that mixtures of grains of different sizes spontaneously segregate, in the sense of a research finding; he
cited it from
previous literature (AiG giving the profoundly wrong impression that it was original research on his part), with citation 6 being a literature review as far back as 1976. AiG wasn't ahead by 9 years; we may fairly say they were behind by 12, Guy Berthault's papers starting to come out only in 1988.
"When a granular mixture is poured between two vertical plates" - did AiG dare to repeat the exact details of the experimental setup? Of course not:
Our experimental system consists of a 'vertical quasi-two-dimensional' cell with a gap of 5mm separating two transparent plates (made of Plexiglas or glass) measuring 300mm x 200mm. To avoid the effects of electrostatic interactions between the grains and the wall, the wall is cleaned with an antistatic cleaner.
This system was in fact rigged so that the distance between the walls was negligible; the scale was so small that electrostatic effects had to be accounted for! In fact, the system is called "quasi-two-dimensional"; can anybody find me a quasi-two-dimensional deposition system in nature? The fact that they obtained such results in a theoretical setting, and then extrapolated to practicalities, is never even hinted at by AiG.
And finally, guess what their results looked like?
It's fairly obvious that these are not the geological strata we see today!
The guts of it is that particles have a property called "angle of repose", which is simply this: when I create a pile of that powder, what angle will it hold? Some particle types may be able to hold a cone sharper than a witch hat, and have a high angle of repose; other particle types can only hold a nearly-flat mound, collapsing as soon as you add more, and have a low angle of repose. Essentially, particles with different
angles of repose (not density, or size, or mass, or any of those properties creationists use to explain
ad hoc hydrological sorting!), as they arrive at the top of a heap, behave in different ways, leading to stratification.
This immediately falsifies any flood applications for several reasons. Firstly, the article examined the
mode of deposition, not the
speed of deposition: and the deposit would have formed at the same rate even if it was laminated (or possibly less). Hence creationists still face the time problem for sedimentation if they attempt to use this article. Secondly, the article deals with a quasi-two-dimensional system in air, in which the particles were introduced near the top of the peak; creationist models are necessarily three-dimensional in water, and if they want to salvage the problem of sedimentation time in any way they have to assume that the particles are being deposited all over the layer simultaneously. Finally and simply, the layers obtained obviously do not look like any geological formation!
The only question left is why did AiG quote this article as if a peer-reviewed paper in Nature is supporting them, when in fact not a single point in it can be appropriated by any creationist flood model? Ineptitude or deception? You decide.
