Continental Drift

Originally posted by Smilin
Scroll Back Nick

Are you kidding? There are 242 posts in this thread. If you don't want to explain it, post a link or something explaining how cave formation contradicts a young earth so I can get an idea from an outside source of what you're talking about.
 
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Stalactites? You mean like these that were found in the basement of the George Rogers Clark Memorial?

http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/gero/hsr7a.htm

Before going to the memorial, O'Bannon, Dr. Coleman, and Judge Ralph Gilbert met with Culbertson. Although Culbertson accompanied them to the memorial, he, for some unexplained reason, soon returned to his office. The others were allowed to proceed with the field study. They scrutinized the water stains on the interior walls of the rotunda and toured the basement rooms where stalactites, some as much as four feet in length, were found.

I hear they're about 10 feet long now...
 
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Morat

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  Goodness. I wonder who builds buildings out of the same sorts of limestone in caves? I wonder if they're exposed to the same enviroment. They're not? How weird!

  Gee, I wonder if anyone has ever addressed this? Why yes, they have.

   Even if we allow rapid stalctite growth, there's not enough time for cave formation. Unless Nick wants to claim the "Flood" did that, too.

 
 
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Pete Harcoff

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Since npetreley has Morat on "ignore", I'll repaste the link so he won't miss it ;)

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood.html#proof22

Edit: npetreley, Morat wants you to know that building and caves aren't the same thing. Not even close.

(Heh, I wonder how long until I get put on "ignore", too ;))
 
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Originally posted by Pete Harcoff
Since npetreley has Morat on "ignore", I'll repaste the link so he won't miss it ;)

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood.html#proof22

Edit: npetreley, Morat wants you to know that building and caves aren't the same thing. Not even close.

What does that have to do with the price of tea in china?

Back to reality: The queston was if it was possible for a stalactite to form quickly. And the answer is clearly yes. We know these formed quickly because they weren't there when people built the basements. In contrast, we don't know what the previous conditions were that caused many cave stalactites to form, so we don't have any way to know how old they are. Just because we can measure how slowly they are continuing to form NOW doesn't tell you anything about what the conditions were when they were first formed.

By the way, as ridiculous as the rest of it is, I love this part of the response from talkorigins...

22. Since when is the age of the earth related to the age of a stalactite?

That's what I say, but I wasn't the one who suggested that they were related, I was just providing the answer to a question by TheBear.
 
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Pete Harcoff

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Originally posted by npetreley
The queston was if it was possible for a stalactite to form quickly. And the answer is clearly yes. We know these formed quickly because they weren't there when people built the basements.

From the talk.origins link (actually from "Cave Minerals and Speleothems", White, W. B. 1976, pg 304):

"On the mortared brickwork of old forts and places of that sort, formations which look to the naked eye like stalactites and stalagmites sometimes form in less than one hundred years. However, those formations are composed of gypsum, which is a salt of calcium sulfate. Unlike calcium carbonate, gypsum is moderately soluble in water, which means that transport and recrystallization can take place much more rapidly"


In contrast, we don't know what the previous conditions were that caused many cave stalactites to form, so we don't have any way to know how old they are. Just because we can measure how slowly they are continuing to form NOW doesn't tell you anything about what the conditions were when they were first formed.

The talk.origins site also answers this:

"Needless to say, this is not the kind of operation you can turn up the spigot on. A rapid flow of water would simply carry the minerals with it, not to mention diluting the carbonic acid which is produced in limited quantities. We're dealing with a drip-by-drip scenario"

So, it seems that cavern-based stalagmites do take quite some time.
 
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Gypsum forms flowers and needles, not stalactites.

More important, Carlsbad Caverns is not a basement. From the previous link:

In October 1953, National Geographic published a photo of a bat that had fallen on a stalagmite in the famous Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, and had been cemented on to it. The stalagmite had grown so fast it was able to preserve the bat before the creature had time to decompose.

Calcite is calcium carbonate, not gypsum.

At Australia's Jenolan Caves in New South Wales, a lemonade bottle was placed below a continually active stalactite in the 'Temple of Baal' in 1954. In the following 33 years a coating of calcite about three millimetres thick has formed on the bottle. The same amount of deposit has formed since development in 1932 of the Ribbon Cave in the jenolan system. At this time pathways were cut through areas of flowstone. Water flowing down the sides of these cuttings over the past 55 years has built up the current deposit.

Here's a description of how caves are supposedly formed. Note that it assumes rain water, and therefore speculates based on that premise.

http://www.guanopage.com/info/cavegeo.html

Caves are formed when rainwater, acidified by carbon dioxide in the soil, seeped downward through millions of tiny cracks and crevices in the limestone layers. This weak carbonic acid (the same acid as in soda pop) dissolved a network of tiny microcaverns along cracks. If the bedrock is lifted, the erosion will create deeper channels. Just as rivulets converged into streams above ground, water flow paths through the limestone also converged into incrementally larger flow paths.

As rainwater continued to enter the system and more limestone was dissolved, the microcaverns enlarged. Because the major drains carried the most water, they enlarged the most. Caves were forming. If the water table continues dropping new underground drains formed at levels lower than the older ones, and the older channels empty. Thus the oldest cave passages are the closest to the surface, and the youngest horizontal passages are the deepest underground.
 
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Originally posted by TheBear
Quick question. Does rapid formation account for all stalactite and stalagmite structures?

How could you know if you weren't there to see the conditions that were present when they were formed? You can't. You have to speculate. Just make sure when you speculate that you understand that they can form quickly, and that the rate of formation TODAY may not be the same as the rate of formation YESTERDAY (or 1,000 or 4,000 years ago.)
 
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Referring to nick's latest posting the growth of stalgmites etc I would like to see some positive proof of the chemical composition of these structures I have been in many karst areas and seen no evdence of these claims Also what type of structures are you you talking about. Straw stalictites or more massive structures?
 
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