J
Jet Black
Guest
as I was skipping through the fossil termite nest thread, I noticed shinbits rather depressingly ignoring all the stuff I wrote about limestone. It was rather odd that he replied to the post immediately following it, inbetween two posts on limestone which were subsequently ignored. I can only thing morton's demon was at play.
anyway, here is the full text for those who didn'T see it the first time
Cocoliths belinging to cocolithophores like Emiliania huxleyi have a diameter of something like about 1-2 micrometres . (a human hair is about 200 micrometres) so 40 times thinner than a human hair. and a thickness somewhere in the order of 0.1micrometres
The upper layer of chalk formations in the UK average about 480m thick, so if you were to take a column of these cocoliths and stack them on top of one another, you are looking at several billion cocoliths. Now consider this over the area of the formations. Here is a picture of the white cliffs of Dover with a building on top (I think it is a church) just to give you an idea of scale
Now bear in mind that these cliffs consist of very high purity chalk, they aren't mixed with loads of sand, and that in the south of the UK there are three overlying layers of chalk, with different rock types inbetween. There is also evidence of bioturbidity in the limestone, and occasional fossils of molluscs and bivalves.
so far we have a number of issues
As you can see, the sheer size and purity of these deposits is simply not conducive so a single year long flood. First of all there are multiple layers, i.e. limestone-sandstone-limestone, with two relatively pure limestone layers. Since the cocoliths take so long to settle, it is not possible within a year to form such structures, since you would see a mixture of the limestone with other deposits such as sand. Furthermore, cocoliths need lots of light, they only live in the sunlit parts of the ocean, and you simply cannot pack in enough cocolithophores in the space of a year to make such deposits. Furthermore, the amount of calcium sequestered from the water required to make formations such as the white cliffs would not be possible in the space of a year.
As raised above, Cocoliths settle out of the water very slowly, and there can only be a certain density of cocolithophores in the upper surface . even if (and this is trivially unlikely) all the cocolithophores were at the surface of the sea at t=0, you would still have to wait a hundred years for a limestone deposit to form on the surface of the sea. If you have three layers with other stuff inbetween, then you are looking at at least three hundred years for the three layers to form (that also ignores formation time for the intermediate layers). but of course a time length that short is impossible, since you aren't going to start off with hundreds of metres thick of cocoliths at the surface of the sea, they do have to be produced.
.... and in the subsequent post
The most severe algal blooms result in densities of about a million or so algae per millilitre. I'll say 10 million. For an average algal size of about 5micrometres, this equates to 5x10^-9 cubic metres of algae per mililitre (1x10^-6 m^3) of water. so the algae make up something like 5x10^-3 of the volume (0.5%). (in reality they cannot keep this up for very long, since it depletes the water of all nutrients and starts spreading toxins very rapidly) you could pancake all the algae in this volume into a thickness of 5x10^-5m. take a 500 metre thickness of limestone, that means you need something like 10 million of these layers (I'm being really good here and assuming that all of the algae by volume makes up the limestone, when only a fraction of it does so), and that means you need a column of water with an algal bloom density of Cocolithophores, some 100 km thick. to support all of the algae in one go. of course that isn't going to happen, so we'll distribute it over a year, 365 days at a maximal production rate. We'll say that every single day, the cocolithphores can regenerate their entire mass (it will be lower than this in reality). that would mean that each day we need 270m of water producing a maximal amount of cocolithophores. A significant amount of sunlight can only penetrate 100m of clear sea water, and cocoliths have a very high reflectivity, so that would reduce the amount of sunlight penetrating the sea even further, especially if they are at algal bloom density. These figures show that expecting even a single layer of the chalk deposits to form in the flood are simply not realistic at all.
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from all of this effort, I got an entire one creationist reply, which consisted of the pointless
anyway, here is the full text for those who didn'T see it the first time
Chalk is a particular form of limestone that forms in shallow water as a result of the breakdown of microscopic green algae called cocolithophores. The chalk consists primarily of the microscopic calcium plates called cocoliths. Cocolithophores can only live in a fairly narrow layer near the surface of the water. Famous Chalk deposits, such as the White Cliffs of Dover are several hundred feet thick. Cocoliths are very small, only a few micrometres in size, and this means that they experience a very low terminal velocity in water. (Terminal velocity is a property of the mass and surface area of an object. To give an example, drop a metal sphere and a ball of cotton wool at the same time. The former will hit the floor before the latter due to the higher terminal velocity.) The terminal velocity in fact is so low, that if you take a cocolith in the typical deep water in which limestones form, a cocolith should take about a hundred years to reach the bottom.shinbits said:
Cocoliths belinging to cocolithophores like Emiliania huxleyi have a diameter of something like about 1-2 micrometres . (a human hair is about 200 micrometres) so 40 times thinner than a human hair. and a thickness somewhere in the order of 0.1micrometres
The upper layer of chalk formations in the UK average about 480m thick, so if you were to take a column of these cocoliths and stack them on top of one another, you are looking at several billion cocoliths. Now consider this over the area of the formations. Here is a picture of the white cliffs of Dover with a building on top (I think it is a church) just to give you an idea of scale
Now bear in mind that these cliffs consist of very high purity chalk, they aren't mixed with loads of sand, and that in the south of the UK there are three overlying layers of chalk, with different rock types inbetween. There is also evidence of bioturbidity in the limestone, and occasional fossils of molluscs and bivalves.
so far we have a number of issues
- Thick limestone and chalk deposits such as those in the south of England consist of multiple layers of limestone, each of which may be several hundred metres thick
- Limestone deposits of this kind are made chiefly from cololiths, the calcium plates of cocolithophores which are onls fractions of a micrometre thick, and a micrometre or so in diameter
- cocolithophores only live in the upper layers of the sea
- Cololiths take something like a hundred years to settle into deep water deposits.
- Many of the limestone deposits, such as those in the UK show high purity (they are not mixed with sand and unrelated detritus)
- Many show evidence of bioturbidity, that is, animals moving around on the base of the sea.
As you can see, the sheer size and purity of these deposits is simply not conducive so a single year long flood. First of all there are multiple layers, i.e. limestone-sandstone-limestone, with two relatively pure limestone layers. Since the cocoliths take so long to settle, it is not possible within a year to form such structures, since you would see a mixture of the limestone with other deposits such as sand. Furthermore, cocoliths need lots of light, they only live in the sunlit parts of the ocean, and you simply cannot pack in enough cocolithophores in the space of a year to make such deposits. Furthermore, the amount of calcium sequestered from the water required to make formations such as the white cliffs would not be possible in the space of a year.
no, just because a certain feature forms in deep water does not mean that feature is evidence of a flood. For example, a wet patch on a carpet can be caused by a leaking pipe. This does not mean that the wet patch is evidence of a leaking pipe. Furthermore, the evidence put above regarding the formation of such limestone deposits is simply not conducive with a single short turbid event.
As raised above, Cocoliths settle out of the water very slowly, and there can only be a certain density of cocolithophores in the upper surface . even if (and this is trivially unlikely) all the cocolithophores were at the surface of the sea at t=0, you would still have to wait a hundred years for a limestone deposit to form on the surface of the sea. If you have three layers with other stuff inbetween, then you are looking at at least three hundred years for the three layers to form (that also ignores formation time for the intermediate layers). but of course a time length that short is impossible, since you aren't going to start off with hundreds of metres thick of cocoliths at the surface of the sea, they do have to be produced.
.... and in the subsequent post
The most severe algal blooms result in densities of about a million or so algae per millilitre. I'll say 10 million. For an average algal size of about 5micrometres, this equates to 5x10^-9 cubic metres of algae per mililitre (1x10^-6 m^3) of water. so the algae make up something like 5x10^-3 of the volume (0.5%). (in reality they cannot keep this up for very long, since it depletes the water of all nutrients and starts spreading toxins very rapidly) you could pancake all the algae in this volume into a thickness of 5x10^-5m. take a 500 metre thickness of limestone, that means you need something like 10 million of these layers (I'm being really good here and assuming that all of the algae by volume makes up the limestone, when only a fraction of it does so), and that means you need a column of water with an algal bloom density of Cocolithophores, some 100 km thick. to support all of the algae in one go. of course that isn't going to happen, so we'll distribute it over a year, 365 days at a maximal production rate. We'll say that every single day, the cocolithphores can regenerate their entire mass (it will be lower than this in reality). that would mean that each day we need 270m of water producing a maximal amount of cocolithophores. A significant amount of sunlight can only penetrate 100m of clear sea water, and cocoliths have a very high reflectivity, so that would reduce the amount of sunlight penetrating the sea even further, especially if they are at algal bloom density. These figures show that expecting even a single layer of the chalk deposits to form in the flood are simply not realistic at all.
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from all of this effort, I got an entire one creationist reply, which consisted of the pointless
from Micaiah, in which he managed to ignore almost everything I had written, and reply to a single line (I'll let you guess or find which one)
Say what?!
