Solar System Wonders - Olympus Mons

[jereth]

I'm thinking of starting a series of threads looking at various incredible places in the Solar System. It seems to me that the Solar System tends to get left out of creation/evolution discussions, while origins of species, geology and big bang cosmology get far more air time.

My hope is that all of us -- regardless of POV -- will be able to collectively marvel at the wonders of creation. At the same time, I intend to raise some questions which will challenge YECism. Please do not view these questions as an attack, but rather as stimulation to consider whether such wonders can be explained within a young-earth framework, and if so, how. Gap-theorists, OECists and TEists will probably agree on most of these issues.

So let's start...

Olympus Mons

Olympus Mons is the largest known mountain in the solar system. It is an enormous volcano on the planet Mars, and is 25,000 metres in height (by comparison Mt. Everest is only ~8848 m high). The width of the mountain is 550km -- roughly the same size as the US state of Arizona.

Questions for YECists to consider:
How could such an enormous volcano be formed within 6-10 thousand years? (assuming of course that it did not exist at the very beginning). A team of researchers has calculated the volume of Olympus Mons to be roughly 461 cubic km. [http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/371c/project/2005/Hatley/Olympus_Mons.htm ] If we assume that the volcano started forming immediately after creation, and allow for the Solar System to be 10 thousand years old, this means that on average the volcano has been producing -

46100000 cubic metres of rock per year
126300 cubic metres of rock per day
5260 cubic metres of rock per hour
87 cubic metres of rock per minute
1.46 cubic metres of rock per second

Is is really possible for such a huge amount of volcanism to have occured?

 

[Pats]

I love studying solar system wonders. Thanks for the interesting facts, Jereth.

 

[XTE]

God created that volcano in a day is what you'll hear.

Just gettin it outta the way.

 

[jereth]

I love studying solar system wonders. Thanks for the interesting facts, Jereth.

No problem, Pats. I hope to follow this thread with some others at a later time. If you want to learn more about Mars, have you visited this site? http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/

God created that volcano in a day is what you'll hear.

Hey, let's at least give them a chance to come up with a theory

And just to give the non-YECists something to think about: Allowing an age of 4.5 billion years for the solar system, how long might it take for a volcano such as this to form? Any takers?

 

[KerrMetric]

jereth, your numbers from that website are totally wrong. Someone used the wrong units or some other such basic error. The volume of Olypus Mons is way larger than what you state. It is approx. 4,000,000 cubic kilometres not 461. The volume is approx. 4,000,000,000,000,000 cubic metres. Think about it. The volcano covers a base area about the size of Arizona. This is approx. 300,000 square kilometres. And since it is a 27 kilometre high cone and the volume of a cone is 1/3 * base area * height you get: 0.33333 * 300,000 * 27 which is 2.7 million cubic kilometres without any real effort at all. I believe if you do this with satellite images and really model the shape of Olympus Mons it is actually closer to about 4,000,000 tat I stated earlier.

 

[jereth]

Thanks for the correction, KerrMetric. Obviously I should not have been so quick to accept that website's figures.

 

[laptoppop]

What's a couple orders of magnitude among friends? <grin>

 

[PETE_]

While I do not agree with the millions of years old part, it is truely a wonder of the solar system.

Why is Olympus Mons so big?

The main difference between the volcanoes on Mars and Earth is their size; volcanoes in the Tharsis region of Mars are 10 to 100 times larger than those anywhere on Earth. The lava flows on the Martian surface are observed to be much longer, probably a result of higher eruption rates and lower surface gravity. The less gravitational pull, the higher volcanoes can grow without collapsing under their own weight. Another reason why the volcanoes on Mars are so massive is because the crust on Mars doesn't move the way it does on Earth. On Earth, the hot spots remain stationary but crustal plates are moving above them. The Hawaiian islands result from the northwesterly movement of the Pacific plate over a stationary hotspot producing lava. As the plate moves over the hotspot, new volcanoes are formed and the existing ones become extinct. This distributes the total volume of lava among many volcanoes rather than one large volcano. On Mars, the crust remains stationary and the lava piles up in

 

[KerrMetric]

You might as well pretend they don't exist then since they are the old ages given and cannot possibly be otherwise.

 

[laptoppop]

You might as well pretend they don't exist then since they are the old ages given and cannot possibly be otherwise.

This is a fascinating level of certainty. I would expect something more on the line of "current scientific theory is....". I just read an article which challenged the hubble constant resulting in a different age of the universe by a couple of billion years. (of course, I would look at it differently -- I mention it to demonstrate the uncertainty/reasonable discussion inherent in current science.) (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060807_mm_huble_revise.html)

 

[jereth]

While I do not agree with the millions of years old part, it is truely a wonder of the solar system.
.....
Another reason why the volcanoes on Mars are so massive is because the crust on Mars doesn't move the way it does on Earth. On Earth, the hot spots remain stationary but crustal plates are moving above them. The Hawaiian islands result from the northwesterly movement of the Pacific plate over a stationary hotspot producing lava. As the plate moves over the hotspot, new volcanoes are formed and the existing ones become extinct. This distributes the total volume of lava among many volcanoes rather than one large volcano. On Mars, the crust remains stationary and the lava piles up in

Your information is absolutely correct, my friend. A principal reason why Olympus Mons is so much larger than the Hawaiian volcanoes is indeed because the surface of Mars is stationary, while the surface of the earth is in constant motion.

However, I find it difficult to see how this explanation works within a young-earth (i.e. < 10,000 year old) framework. Firstly, it still fails to explain how such a massive volcano could be built in such a short space of time. Using KerrMetric's figure of 4 million cubic km, the volcano would have had to produce an average of 12,000 cubic metres of igneous rock per second ever since the time of creation.

(4 x 10^15 cubic metres / 10000 years / 365 days / 24 hours / 60 minutes / 60 seconds)

Secondly, the explanation regarding the Hawaiian chain of islands only works if the Pacific plate is moving at a rate of several cm per year. At these slow rates, plate tectonics requires millions of years to work.

 

[PETE_]

I am not tryin to debate , just seems like scientist do not yet have it figured out.

1. Olympus Mons, Mars-Hawaii Comparison

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]The martian volcano Olympus Mons (18°N, 133°W) is one of the largest volcanos in the solar system, measuring over 600 kilometers across and rising more than 27 kilometers above the surrounding plain. In this view, Olympus Mons is compared to the Hawaiian Islands, and demonstrates the value of comparative planetary volcanology. Notice that the Island of Oahu would easily fit inside the summit caldera of the martian volcano. Volcanologists on Earth have a good understanding of Hawaiian volcanism, but the eruptive style and duration of planetary examples such as Olympus Mons remain poorly understood. [/FONT]​

 

[jereth]

I am not tryin to debate

My post was not meant to be an attack on you. Sorry if it seemed that way. I was just reinforcing my point that there are some things which make YECism really hard for me to accept, and this is one of them. The only way I could possibly fit Olympus Mons into a YEC framework is via the omphalos theory (i.e. part or all of the mountain was fashioned during creation week).

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]

Volcanologists on Earth have a good understanding of Hawaiian volcanism, but the eruptive style and duration of planetary examples such as Olympus Mons remain poorly understood.

[/FONT]

I guess that is because we cannot observe Olympus Mons erupting, since it is currently inactive. However, I expect that we might learn more one day when samples of rock from the volcano are returned to earth for analysis.

 

[KerrMetric]

This is a fascinating level of certainty. I would expect something more on the line of "current scientific theory is....". I just read an article which challenged the hubble constant resulting in a different age of the universe by a couple of billion years. (of course, I would look at it differently -- I mention it to demonstrate the uncertainty/reasonable discussion inherent in current science.) (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060807_mm_huble_revise.html)

Yeah - like I trust a distance determination with O star eclipsing binary data. And if you read the actual journal paper on this measurement you'll see why it's not exactly trustworthy.

But irrespective of this the differences being argued are in the 10 - 20% regime. Creationists want to change things in the 1,000,000,000,000% type of numbers. And that is why my level of certainty is what you find fascinating and I call common sense.

Why do Creationists seem incapable of understanding the difference between 10% errors and 10 orders of magnitude variations? Education? Ability to comprehend? Unwillingness to learn? Which is it I wonder?