CPT Q. 043: Was it mantle cooling between Creation and the Flood that triggered runaway subduction?

Q. 43. In the paper, “Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: The Physics Behind the Genesis Flood,” presented at the Fifth ICC in 2003 (available here), on page 15 you cite your preference for a subduction trigger “grinding inexorably toward catastrophe” during the pre-Flood years. Heat flow from Earth’s interior to Earth’s surface is extremely slow on a time scale of 1650 years, based upon standard thermodynamics. How can temperatures in the mantle change enough during that brief interval to trigger runaway subduction?

Response: What I had in view with this remark was not a change in the temperature structure of the mantle nor an increase in density of the cold material in the upper mantle around the perimeter of the supercontinent, but rather the mechanical motion of this cold rock, i.e., its progressive sinking, and as a consequence, steadily increasing stress levels in the rock immediately around the cold rock, until the critical stress level was achieved at which runaway could begin.

This possibility was addressed in a separate 2003 ICC paper, which I referenced in the paragraph you quote as reference [16]: Horstemeyer and Baumgardner, “What initiated the Flood cataclysm?” (ICC 2003, pdf).¹ Let me provide the highlights from that paper by quoting the abstract and the conclusions below.

Abstract: We report results from a parametric study of various weakening mechanisms that can occur in olivine aggregate materials to help understand how an episode of runaway subduction could be initiated. We use a finite element analysis employing an internal state variable plasticity/damage model to show that temperature contrasts, loading rate, crystallographic damage, water content, and initial anisotropy can all induce significant mechanical instability in olivine rock. Our results indicate that each of these weakening/localization effects may have played an important role in fashioning an initial state for the earth from which the Flood cataclysm could easily emerge.

Conclusions: We have shown numerically that several mechanisms can enhance the potential for instability that ultimately led to the Genesis Flood. Recall our question at the beginning: Did God establish conditions in the earth during creation week such that catastrophic plate tectonics would eventually occur at the precise time Noah’s day, or did He have to employ additional special means to initiate the cataclysm? Our study suggests it is plausible from a material science standpoint that the earth, as originally created by God, could have been close to the point of instability as far as the state of its lithosphere was concerned, and that during the period between creation and the time of Noah slow deformation was taking place that eventually caused the system to cross the boundary into the regime of full-blown instability and catastrophe. In this case no additional special action was required on God’s part for the Flood cataclysm to unfold.