Seems that a global flood was real. Sorry Noah, you're simply not happening in this scene.

[Twilight Hue]

That was approx 3 billion years ago.

A new study suggests a primordial Earth still in the process of forming, clearly well prior to any life-forms first appearing. The 'land' was still a sphere of molten magma thousands of miles deep. When water did start appearing on the surface it was a piping hot magma ocean and yep it would have certainly boiled Noah and his family alive like a lobster, but lucky for him no life forms had ever ever appeared much less any type of trees and animals. ;0)

3 billion-year-old Earth had water everywhere, but not one continent, study suggests | Live Science

The Bible is still not a science book or even historically accurate on events for that matter.

 

[exchemist]

That was approx 3 billion years ago.

A new study suggests a primordial Earth still in the process of forming, clearly well prior to any life-forms first appearing. The 'land' was still a sphere of molten magma thousands of miles deep. When water did start appearing on the surface it was a piping hot magma ocean and yep it would have certainly boiled Noah and his family alive like a lobster, but lucky for him no life forms had ever ever appeared much less any type of trees and animals. ;0)

3 billion-year-old Earth had water everywhere, but not one continent, study suggests | Live Science

The Bible is still not a science book or even historically accurate on events for that matter.

Thanks, this is interesting. I remember reading, years ago, that the size of the continents is thought to have increased over geological time, as a result of the process of fractionation of minerals, into less dense ones floating on denser ones, that volcanism tends to bring about. Magmas working their way upward tend to be - obviously - composed of less dense minerals, which are then erupted at the surface and float upon the denser mantle and oceanic crustal rocks. This seems to support that idea.

What I can't follow at the moment is why 18O is a marker for this process. The article you linked to is badly written, suggesting absurdly that there was more 18O than 16O in the early ocean, which is nonsense. (The paper itself says the proportion of 18O went down from 3% of the total O to 1%.) But the paper itself seems not to explain why 18O is a marker, or else I have not taken it in properly (it was not written by anyone gifted in communication either!).

Perhaps I'll try reading it again when I have more time and see if I can decode it.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Thanks, this is interesting. I remember reading, years ago, that the size of the continents is thought to have increased over geological time, as a result of the process of fractionation of minerals, into less dense ones floating on denser ones, that volcanism tends to bring about. Magmas working their way upward tend to be - obviously - composed of less dense minerals, which are then erupted at the surface and float upon the denser mantle and oceanic crustal rocks. This seems to support that idea.

What I can't follow at the moment is why 18O is a marker for this process. The article you linked to is badly written, suggesting absurdly that there was more 18O than 16O in the early ocean, which is nonsense. (The paper itself says the proportion of 18O went down from 3% of the total O to 1%.) But the paper itself seems not to explain why 18O is a marker, or else I have not taken it in properly (it was not written by anyone gifted in communication either!).

Perhaps I'll try reading it again when I have more time and see if I can decode it.

It is a live science article for which it was identified as a suggestion. I'm sure there will be plenty of refinement ahead as this goes through the process of peer review.

 

[metis]

I have long believed that the Flood narrative was likely allegorical because it simply didn't make any sense whatsoever if we try to view it as history and/or science. To me, it's far more likely to be written as a counter to the much earlier and more widespread polytheistic Babylonian narrative.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I'm kind of astonished that the Earth didn't just turn into a greenhouse planet if it was entirely comprised of surface water.

I can just imagine what the cloud cover might have been like on a planet like that.

 

[shmogie]

That was approx 3 billion years ago.

A new study suggests a primordial Earth still in the process of forming, clearly well prior to any life-forms first appearing. The 'land' was still a sphere of molten magma thousands of miles deep. When water did start appearing on the surface it was a piping hot magma ocean and yep it would have certainly boiled Noah and his family alive like a lobster, but lucky for him no life forms had ever ever appeared much less any type of trees and animals. ;0)

3 billion-year-old Earth had water everywhere, but not one continent, study suggests | Live Science

The Bible is still not a science book or even historically accurate on events for that matter.

So, you say.

 

[exchemist]

I'm kind of astonished that the Earth didn't just turn into a greenhouse planet if it was entirely comprised of surface water.

I can just imagine what the cloud cover might have been like on a planet like that.

Perhaps it was, for a few hundred million years. But as I understand it the greenhouse effect involves two different things. Water vapour (which is transparent in the visible) absorbs in the IR. This creates a greenhouse effect by allowing light to fall on the surface but then trapping the re-reradiated IR. Clouds, on the other hand, prevent light from reaching the surface, by reflecting it back into space from the cloud tops. So I don't think it is the clouds that lead to a greenhouse effect. (CO2 of course forms no clouds at all. What it does, I gather, is to blocks the "windows" in the IR spectrum that are left open by water vapour.)

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

That was approx 3 billion years ago.

A new study suggests a primordial Earth still in the process of forming, clearly well prior to any life-forms first appearing. The 'land' was still a sphere of molten magma thousands of miles deep. When water did start appearing on the surface it was a piping hot magma ocean and yep it would have certainly boiled Noah and his family alive like a lobster, but lucky for him no life forms had ever ever appeared much less any type of trees and animals. ;0)

3 billion-year-old Earth had water everywhere, but not one continent, study suggests | Live Science

The Bible is still not a science book or even historically accurate on events for that matter.

I thought the fact that the planet was a fiery ball of molten rock billions of years ago was commonly known.

 

[exchemist]

I thought the fact that the planet was a fiery ball of molten rock billions of years ago was commonly known.

The point, I think, is that after that hot phase there may have been a phase in which the surface was entirely covered with liquid water, with no continents protruding above the surface. The continents may have gradually appeared, later, as a result of volcanic action erupting selectively lighter minerals that "floated" on the denser rocks below and thus were able to rise above sea level.

But I wonder where @Subduction Zone is: this is one for him.

 

[sun rise]

I'm kind of astonished that the Earth didn't just turn into a greenhouse planet if it was entirely comprised of surface water.

I can just imagine what the cloud cover might have been like on a planet like that.

Earth was a greenhouse planet at one point. Greenhouse and icehouse Earth - Wikipedia

 

[sun rise]

But about flood myths: cultures all over the world have flood myths even before they came into contact with each other.

So it's reasonable to assume there was a reason for such legends to be born. The source of that widely shared mythology may never be uncovered.

 

[Twilight Hue]

But about flood myths: cultures all over the world have flood myths even before they came into contact with each other.

So it's reasonable to assume there was a reason for such legends to be born. The source of that widely shared mythology may never be uncovered.

Ironically I think those stories and what science has found so far are separate accounts.

I can't see how the ancients would possibly think the Earth started out as a mass of hot gasses coalescing into a violent molten planet, with the water being introduced later on by the constant bombardment by comets and other interstellar matter that must have been plentiful at the time.

 

[Aupmanyav]

It was snow melting after ice-age, and water breaching the lakes that formed at that time.
Avesta mentions a deluge by snow.

 

[exchemist]

It is a live science article for which it was identified as a suggestion. I'm sure there will be plenty of refinement ahead as this goes through the process of peer review.

OK I've read a bit more about this. Both 18O and 16O are stable isotopes so this is not to do with radioactive decay (e.g. as in 14C for instance). From what I gather it is simply the effects of the 18O water molecule being a bit heavier than the 16O version. This makes 18O water fractionally less eager than 16O water to participate in reactions with hot rocks, diffuse more slowly, be slightly less prone to evaporate, and slightly more prone to condense, and so on. For example, it seem that periods when the 18O ratio in the oceans was high correlate with periods of glaciation, since selectively more of the lighter isotope is evaporated and deposited in glacial ice on the land, thereby enriching the oceans in 18O.

In this case they seem to be arguing that reactions with the rocks would take up 16O at a faster rate, leaving more 18O behind in the oceans, whereas processes on land (if there had been any) would have mitigated this, somehow, but at the moment I don't understand the logic of the argument.

I must say it seems to be hanging rather a lot on a mere series of 18O measurements to deduce that there cannot have been continents if the 18O was this high. I suspect the Live Science article may be over-egging it a bit.

 

[1213]

...
3 billion-year-old Earth had water everywhere, but not one continent, study suggests | Live Science

The Bible is still not a science book or even historically accurate on events for that matter.

But it is still nice when science confirms what is told in the Bible (planet was covered with water at the beginning). I think it is quite interesting how would the ancient people have known that, if God didn’t tell it.

 

[Twilight Hue]

But it is still nice when science confirms what is told in the Bible (planet was covered with water at the beginning). I think it is quite interesting how would the ancient people have known that, if God didn’t tell it.

They didn't. The account from Genesis places life and land on the earth well before the flood.

Since the flood stories all follow along similar lines, I would say most if not all religions of the day would follow the same template.

It's probably not hard to hit the mark anyways considering most people would think in black and white terms to which either there's water or there's not and all including the existence of people and animals.

 

[crossfire]

But about flood myths: cultures all over the world have flood myths even before they came into contact with each other.

So it's reasonable to assume there was a reason for such legends to be born. The source of that widely shared mythology may never be uncovered.

I would suspect that the megafloods from melting glaciers that marked the beginning of this interglacial period (one example being the Missoula floods) might be the source?

 

[Godobeyer]

That was approx 3 billion years ago.

A new study suggests a primordial Earth still in the process of forming, clearly well prior to any life-forms first appearing. The 'land' was still a sphere of molten magma thousands of miles deep. When water did start appearing on the surface it was a piping hot magma ocean and yep it would have certainly boiled Noah and his family alive like a lobster, but lucky for him no life forms had ever ever appeared much less any type of trees and animals. ;0)

3 billion-year-old Earth had water everywhere, but not one continent, study suggests | Live Science

The Bible is still not a science book or even historically accurate on events for that matter.

In Quran it's said happened for short period of time .
Water gone back to it's sources.
We ignore if it's was globale or just in particular area in earth.

 

[halbhh]

That was approx 3 billion years ago.

A new study suggests a primordial Earth still in the process of forming, clearly well prior to any life-forms first appearing. The 'land' was still a sphere of molten magma thousands of miles deep. When water did start appearing on the surface it was a piping hot magma ocean and yep it would have certainly boiled Noah and his family alive like a lobster, but lucky for him no life forms had ever ever appeared much less any type of trees and animals. ;0)

3 billion-year-old Earth had water everywhere, but not one continent, study suggests | Live Science

The Bible is still not a science book or even historically accurate on events for that matter.

If you read the link you referenced more carefully, you'll want to edit your paragraph on it. For instance, the oceans were not steaming hot generally 3.2bn years ago nor were they steaming hot more recently (much more recently!) when any large regional floods happened in modern human times. And, for another instance, it will be able to fit this:

The earliest time that life forms first appeared on Earth is at least 3.77 billion years ago...
Earliest known life forms - Wikipedia.

 

[Twilight Hue]

If you read the link you referenced more carefully, you'll want to edit your paragraph on it. For instance, the oceans were not steaming hot generally 3.2bn years ago nor were they steaming hot more recently (much more recently!) when any large regional floods happened in modern human times. And, for another instance, it will be able to fit this:

The earliest time that life forms first appeared on Earth is at least 3.77 billion years ago...
Earliest known life forms - Wikipedia.

The article referenced it as magma oceans. Rest assured, they were quite hot at the time.