The Noahide Flood

[Thumpalumpacus]

That's the basic idea, yep.

Visualization help: Suppose the outside of this globe of water covering rock is metaphorically represented by the outside of a basketball. Would the thickness of the shell of the ball equate to the theoretical depth of water? (The inside of the ball is compared to a theoretically billiard ball smooth planet.)

If that isn't confusing enough I'll keep going.

I already get it -- after all, I did pass math, up to trig. In essence, it's due to the square-cube law.

[The Grand Nudger]

I would also think smaller than ararat too. That version of the story is known to be a later revision to whatever event a hypothetical observer would have been describing.

As for the potential volume of water missing in the case of topography being..essentially, a rounding error in whatever the total excess volume of water may be in the everest scenario, that's just an acknowledgement that the earth really is pretty damned smooth. Take a look at a map of a single meter of sea level rise to see how quick conceptual voids in a given volume start to diminish. Mean numbers do not reflect 3d topography. They're an average of the samples of the peaks of mountains, which, at least on earth, descend in volume as they ascend in height.

[Anomalocaris]

No, mean altitude is exactly the height you would get if you keep the total volume of land above MSL constant but morph its topology into a flat plateau of uniform height.    

The continents overall are not quite as low lying as might seem from coastal cities.    Mountains, highlands and plateaus represent a sizeable portion of the continental surface.   The mean height of land on earth is about at the level of Tucson, Az.    Tibetan plateau proper alone adds 200 feet to the average height of all land on earth.

[The Grand Nudger]

Which, ofc, would be wildly inaccurate with respect to actual topography..becase the mean numbers are skewed by peaks which -do not- contain any fill between them. Those would be voids for water, just as the peaks would be voids in water, in the everest scenario.

The whole thing is absurd on so many levels. Truthfully, we'd need a new understanding of geology and hydrology and a new physics to come up with how that much water would end up here or how it would behave if it were.

[Anomalocaris]

Which, ofc, would be wildly inaccurate with respect to actual topography..becase the mean numbers are skewed by peaks which -do not- contain any fill between them.  Those would be voids for water, just as the peaks would be voids in water, in the everest scenario.

The whole thing is absurd on so many levels.  Truthfully, we'd need a new understanding of geology and hydrology and a new physics to come up with how that much water would end up here or how it would behave if it were.

We also need a new counterfactual understanding of thermodynamics, annd probably even more fundamental basis of physics.

There is just no way from thermodynamics point of view for earth not to be boiled just before or during the release of Noachian flood.   Either the water came from underground and it would emerge at boiling temperatures like hydro thermal vents writ a few quadrillion times larger,   Or if it were suspended in air its weight would make thr atmosphere pressure so crushing that oxygen partial pressure would kill everyone many times over,  had the heat trapping effect of so much water vapor in the air not already turned earth into Venus and reduced everyone to ash.

[The Grand Nudger]

It has to be added, that it reaches that point before it tops everest. It's one of those hidden miracles in magic books. Like the wargod stopping the sun in the sky to give his mujahideen a little more time to slaughter. They think that's the miracle, like they think the big fuck all storm is the miracle.

Nope, in both cases there's something even more inexplicable underneath and the god botherers are -already- appealing to magic at the surface level. So....

Why not just say it would take one cubic inch of water (or none!) to cover the entire earth to one mile over everest..if you could goddoit.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

No, mean altitude is exactly the height you would get if you keep the total volume of land above MSL constant but morph its topology into a flat plateau of uniform height.    

The continents overall are not quite as low lying as might seem from coastal cities.    Mountains, highlands and plateaus represent a sizeable portion of the continental surface.   The mean height of land on earth is about at the level of Tucson, Az.    Tibetan plateau proper alone adds 200 feet to the average height of all land on earth.

Yeah, I immediately thought of Tibet and the steppes, for reasons I won't go into here.

[Huolpoch]

The radius of the Earth doesn't really factor in.  If you have rectangular pool that requires 100 gallons of water for fill up to 1 foot in depth, it'd require  an additional 100 gallons of water to make it 2 feet in depth, another 100 gallons to make it 3 feet in dept, and so forth.  However, if the pool is in the shape of an inverted trapezoid, with a bottom narrower than the top, each subsequent foot of water depth will require more water to fill.

really?  radius of earth doesn’t come into play in calculating the volume of a spherical shell sitting on its surface?   have you thought this through at all?

Yes, I have, but whatever.