RE: Is this a contradiction or am I reading it wrong? Genesis 5:28
March 18, 2023 at 11:58 am
(This post was last modified: March 18, 2023 at 12:34 pm by Anomalocaris.)
There are about 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of water in the world’s oceans currently.
Most of the earth’s land mass is at fairly close to the current sea level, mountains and large plateaus form only a small part of land area, so to an first order approximation, we can ignore the volume taken up by mountains when we calculate the volume of water required to raise the sea level 29,000 feet to flood the top of the highest mountain. It turns out that requires an addition of 4.5 billion cubic kilometers of water, as can be determined by subtracting the volume of a sphere 9 km larger than the current radius of the earth (the size of an earth flooded to drown the tallest mountain) from the current volume of the earth.
So it seems it would require the addition of just under 3.46 times as much water as currently in all of the world’s oceans to drown the tallest mountains. Round that down slightly to account volumes of existing mountains and plateaus, say around 3.4 times.
Adding 3.4 times as much water in the ocean to the atmosphere, so it can rain out in Noah’s eponymous flood, would increase the atmosphere pressure of the earth from 14.7 psi to about 19000 psi. At 19000 psi pressure the air would be twice as dense as water. Breathing it would be like breathing molasses.
To keep all the water in the air that’s about to rain out in the vapor phase so as to not be prematurely raining out and ruining Noah’s eponymous ark while it is still under construction, the atmosphere temperature would have to be high enough to keep so much water vapor from exceeding the saturation pressure.
Unfortunately I failed to locate any engineering saturation pressure plot that goes up to 19000 psi. The highest doesn’t even go 1/10 that high. But at 1/10 that pressure, the saturation temperature is already 350 degrees Celsius.
To put it differently, even if the atmosphere Noah breathed contained just 1/10 as much water as required to precipitate out and drown the tallest mountain, that atmophere must have already been hot enough to melt lead to keep all that water from supersaturating the atmophere and instantly raining out.
Noah must have been quite the champ to be able to work so hard at building the ark while breathing air as thick as molasses and hot enough to at least melt lead.
Most of the earth’s land mass is at fairly close to the current sea level, mountains and large plateaus form only a small part of land area, so to an first order approximation, we can ignore the volume taken up by mountains when we calculate the volume of water required to raise the sea level 29,000 feet to flood the top of the highest mountain. It turns out that requires an addition of 4.5 billion cubic kilometers of water, as can be determined by subtracting the volume of a sphere 9 km larger than the current radius of the earth (the size of an earth flooded to drown the tallest mountain) from the current volume of the earth.
So it seems it would require the addition of just under 3.46 times as much water as currently in all of the world’s oceans to drown the tallest mountains. Round that down slightly to account volumes of existing mountains and plateaus, say around 3.4 times.
Adding 3.4 times as much water in the ocean to the atmosphere, so it can rain out in Noah’s eponymous flood, would increase the atmosphere pressure of the earth from 14.7 psi to about 19000 psi. At 19000 psi pressure the air would be twice as dense as water. Breathing it would be like breathing molasses.
To keep all the water in the air that’s about to rain out in the vapor phase so as to not be prematurely raining out and ruining Noah’s eponymous ark while it is still under construction, the atmosphere temperature would have to be high enough to keep so much water vapor from exceeding the saturation pressure.
Unfortunately I failed to locate any engineering saturation pressure plot that goes up to 19000 psi. The highest doesn’t even go 1/10 that high. But at 1/10 that pressure, the saturation temperature is already 350 degrees Celsius.
To put it differently, even if the atmosphere Noah breathed contained just 1/10 as much water as required to precipitate out and drown the tallest mountain, that atmophere must have already been hot enough to melt lead to keep all that water from supersaturating the atmophere and instantly raining out.
Noah must have been quite the champ to be able to work so hard at building the ark while breathing air as thick as molasses and hot enough to at least melt lead.
