“Fountains of the Deep” on Mars

Did you know that scientists believe that Mars has “Fountains of the Deep” under it’s surface? And that this sounds very similar to the “Fountains of the Deep” on Earth which we read about in the Biblical book of Genesis which kicked off the Global Flood of Noah? (Genesis 7:11) Check out this paper …

Semi-three dimensional computer simulations of large-scale cataclysmic flooding: A model and parameter sensitivities

Miyamoto, H. | Baker, V.R. | Komatsu, G.
34th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference; Abstracts of Papers. 2003

Many cataclysmic megafloods in the geological history of Earth has [sic] been recognized. They are linked with late Pleistocene glaciation, and therefore research on these floods might provide insights on climatic changes of Earth. Megafloods appear also to have occurred on Mars, at scales so large that the outflows may have been responsible for the formation of a transient north polar ocean on the planet. Relevant to these problems, the understanding of discharge rates and durations of megafloods will be quite important. A variety of quantitative methods have been applied. However, these computations were confined to a single reach at one time. Therefore, it was difficult to reconstruct the continuous flow relationships among multiple reaches, which is necessary to estimate a discharge rate for the whole system of a megaflood. Link to abstract

Or this from Wikipedia …

Liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars with its present low atmospheric pressure, except at the lowest elevations for short periods[11][12] but water ice is in no short supply, with two polar ice caps made largely of ice.[13] In March 2007, NASA announced that the volume of water ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted, would be sufficient to cover the entire planetary surface to a depth of 11 metres.[14] Additionally, an ice permafrost mantle stretches down from the pole to latitudes of about 60°.[13]
Much larger quantities of water are thought to be trapped underneath Mars’s thick cryosphere, only to be released when the crust is cracked through volcanic action. The largest such release of liquid water is thought to have occurred when the Valles Marineris formed early in Mars’s history, enough water being released to form the massive outflow channels.

And just how big is Valles Marineris? VERY BIG!

The large canyon, Valles Marineris (Latin for Mariner Valleys, also known as Agathadaemon in the old canal maps), has a length of 4000 km and a depth of up to 7 km. The length of Valles Marineris is equivalent to the length of Europe and extends across one-fifth the circumference of Mars. By comparison, the Grand Canyon on Earth is only 446 km long and nearly 2 km deep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars

And don’t forget … Mars only has about 1/4 the surface area of Earth.

OK … so did you catch all that? The scientists think that there is a massive amount (like enough to cover the whole planet to a much greater depth than 11m … 100m? More?) of liquid water trapped under the Martian surface and that this “Fountains of the Deep” was broken up by volcanic action early in Martian history, releasing enough water to carve a channel the size of Europe! Wow.

And yet, most scientists are unwilling to consider the possibility that similar “Fountains of the Deep” burst forth catastrophically a few thousand years ago here on Earth, causing a total resurfacing of the crust, even though the crust shows every sign of having bee catastrophically resurfaced by a massive amount of water. Why are they so resistant to this idea? Well … I think it’s because they don’t like the thought of the Book of Genesis possibly being true. If the Book Of Genesis is accurate WRT the Flood story, then maybe it’s accurate WRT other things too. And this would have large implications. This would cause people to face the fact that maybe there really is a Creator after all. And maybe He really did destroy the former world with water and maybe He will destroy the present with fire as promised. And maybe He really will judge mankind at the end of time. Hmmm.

ANOTHER PAPER ABOUT MEGAFLOODS ON EARTH AND MARS

Science 23 May 2008: Vol. 320. no. 5879, pp. 1067 – 1070
DOI: 10.1126/science.1156630

Reports

Formation of Box Canyon, Idaho, by Megaflood: Implications for Seepage Erosion on Earth and Mars
Michael P. Lamb,* William E. Dietrich, Sarah M. Aciego, Donald J. DePaolo, Michael Manga

Amphitheater-headed canyons have been used as diagnostic indicators of erosion by groundwater seepage, which has important implications for landscape evolution on Earth and astrobiology on Mars. Of perhaps any canyon studied, Box Canyon, Idaho, most strongly meets the proposed morphologic criteria for groundwater sapping because it is incised into a basaltic plain with no drainage network upstream, and approximately 10 cubic meters per second of seepage emanates from its vertical headwall. However, sediment transport constraints, 4He and 14C dates, plunge pools, and scoured rock indicate that a megaflood (greater than 220 cubic meters per second) carved the canyon about 45,000 years ago. These results add to a growing recognition of Quaternary catastrophic flooding in the American northwest, and may imply that similar features on Mars also formed by floods rather than seepage erosion.

Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720–4768, USA.

OTHER SOLAR SYSTEM BODIES WITH SUB-SURFACE WATER
Titan
Enceladus

9 Responses to ““Fountains of the Deep” on Mars”

  1. lordkalvan says:

    Well, my first comment on this article is that insofar Mons Olympus is 26 kilometres high I doubt that this would likely be submerged to a depth of 100m or more by what you categorize as Martian fountains of the deep. I think you need to look more critically and, dare I say, thoughtfully at the information you are reading and presenting before leaping to the conclusion that it in some way provides support for young Earth creationism. I would also point out that, as in the case of your resurfacing of Venus article, the timescales talked about in the articles you reference discuss events occurring millions of years in the past, yet you seem to ignore these parts of those articles. Presumably because they fail to support your argument. And it is also quite obviously the case that evidence for events on Venus and Mars is not evidence for (to stretch a point) similar events on Earth. To support the occurrence of events on Earth, you need to present evidence for those events on Earth, not Mars and/or Venus.

  2. dhawkinsmo says:

    I hear this objection a lot … that events on other planets is not evidence of those events on earth, but the people who object in this way are forgetting something. We compare similarities on earth all the time in all fields of science in order to gain insights into processes. We study cancer in lab rats to try to understand cancer in humans. We perform flume tests to study sedimentation of mud. And so on. Are you telling me that these tests are invalid just because a rat is much different from a human and a flume experiment is much smaller in scale than the real thing? I hope not. So it is valid to study neighboring planets in our solar system to gain insight into earth processes. Nobody’s trying to claim that anything is proven.

    As for the possible water depth, note this article …

    H2O Inventory of Mars

    A significant amount of surficial H has been observed globally by the Mars Odyssey GRS.[1] Stoichiometrically estimated H2O mass fractions indicate that – when free of CO2(s) – the near surface at the poles consists almost entirely of H2O(s) covered by a thin veneer of fine material.[1] This is reinforced by MARSIS observations, with an estimated 1.6×106 km3 of H2O(s) at the southern polar region with Water Equivalent to a Global layer (WEG) 11 m deep.[2] Additional observations at both poles suggest the total WEG to be 30 m, while the Mars Odyssey NS observations places the lower bound at ~14 cm depth.[3] Geomorphic evidence favors significantly larger quantities of surficial H2O over geologic history, with WEG as deep as 500 m.[3]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_water_on_Mars_and_Earth

  3. lordkalvan says:

    I have submitted a response to your reply twice, but in each case it does not seem to have registered. I will try again, but meantime I am making this comment to check whether the problem is at my end or not.

  4. lordkalvan says:

    Evidently not, but perhaps my response was too long. I will try submitting it in trenches.

    Part 1:

    I submitted essentially this post some three hours ago, but it has not appeared on the blog yet. I don’t know what the problem may have been, but if the original turns up out of cyberspace, please feel free to delete this one.

    In the first place, your argument about using events on one Solar System body to speculate that similar events may occur on another Solar System body is fair enough, but the whole point is that it is SPECULATION. The differences amongst your subject bodies – Earth, Mars, Venus, Enceladus and Titan – are such that any comparison is largely meaningless unless you closely define and describe scientifically the terms you use, the phenomena you are comparing and the various data that make those comparisons meaningful (if, in fact, they do). What you are proposing in this comparison (Mars to Earth) is only valid if the systems you are looking at have something in common with each other, those common features being measurable and quantifiable in a relevant way. The examples you use to illustrate your analogy have been measured and tested exhaustively enough to confirm that conclusions that are drawn from them are sufficiently robust to withstand serious scruting. This is not the case when you suggest that Martian fountains of the deep may be some sort of evidential support for Terrestrial fountains of the deep. In order to establish the existence of the latter, you must do more than speculate that vaguely similar phenomena (to stretch the definition of ‘similar’ to accommodate your argument) elsewhere in the Solar System imply the existence of that phenomena on Earth. You must provide evidence and, sadly, so far that evidence is non-existent.

  5. lordkalvan says:

    Part 2:

    I submitted essentially this post some three hours ago, but it has not appeared on the blog yet. I don’t know what the problem may have been, but if the original turns up out of cyberspace, please feel free to delete this one.

    In the first place, your argument about using events on one Solar System body to speculate that similar events may occur on another Solar System body is fair enough, but the whole point is that it is SPECULATION. The differences amongst your subject bodies – Earth, Mars, Venus, Enceladus and Titan – are such that any comparison is largely meaningless unless you closely define and describe scientifically the terms you use, the phenomena you are comparing and the various data that make those comparisons meaningful (if, in fact, they do). What you are proposing in this comparison (Mars to Earth) is only valid if the systems you are looking at have something in common with each other, those common features being measurable and quantifiable in a relevant way. The examples you use to illustrate your analogy have been measured and tested exhaustively enough to confirm that conclusions that are drawn from them are sufficiently robust to withstand serious scruting. This is not the case when you suggest that Martian fountains of the deep may be some sort of evidential support for Terrestrial fountains of the deep. In order to establish the existence of the latter, you must do more than speculate that vaguely similar phenomena (to stretch the definition of ‘similar’ to accommodate your argument) elsewhere in the Solar System imply the existence of that phenomena on Earth. You must provide evidence and, sadly, so far that evidence is non-existent.

  6. lordkalvan says:

    I am sorry, but Part 2 seems to be only a duplicate of Part 1. This is evidently my fault and I apologize sincerely. Please delete this duplicate post and I will try again.

    Part 2 (2nd attempt):

    Regarding the question of the Martian WEG, again I question your apparent conclusion that the entire planet would be covered to a depth of 11m or more. I think you will find that the WEG at best is a hypothetical case based on a topographically smooth planet. To propose submerging Mons Olympus to a depth of just 11m seems at best absurd and I would like to see your maths justifying such a conclusion. The average depth of Earth’s oceans is just under 4km. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that a Terrestrial WEG based on this figure would give a depth of around 2.3km, yet 30% of Earth’s surface stands above mean sea level. I think the case you are trying to make here is weak at best.

    It is also the case that, when you reference the geomorphic evidence, the timescales which are being discussed are such as to make the model proposed by young Earth creationism meaningless. In order for the Martian environment as it exists today to have been arrived at in the timescale proposed by young Earth creationism would require the suspension of the laws of physics as we know them.

  7. dhawkinsmo says:

    I understand very well that we are long ways from establishing the existence of “fountains of the deep” on earth prior to the Flood. Far from it. I do not conclude anything definite about these WEG figures. Also, these are meant to be average depth figures.

  8. dhawkinsmo says:

    Comments are now open on the “Lake Suigetsu” article. That was my mistake.

  9. lordkalvan says:

    Many thanks for clearing up the dog’s breakfast I had made of my last posts.