Addresses of All Authors
Noah Cho, 61 Nicklaus Ln., Starkville, MS 39759, USA HeechenECho@gmail.com
John Baumgardner, 24515 Novato Place, Ramona, CA 92065, USA
Jesse A. Sherburn, 3909 Halls Ferry Rd, Vicksburg, MS 39180, USA
Mark F. Horstemeyer, 1292 Chapel Hill Rd, Starkville, MS 39759, USA
Author's Biography
Noah Cho is currently a Ph.D. student in computational engineering at Mississippi State University, with an emphasis on computational geophysics. His dissertation research involves development of improved numerical models for the deformation behavior of mantle, combined with an exploration of how that deformation behavior influences the earth mantle’s dynamics. The goal of his work is to model the plate tectonics and mantle convection during the Genesis Flood in a more realistic manner than ever before and to gain deeper insight into the physical processes that occurred during this cataclysm.
John Baumgardner has a Ph.D. in geophysics and space physics from UCLA and worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in computational physics research during most of his scientific career. Since the early 1980’s he has undertaken most of the primary research undergirding the concept of catastrophic plate tectonics in connection with Noah’s Flood. Beginning in 1997 he served on the Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) team that documented multiple independent lines of radioisotope evidence that the earth is thousands, not billions, of years old. Since 2005 he has been part of a small team that has developed Mendel’s Accountant, a computer model for exploring key topics population genetics relating to the origin and history of life. John currently is a senior research associate with Logos Research Associates based in Santa Ana, California, and teaches science apologetics courses at Southern California Seminary in the San Diego area.
Jesse Sherburn has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Mississippi State University and is currently a research mechanical engineer at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center. He has published over 30 journal articles, technical reports, and conference proceedings in the area of modeling weapon effects on defensive structures relevant to the Department of Defense. His dissertation topic was implementing an internal state variable model into the 2D version of TERRA. The work was used to investigate olivine weakening mechanism in a 2013 ICC paper. He is also an adjunct online professor at Maranatha Baptist University where he frequently teaches a course covering recent creationary research.
Mark Horstemeyer is a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Mississippi State University (MSU) where he holds a Chair position for the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems in Computational Solid Mechanics. He is also the chief technical officer over the manufacturing and design aspects of CAVS. He has published over 500 journal articles, conference papers, books, and technical reports with a citation H-factor of 52. He has won many awards including the R&D 100 Award, AFS Best Paper Award, Sandia Award for Excellence, the SAE Teetor Award and was a consultant for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
Proposal
This paper reports our efforts to model the effects of grain size, recrystallization, creep, and texture on overall rock strength within the Earth’s mantle during the Genesis Flood. Our study uses experimental rheological data obtained from the mineralogical literature for olivine, which is an important mantle mineral. We apply an Internal State Variable (ISV) constitutive model within the framework of the TERRA finite element code to capture the subscale structures and their associated dynamics, strength, and viscosity effects during the Flood episode. Our numerical investigations, in both 2D and 3D, that include the improved deformation model reveal even more clearly that the potential for mantle instability enabled an episode of catastrophic plate tectonics to occur. This mantle instability arises from the extreme weakening behavior resulting from the relationship between microstructural features (herein texture, recrystallization, and grain size) and thermomechanical properties (e.g., stress and viscosity) under the conditions of temperature, pressure, and strain rate within the mantle during the Genesis Flood. It is our conviction that such an episode played a major role in the global Flood described in Genesis 7-8.
Disciplines
Geology | Geophysics and Seismology | Physics
Keywords
Mantle rheology, internal state variable model, catastrophic plate tectonics, Genesis Flood, TERRA earth model
DOI
https://doi.org/10.15385/jpicc.2018.8.1.48
Print Reference
Pages 707-730
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Recommended Citation
Cho, N., J. Baumgardner, J.A. Sherburn, and M.F. Horstemeyer. 2018. Numerical investigation of strength-reducing mechanisms of mantle rock during the Genesis Flood. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, ed. J.H. Whitmore, pp. 707–730. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship.
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