Seventh Post
Oldest Rock Layer Is on the Bottom, Right?Right??
Glory To Jesus Christ!
A grace-filled Byzantine Feast of the Martyr Julian of Tarsus and the Roman Feast of the Confessor Aloysius Gonzaga, y'all!
OK, you dig a two-foot-deep hole in the ground in your backyard: because, why not? 🤓 The next day, a heavy thunderstorm washes an-eight-inch layer of pine needles into it from up the hill. Two days later, another heavy thunderstorm washes in eight inches worth of sand from up the hill. A few days after that, a two-day nonstop steady rain washes in eight inches of soil just like the soil all around it. The hole is gone. Because you were hoping to plant a rose bush in that hole you dig it up again, but aim wrong and dig into the side of the original hole. You see a layer cake of pine needles under sand under soil. Because you witnessed all three rains, you know that the bottom pine needle layer came first, and is thus older than the two above it.
Same goes with your lasagna: the cheese topping came AFTER the noodle under it, and that noodle was laid down AFTER the cheesy-tomatoey-ground beef, and so on. Top is younger than bottom.
Well, natural science men in the 1800s seeing layers of rock, assumed that they were laid down bottom to top, and, keeping in mind that it takes time between laying down of layers, they calculated that a LOT of time had to pass to lay down the whole stack.
Sadly, this enabled a long time-frame that the evolution theory could piggyback on.
However, some natural science men, like modern Frenchman, Guy Berthault, thought outside the box: what IF the layers were laid down in a different way? What if sediments were carried by swift currents? How would they deposit? Well, he up and did experiments, including water flumes.
Some interesting results came about:
Still water: if you dropped mixed sediments into still water, layers often formed spontaneously…
(Would be nice if you could do that with lasagna, just dump everything into the baking dish all at once! 🤣 Same for shepherd's pie!)
If you ran mixed sediment particles in a swift current, you got a layer cake all at once!!!
And the layer cake deposited SIDEWAYS!!!
Older is UPSTREAM, and the pattern continues downstream! Quickly!
(Imagine the huge Grand Canyon layer cake being laid down in weeks by several huge currents in a row…saves a LOT of time!)
So, FUN homework this time 😊😀😃☺️: find all the above, and much more, including videos, at sedimentology.fr It's in English. (Cet website est disponible aussi à français.)
Our Mother of Perpetual Help, aid us!!
Ademar