Vast Water Below the Earth’s Surface (June 3)

Scientists believe they have discovered three times more water deep within the Earth’s mantle than in all the oceans of the world. But before you grab your bathing suit and surfboard and book a trip to where the Sun doesn’t shine, consider that this vast reservoir of water is located 420 miles below the earth’s surface (50 times lower than the deepest oil well). It is also locked up as hydrated molecules within the Earth’s magma and rock crystal structure.

What makes this discovery so significant is the fact that scientists cannot even explain where all the water that fills our current oceans came from, let alone more water locked deep within the Earth. This water is a total mystery to scientists studying the Earth from an evolutionary, old-age perspective. All naturalistic models for the Earth’s formation require enormous amounts of heat as materials slowly coalesced to form our planet – billions of years ago. These processes would have driven water out of the Earth’s core and left little on the surface. So, speculation has proposed that our oceans came from vast numbers of comets hitting the Earth and depositing their water. This also does not work because water contained in comets has been shown to have a very different composition of isotopes than water found on Earth.

The Bible states that the Earth was recently created “out of water” (2 Peter 3:5 NKJV) and made for mankind’s benefit (Psalm 115:16). Finding oceans filled with water (and even more water deep below the surface) is neither surprising nor a mystery.

Towards the end of the Flood of Noah’s day, the mountains rose up, and the waters rushed off the continents into the oceans. This is where the waters that flooded the Earth now reside. Much of this water may have originally come from sources deep within the Earth when “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up” (Genesis 7:11 NKJV) approximately 4,350 years ago.

2 Peter 3:5-6

KJV: For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

NIV: But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.

Reference

Schamndt, B. et.al., 2014. “Dehydration melting at the top of the lower mantle”. Science 344 (6189):1265-1268.

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