Genesis says that the water got high enough to cover every mountain in the world. Mt. Everest is 29,000 feet above sea level. That means the water had to be at least 29,000 feet deep to cover every mountain. That's 5 1/2 miles.
I got some math gurus to calculate out how much water it takes to cover the Earth to a depth of 5 miles. Needless to say, it's a big number. Take a look: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgE_vUnj0tE9IP6WTn28GO7sy6IX?qid=20070225133656AAg7pcq
There are 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons on the Earth now. To have water 5 miles deep above sea level, you'd need more than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which, and I'm no math wiz, is thousands of times more water than is currently on the planet.
If Noah's flood is literal, it has to have been a divine miracle, and the water must have receded into oblivion.
2007-02-25 10:38:16 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Before you get to wondering where it went to, there is the slight problem of where it came from.
Mt Everest is a little over 8000m high, let's round it off to 8000m. It rained for 40 days and nights, that is 960 hours. It had to rain on every point of the Earth's surface at the same average rate. that is 8000/960 metres per hour. That's 8.33m of rain an hour. That is 8333mm an hour or 139mm a minute on every point of the earth's surface. The heaviest rain in one hour recorded anywhere in the world is 401mm and the heaviest in 1 minute is 38mm.
Even if we accept the impossible rainfall rates, there is still not enough room in the sky for all that water. Less than 1% of the volume of a cloud is water, the rest is air. Let us suppose that 10% of a cloud is water and that all of it was turned to rain which fell on the surface. This means that the earth was surrounded by cloud 80km thick. No light reached the surface and any life forms would need to be as resilient as those in the deepest ocean trenches. Human life would be impossible so how could Noah build an Ark?
2007-02-25 11:00:21 · answer #1 · answered by tentofield 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Don't forget that the air pressure created by adding that much water to the atmosphere would have instantly crushed every living organism on the planet.
2007-02-25 10:45:12 · answer #2 · answered by scifiguy 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
or, just MAYBE, it was a local flood, the guys stuffed his wife and a couple of goats on a raft, and the story got a little out of hand.
2007-02-25 10:45:01 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
For crying out loud man...of course there is an answer..."god moves in mysterious ways"....don't you know that by now? *wink* Good question.
2007-02-25 10:46:28 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The ice caps and evaporation to clouds
2007-02-25 10:44:50 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 3⤋