Hydroplate Theory

The Hydroplate Theory of the Great Flood is the theoretical model, proposed by Dr. Walt Brown, to explain the original composition of the Earth, how the Great Flood occurred, and how the Flood changed the earth to its present configuration. Dr. Brown explains his theory in detail in his on-line book, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood.

Observations to explain

The Hydroplate Theory seeks to explain a number of observations, both Biblical and extra-Biblical. The Biblical explanations are found in Genesis chapters 6-8: a rupture of deep-underground springs (Hebrew כל-מעינת תהום or khal-mayanah tahown, translated as "fountains of the great deep" in the KJV), a torrential rainfall lasting for forty days and nights, water covering the highest elevations then existing to a depth of more than twenty-five feet (fifteen long cubits), and all this water covering the surface for 150 days and then receding, almost as if they had never been. The extra-Biblical explanations include:

1. The fitting-together of the continents of the earth like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.
2. The outlines of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge system, especially the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that parallels the shores of the Americas to the west and Europe and Africa to the east.
3. The findings of sedimentary rock and even marine fossils at the highest elevations.
4. The distribution of ocean trenches, earthquakes, and the Ring of Fire.
5. The Grand Canyon.
6. The existence of vast quantities of limestone, too vast to explain as dead coral.
7. The finding of frozen mammoths, some of which froze standing up.
8. The existence of comets, asteroids, meteoroids, the moons of Mars and all the gas giant planets (except only the Galilean moons of Jupiter and some, but not all, the Large Moons of Saturn), and the subglacial oceans known or suspected to rest on Europa, Ganymede, and Enceladus.
9. The existence of the Trans-Neptunian Objects. This includes the dwarf planet Pluto, and especially the frozen lake of carbon monoxide in the western lobe of Tombaugh Regio (Tombaugh's Region, or the Great Heart Shape).
10. The existence of radioactive materials on earth and on the surface of the Moon but not buried deep on it.

Basic elements

The one basic element of the Hydroplate Theory is a model of the antediluvian earth. According to this model, the earth had a subcrustal ocean. This is similar to the subglacial oceans on three of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, and on Enceladus, moon of Saturn.

This ocean was in a sealed chamber with multiple pillars holding up the earth's crust overhead. Recent evidence suggests this subcrustal chamber lay fifty miles beneath the surface of the earth.

Beginning with the Fall of Man, these pillars began to buckle, slowly at first, then somewhat faster. This buckling caused some parts of the crust to begin to settle, and this uneven settling created tensile stresses in the parts of the crust that did not settle. (Or else some person or persons unknown, set off a powerful but non-nuclear explosion over a pillar. This weakened it, with disastrous results long after the first event. We may never know. Noah, the great shipwright and Annalist, records only that he had one hundred twenty years' advance warning.)

Eventually the crust failed catastrophically, creating a seam at what is now the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This seam continued to break open until at length all of that water, previously confined under pressure, burst through to the surface. The crust was then ruptured, forming various crustal plates, or hydroplates, that moved about or were shoved violently aside or into one another. This movement generated a great deal of heat, at levels that persist today under the earth.

Part of the subcrustal ocean survived. A vast reservoir of water, comparable in volume to the Arctic Ocean, exists under the Asian continent. It is known as the Beijing Anomaly.

Sequence of events

The catastrophic failure began, as mentioned, at what is now the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the Americas once were joined with the rest of the continents in one continuous land mass. A tiny through-and-through crack appeared, and once this happened, it inevitably lengthened and broadened as the confined water burst through it. Eventually a seam opened nearly all the way around the earth, involving the entire Mid-Oceanic Ridge system.

Most of the water thus released washed over all the land areas in a series of incredibly high and fast tsunamis. These great waves lifted up Noah's Ark and carried it with them. That the Ark, or indeed any vessel, could survive this event is a tribute to the Ark's divine design and to Noah's innate skill as a shipwright.

In addition, this water created a cascade that arced very high in the atmosphere and fell as rain, for forty days and nights, as the Bible says. This water would reach very high indeed, not only because it had been confined under pressure, but also because the ten-mile-thick crustal plates would "flap" with the water's passage and create pumping action and "water hammer" to drive the water even higher. Brown estimates that one percent of this water, together with vast quantities of mud and rock, achieved escape speed and persists today as comets, asteroids, meteoroids, and the ice deposits that have already been demonstrated on the Moon, the planet Mercury, and most recently on the planet Mars. In addition, many of the ejected rocks may have bombarded the Moon and created many of its present features—although Russell Humphreys' magnetic-field model, combined with findings from samples returned by the crews of Apollo 15 and Apollo 16, suggest that the Moon was bombarded on two other occasions, neither of which coincided with the Flood. Some organic matter (which undoubtedly even included whole fish and dolphins) must also have been ejected, and indeed organic matter was found in the frozen polar craters on Mercury.

The Americas were shoved violently to the west and opened a gap that persists today as the Atlantic Ocean. In the process, they formed two north-south mountain ranges (perpendicular to their direction of motion, naturally): the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, and the Rocky Mountains and Andes Mountains to the west of North America and South America, respectively. To the Far East, the Asian continent collided with the land masses of Europe and created the Himalayas.

Directly opposite the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, depressions formed. These persist today as the Mariannas Trench and especially the Challenger Depth, two of the deepest places in all the earth's oceans.