Evaporites and Salt Domes

Morton, Glenn R.  “Geologic Challenges to a Young Earth.”  Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism 1:II:137–146.  1986.  A paper by Glenn Morton, a Dallas writer with a B.S. degree, given to the First International Conference on Creationism, addressing a creationist audience, on the geological problems a young earth faces.  It argues that pollen and spores in buried salt show the salt formed at the surface, and that the banded beds of west Texas cannot have been laid down in one year; the paper says that many creationists, its author included, once held the young-earth age it tests.  The article uses it for the 1986 creationist statement of these two problems and for the printed exchange that followed.

1. 1a.

   Page 138:  “A well drilled off Nova Scotia drilled through 4900 feet of salt known as the Osprey Evaporites.  4,000,000 cubic kilometers of salt are found in the sediments below the Gulf of Mexico, and salt is found in the sediments in the bottom”.  The bracketed words, of the Mediterranean, are added by this article, not by Morton. ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 138:  “The evidence which most persuasively argues for evaporitic salt is the fact that these salt deposits contain fossil pollen grains.  It is difficult to envision any metamorphic process in which pollen is Included In the Intruded material.  Bacterial and plant spores… spores are found in quantities from 50 to 2,000 spores per cubic centimeter.” ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 145:  John Morris's discussion note:  “Evaporitic salt does contain abundant pollen grains.  However, the laterally extensive and thick salt beds found buried in the stratigraphic record do not, nor do they contain meteoric dust or wind-blown dust.  Morton's argument based on evaporitic salt seems to be a straw man.”  Page 146:  Morton's closure:  “To say that salt does not contain pollen is to ignore the vast palynological literature on salt, some of which I cited in the paper.  Dr. Morris needs to read a few of them.” ↩

4. 1d.

   Page 138:  “If we creationists attempt to explain the deposition of this series of bands by a one year period of deposition, we are requiring one band to be deposited per minute - an impossible task over such a wide area.” ↩ ↩

5. 1e.

   Page 138:  “Assuming that these bands are tidally related we can account for the formation of four bands per day (two low tides and two high tides per day yielding two couplets) which would require over 350 years for this deposit to be laid down.  It is difficult to see how It could have been deposited within a one year time frame.”  In the printed Discussion, pp. 144–146, Steven Austin's entire reply is a four-item bibliography, one item being "D. I. Nutting, 1984, 'Origin of Bedded Salt Deposits: A Critique of Evaporative Models and Defense of a Hydrothermal Model': Unpublished M.S. thesis. Institute for Creation Research, 107 p." ↩ ↩

Warren, John K.  Evaporites: Sediments, Resources and Hydrocarbons.  Berlin: Springer.  2006.  A 1,035-page reference book on evaporites, the salt rocks that settle out as water evaporates, with ISBN 3-540-26011-0.  It predates Hovland et al. (September 2006) and does not cite it.  The article calls it the standard reference and quotes it for the mainstream view that basinwide salt came from seawater, and for problems the book itself prints.

1. 2a.

   Page 331:  “The requirement that the basin must be hydrographically isolated and that there must be a huge source of brine available to supply the required ions means; 1) all large thick volumes of salts (basinwides) must come from seawater and the only mechanism capable of supplying this volume is seepage into an isolated subsealevel depression”. ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 327:  “Basinwide evaporites can constitute large proportions of sediment fill in many ancient evaporitic basins, such as the Delaware Basin of west Texas, the Zechstein Basin of Europe, the Louann Salt Basins in the Gulf of Mexico, the Hormuz Salt Basins in the Arabian Gulf and the Late Miocene Messinian sub-basins in the Mediterranean (Figure 5.25).  The total evaporite fill in such basins is often hundreds to thousands of metres thick and composed of numerous stacked 'brining upward' evaporite cycles tens to hundreds of metres thick (e.g. the Z1-Z4 of the Permian Zechstein of northwest Europe).” ↩

3. 2c.

   Page 331:  “Volumes of salt deposited in saline giants can be huge, with individual deposits accumulating over geologically short time frames of no more than a few million years.  For example, the deposition of the Jurassic Louann Salt in the Gulf of Mexico some 175 Ma, sequestered approximately 8% of world-ocean NaCl (Land et al., 1988), while the Messinian evaporites of the Mediterranean were deposited in less than 300,000 years, yet lowered oceanic salinities by 6‰.” ↩ ↩ ↩

4. 2d.

   Page 330:  “The largest Early Permian deposit fills the East European Basin from the Caspian to the Black Sea with some 500 × 10³ km³ of halite and 100 × 10³ km³ of anhydrite (Magaritz 1987).” ↩

5. 2e.

   Page 611, figure 8.30 caption:  “Gamma-ray log, lithologic log, Br concentration and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio in whole rock samples from the cored interval through the Louann Salt in the Champion-Klepac #1 well (after Land et al., 1995).  The well was drilled to a total depth of 4,800 m.  Based on the monotonous gamma log, pure halite, at least 1,050 m thick, underlies the cored interval.” ↩

6. 2f.

   Page 611:  “The bittern sequence lacks MgSO₄ salts, giving a mineralogy that, according to Hardie (1990), is a prime candidate for a nonmarine, possibly hydrothermal, brine source, or perhaps indicates evaporation of a Jurassic seawater with ionic proportions different from today.” ↩

7. 2g.

   Page 33:  “In some ancient basinal settings, such as in the Castile Formation - a widespread Permian laminite in west Texas, water depths on the drawndown seaway bottom were mostly sub-wavebase… Repetitive layering in laminites is resolvable at two scales, 1) at the scale of individual 1.5-2.0 mm laminar couplets of calcite and anhydrite with calcite making up about 6% of a typical couplet, and 2) at the coarser scale of millennial brining upward parasequences ≈4 m thick (Figure 1.24a).  The mm-couplets are remarkably regular in thickness, and are commonly repeated thousands of times without interruption (Kirkland et al., 2000).” ↩ ↩

8. 2h.

   Page 34:  “varves (Dean and Anderson, 1982).  If so, it means the broader scale brining upward cycles were deposited in something like 1800 - 3000 years per cycle, with an average of 2700 years and something like 175,000 years to deposit the Castile Formation (Kirkland et al., 2000).” ↩

9. 2i.

   Page 35:  “Differences in the interpretation of brine depth during deposition of the Castile remain unresolved (Figure 1.24c).” ↩ ↩

10. 2j.

    Page 36:  “As more studies are completed on modern deepwater evaporites it is increasingly obvious that laminated beds alternating with growth aligned beds are not the typical signature of a deep subwave-base evaporite in a meromictic brine column.” ↩

11. 2k.

    Page 73:  On the Zechstein bittern suite and the century-old hot-brine proposal:  “In order to explain some of these problems Van't Hoff suggested that the temperature at the time of salt formation in the Zechstein Basin was as high as 83°C. …  Geologists found his suggestion of temperatures close to boiling in surface evaporite environments, cooling to 55°C at the end of a cycle, a little unlikely.”  Van't Hoff's proposal was displaced by Harvie et al. 1980's backreaction modelling, not ignored. ↩

12. 2l.

    Page 815:  “Potash extracted from the Permian Zechstein evaporites provides 20% of the world's potash.  The Zechstein succession was deposited in a huge drawdown seaway and is today made up of four evaporite cycles: the Z1-Werra Series, Z2-Stassfurt Series; Z3-Leine Series and Z4-Aller Series (Figures 5.48, 5.49).  Each has a general sequence of clastics, carbonates, one or two phases of sodium and potassium salts, regressive halite or anhydrite, and carbonate.  Potash beds of Z1 and Z2 are primarily composed of sylvite (KCl), carnallite (KCl.MgCl₂.6H₂O) and kieserite (MgSO₄.H₂O) and rapid lateral changes are common.  The Zechstein 2 potash bed interval locally attains a true thickness of about 15 metres.” ↩ ↩

13. 2m.

    Page 370:  “Leibold (1992) and Raup and Hite (1993) analysed bromide from bulk halite samples in the JEM Bruggers 3-7 core and showed that coarse halite and chevron-rich facies at the bottom of the A-1 Evaporite display a systematic upsection increase in Br concentration, ranging from 25 to 200 ppm.  This type of bromine profile, along with the upward increase in the density of chevrons, and buckled crust polygons towards the top of the chevron-rich facies indicate that this lowermost section of the A-l halite formed by the progressive evaporation of a large shallow body of brine, which dried out at the top of the unit.  In contrast, halite from the mid-basin potash facies does not exhibit any systematic increase in the Br concentrations.  Instead, the Br is relatively high (210 ppm) throughout, which suggests these halites did not form strictly by the progressive evaporation of a large body of Silurian seawater.” ↩ ↩

14. 2n.

    Page 371:  “Bromide concentrations increase systematically upsection in the halites of the F-1-Salt (Das et al., 1990), consistent with the profile expected for evaporation of a large body of seawater-fed brine.  Sulphur and strontium isotopic analyses of the anhydrite in the F-1 salt are also consistent with Silurian seawater values.” ↩

15. 2o.

    Page 368:  “The Michigan basin in the Late Silurian was a roughly circular intracratonic sag basin, approximately 400 km in diameter and fringed by reef pinnacles passing updip into an extensive rimmed platform… When Salina Group evaporite deposition commenced some 423 Ma the palaeolatitude was approximately 26°S, and approximately 20°S at 417 Ma, when Salina Group deposition ended.” ↩

16. 2p.

    Page 378:  “A value of 10⁻⁹ is 1 million times faster and represents strain rates in active (wet) salt glaciers in Iran (1.6 × 10⁻⁹ to 1.8 × 10⁻⁹ per second; Wenkert, 1979) and equates to an annual rate of rise of ≈ 2 m/year in the salt stem.  But the rate of salt supply and surface flow is not constant; salt glaciers (namakiers) in Iran always flow faster after a rain; the Dashti glacier at Kuh-e-Namak flows at up to 0.5 m/day during the few weeks of the annual wet season, but flows little if any during the dry season.” ↩ ↩

17. 2q.

    Page 450:  On the Winnfield salt dome caprock in northern Louisiana:  “Accumulation rates from these data indicate that the average rate for the oldest cap rock sampled is 5.7 m/m.y. and decreases to 2.8 m/m.y. for the younger lower parts of the caprock… The nearby 285 m-thick Hockley Dome cap rock is believed to have developed within the last 45 Ma giving same order of magnitude for the caprock accumulation rate (≈ 6 m/m.y.).” ↩

18. 2r.

    Page 450:  “a core through the Eureka dome, a structure located in the upper slope of the Gulf of Mexico, encountered 36 m (117 ft) of anhydrite caprock above the salt massif (Lehner, 1969).  Assuming an anhydrite content of around 5% in the Louann Salt, this thickness of caprock requires the dissolution of more than 700 metres of salt.” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “The Messinian salinity crisis questioned.”  Journal of Creation 19(1):11–13.  2005 (edition of 2014).  A Creation Ministries International article by Michael J. Oard, a creationist writer, first printed in the Journal of Creation in 2005 and posted on the ministry's website in 2014.  It argues against the mainstream account of the late Miocene drying of the Mediterranean, using the critique of the deep-sea drill cores by Hardie and Lowenstein.  The article uses it as the creationist source that most candidly admits the young-earth side has not yet worked out its own explanation.

1. 3a.

   “such an event would result in an average of only 20 m of salts with 60 m in deeper basins.  This would require that the full Mediterranean Sea would have evaporated 50 times!” ↩

2. 3b.

   “Since the evaporation rate of the Mediterranean Sea is probably 1 to 2 m/year, it would take on the order of millennia, or perhaps tens of millennia depending upon other variables, for the Sea to completely dry up once.” ↩

3. 3c.

   Oard quoting Hardie & Lowenstein 2004, Journal of Sedimentary Research 74:453–461:  “it is our view that the evidence presented by the DSDP scientists for the shallow-water origin of these evaporates is equivocal and is far from being the 'conclusive evidence' it is claimed to be (Hsü 1972a, p. 386).  A number of the features of these evaporites presented as evidence of shallow-water conditions are, in fact, more compatible with deposition under deep-water (below wave base) conditions.” ↩

4. 3d.

   “One would not expect true evaporites to form in the Flood, but the idea of precipitating the chemicals out is likely.  The details of the formation of such huge precipitites need work.  Creationists need a major research project, not only on the Messinian precipitites, but also on many of the other monstrous precipitites in the sedimentary rocks.” ↩ ↩

5. 3e.

   “Since the scale of the deposits is so large, it seems unthinkable that the precipitites could be post-Flood.  Thus, the Flood/post-Flood boundary in the Mediterranean and surrounding areas is likely to be in the late Cenozoic.” ↩ ↩

Heerema, Stef.  “A magmatic model for the origin of large salt formations.”  Journal of Creation 23(3):116–118.  2009.  An essay in the Journal of Creation, published by Creation Ministries International, that argues large salt formations were put in place as molten salt magma from deep in the crust, not formed by evaporating seawater.  The author's stated credential is a bachelor's degree in aircraft engineering, and the essay's main case is the thickness of salt deposits, the lack of sand and marine fossils in them, and the melting points of the salts in a table.  The article uses it as the clearest young-earth statement of the magma model, accepts its 60 km arithmetic, and tests the model against its own melting-point table.

1. 4a.

   Page 116:  “To form a deposit only 1 km thick would require seawater 60 km deep to be evaporated.”  His footnote 6 gives the inputs:  “Given the current salt content of sea water (3.5 % by weight) and a specific gravity of NaCl (2,162 kg/m³).”  His figure treats all dissolved salts as halite, which is why it matches Hsü's 61 km per kilometre of mixed evaporite rather than the 77.7 km for halite alone. ↩

2. 4b.

   Page 116, section abstract:  “The evaporite model requires the evaporation of hundreds of kilometers of depth of seawater, a process that would require vast periods of time, far longer than the biblical timescale.  Consequently evaporites have been used as an argument against young-earth geology.” ↩

3. 4c.

   Page 116:  “The salt formations show negligible contamination with sand… The salt formations exhibit negligible contamination with marine fossils… the distribution of salt deposits globally contradicts the idea that all of these areas were once near the equator for the required time to achieve such a result.” ↩

4. 4d.

   Page 117:  “the deposits were emplaced as a molten magma at temperatures above 800°C… with the magmatic model the large salt formations are emplaced rapidly by igneous processes, a mechanism that is consistent with the biblical timescale and a young earth.” ↩ ↩

5. 4e.

   Page 117, table 1:  Melting points taken from Ullmann's Encyclopedia: NaCl 801 °C, KCl 776 °C, MgCl₂ 714 °C, carnallite 117 °C.  The carnallite entry is the one that refutes the model, and it is Heerema's own. ↩ ↩

Nelstead, Kevin.  “A young-Earth creationist magmatic model for the origin of evaporites.”  GeoChristian.  Mar 26, 2013.  A blog post by Kevin Nelstead, an old-Earth Christian, reviewing a 2009 Journal of Creation paper by Stef Heerema and a later video by the same author, which argue that salt deposits formed from a molten salt magma during the Flood.  It checks the arguments one by one against the rates, the rock contacts and the mineral evidence of the mainstream model.  It is a critique from inside the church rather than from a hostile secularist, and the article uses it for the rate calculation and for the objection that carnallite cannot form from a salt melt.

1. 5a.

   “Seawater evaporation rates in tropical areas are on the order of one meter per year.  One meter of seawater, if evaporated completely, would leave behind 1.5 cm of evaporite minerals, mainly halite (NaCl).  At a rate of 1.5 cm per year, it would take 67,000 years to accumulate 1000 meters of salt, which is a short amount of time geologically speaking.” ↩ ↩

2. 5b.

   “there is no evidence that something like a salt magma has ever existed in the Earth.  Contacts between evaporite formations and other rocks show no signs of contact metamorphism (alterations to minerals caused by heat and hot fluids).  Some evaporite minerals, such as carnallite and bischofite, can form by precipitation from seawater, but cannot form from a salt melt.” ↩ ↩ ↩

Heerema, Stef.  “Clarifying the magmatic model for the origin of salt deposits.”  creation.com.  2013.  A reply on creation.com by Stef Heerema, the creationist who proposed the magmatic model in 2009, to a blog critique by the geologist Kevin Nelstead.  The article uses it for Heerema's own words on the 60 km figure, his answer on pollen, and his claim about the Dead Sea and Danakil.

1. 6a.

   Section Kevin states that 67 km of seawater was required to form 1 km of salt:  “To evaporate such a vast amount of water in a basin would take lots of time and lots of evaporation cycles.  I mentioned 60 km, and Kevin's 67 km of evaporated seawater is even more unlikely.” ↩

2. 6b.

   Section Kevin states that pollen have been found in salt formations:  “salt formations can be contaminated by pollen after their primary igneous deposition.  Salt formations have been subject to erosion for thousands of years.  Water has been rushing in delivering pollen and rushing out taking away a lot of salt.” ↩

3. 6c.

   On the Dead Sea and Danakil, Heerema writes:  “No, there has never been any connection.  Therefore these formations can only be from a primary igneous origin.” ↩

Morris, John D.  “Does Salt Come from Evaporated Sea Water?”  Acts & Facts 31(11).  Institute for Creation Research.  2002.  A short popular article by John D. Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research, in the institute's magazine Acts & Facts.  It has no reference list and no new measurements.  The article uses it for the institute's public account of the thick salt beds, which it says were extruded from deep in the earth during the Flood.

1. 7a.

   “If a basin of seawater 100 feet thick were to evaporate, only about 2 feet of salt would be left behind.”  Hsü's Table 1 gives 1.64 feet, so the figure is right and slightly generous to the argument it is used for. ↩

2. 7b.

   “modern evaporites are quite impure.  But the major salt deposits in the geologic record are absolutely pure salt!  Salt mines simply crush it and put it on the store shelf.” ↩

3. 7c.

   “Many now think the salt was extruded in superheated, supersaturated salt brines from deep in the earth along faults.  Once encountering the cold ocean waters, the hot brines could no longer sustain the high concentrations of salt, which rapidly precipitated out of solution, free of impurities and marine organisms.”  No citation is given for "Many now think."  In 2002 the published hydrothermal literature was Hardie 1990, for some bittern suites only, and Sozansky 1973; Hovland's paper was four years away. ↩ ↩

4. 7d.

   “During the Flood, great volumes of magma, water, metals, and chemicals, were extruded onto the surface from the depths of the earth, as the 'fountains of the great deep' spewed forth hot volcanic materials.  Today we find them (especially salt) interbedded with Flood sediments.” ↩

Hsü, Kenneth J. et al.  “The Origin of the Mediterranean Evaporites.”  Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project 13:1203–1231.  1973.  “43. The Origin of the Mediterranean Evaporites”.  A chapter, number 43, of the Deep Sea Drilling Project report on Mediterranean cores, and the long form of the same three authors' four-page Nature note from the same year, making the same argument.  It uses the drilled salt, the seismic profiles and the basin's water budget to argue that the Mediterranean dried out into a deep basin cut off from the Atlantic, and sets that model against two rival models.  The article uses it for the authors' salt table and water budget, and for their figure of thirty refills of the basin.

1. 8a.

   Page 1214, table 1:  “Volumes and Thicknesses of Salts Precipitated (after Schmalz, 1969).”  Per litre of seawater and per 1,500 m column: MgCl 1.48 cm³ gives 2.2 m; KCl 0.43 gives 0.65 m; MgSO₄ 0.94 gives 1.41 m; NaCl 12.87 cm³ gives 19.31 m; CaSO₄ 0.59 gives 0.89 m; carbonates 0.06 gives 0.18 m.  Total 24.64 m of evaporite from 1,500 m of seawater, which is 77.7 km of seawater per kilometre of halite and 60.9 km per kilometre of mixed evaporite. ↩

2. 8b.

   Page 1211:  “The Mediterranean Sea, exclusive of the Black Sea, has an area of 2.5 million km² and a water volume of 3.7 million km³… E, the annual volume loss by evaporation, is 4.69 × 10³ km³.  P, the annual precipitation, is 1.15 × 10³ km³.  R, the annual volume delivered by river inflows, is 0.23 × 10³ km³… The evaporative loss of the Mediterranean amounts to 3310 km³ annually; this loss is compensated for by inflow from the Atlantic.” ↩ ↩

3. 8c.

   Page 1215:  “some thirty full basins of marine waters would have to be postulated if they were brought in instantaneously and if one-third of the Mediterranean is underlain by 2 km of salt.” ↩

4. 8d.

   Pages 1215–1216:  “the total water influx should be two or three times the basin volume, and the salt influx per refill should be two or three times more than the theoretical value given in Table 1.  If the latter was the case, materials for a layer of halite 60 meters thick (20 m × 3) should be brought in by each refill.  If this salt was laid down only in the deepest parts of the Mediterranean that had one-third of the total basin area, the basinal halite deposited by each marine incursion would reach 180 meters in thickness (60 m × 3), and an aggregate thickness of 2 km Messinian halite would require only eleven interludes.” ↩

5. 8e.

   Page 1215:  “it probably took one or two thousand years each time before the Mediterranean could be filled up again.” ↩

6. 8f.

   Page 1215:  “So far, hardly any marine fossils have been found in the evaporites of the DSDP cores, although foraminifera and nannofossils are common in interbedded oozes.  The sterility of the evaporites seems to negate the postulate of a steady-state waterfall.” ↩

Debure, Mathieu et al.  “Thermodynamic evidence of giant salt deposit formation by serpentinization: an alternative mechanism to solar evaporation.”  Scientific Reports 9:11720.  2019.  A modelling study by researchers at the French Geological Survey (BRGM) and TOTAL, which proposes that salt forms on the sea floor through serpentinisation, the reaction in which seawater turns mantle rock into serpentine, rather than by evaporation.  It uses thermodynamic calculations, which predict which salts form, and how much, from a given chemistry at a given temperature and pressure, and it applies them to tachyhydrite, to a field example on the Central Western Iberian margin, and to the salt yield of seawater.  The article uses it for two things: the authors' own statement that evaporation cannot make the thick soluble salts, and their yield figures, which show that the route moves the salt already in seawater rather than making more.

1. 9a.

   Page 1:  “evaporation alone cannot explain salt deposits several kilometres thick (salt giants) or deposits of highly soluble evaporites (bischofite, carnallite and tachyhydrite).  For example, the dryness required to precipitate the tens of metres of tachyhydrite observed in the South Atlantic is not compatible with the Aptian equatorial climate, which was wet and warm, because the calculated equilibrium relative humidity of this salt is as low as 24.4% at 25 °C.” ↩ ↩

2. 9b.

   Page 2:  “Serpentine contains approximately 13 wt% water; hence, the alteration of 1 m³ of peridotite into serpentine by seawater yields 10.5 kg of salt and additional by-products (e.g., magnetite, quartz, and hydrogen).” ↩

3. 9c.

   Pages 5–6:  The sentence straddles the page break:  “A quantity of seawater that contains 1000 kg of pure water produces approximately 20–27 kg of halite (during serpentinization), 100 g to 4 kg of highly soluble salt and up to 4 kg of additional halite (on the seafloor) depending on the temperature and CO₂ level.” ↩ ↩ ↩

4. 9d.

   Page 6:  “Considering the amount of serpentinized rock estimated in the Central Western Iberian margin (3500 × 10⁹ tons), up to 1.5 × 10⁹ tons (or 7.0 × 10⁸ m³) of soluble salts may have settled on the seafloor.  If we consider the average rate of serpentinization (42%) estimated by Pinto et al., the amount of salt produced would be approximately 9.9 × 10⁸ m³.  The total amount of salt formed is even higher when considering the additional halite precipitation.  Therefore, the formation of giant salt deposits by serpentinization and upward migration of brine appears to be achievable.” ↩ ↩

Roveri, M. et al.  “The Messinian Salinity Crisis: Past and future of a great challenge for marine sciences.”  Marine Geology 352:25–58.  2014.  A review article by fifteen authors on the Messinian Salinity Crisis, the event at the end of the Miocene that left evaporites under the Mediterranean.  It places the crisis in three stages: evaporites first formed in shallow sub-basins, the peak came when they shifted to the deepest basins, and a brackish lake ended it.  It lists the questions that cores from the deepest basins could answer.  The article uses it as the mainstream's own statement of its unsolved problems and of the size of the salt.

1. 10a.

   Section Introduction, lines 44–46:  “As with the other saline giants that developed episodically during the Earth's history (Hsü, 1972; Warren, 2010), the causes of, and mechanisms by which more than a million cubic kilometers of salt accumulated on the Mediterranean sea-floor over a brief period of less than 700 ka are difficult to understand.” ↩ ↩

2. 10b.

   Section Introduction, lines 46–47:  Continuing the same sentence, lines 46–47.  “In part this is because of the absence of modern evaporitic systems comparable in terms of both size and mineralogy.” ↩

3. 10c.

   Section §5, lines 698–699:  MU is the Mobile Unit, the thick salt layer.  “In the Western Basin, apparently undeformed MU is <~1.2 km thick (using a 4.5 km/s velocity) when non-deformed.  In the Eastern Basin, MU is thicker (up to ~2.1 km).”  Section Introduction, line 64:  “the western Mediterranean diapiric structures rooted in an offshore salt layer up to 2 km thick”. ↩

4. 10d.

   Section §3.2.3.1–3.2.3.6:  Onset 5.97 Ma (million years ago), Zanclean reflooding 5.33 Ma, a total of 640 kyr (thousand years).  Stage 2, which the paper calls.  “the acme of the MSC”.  , runs 5.6–5.55 Ma, about 50 kyr, and is.  “dominated by thick primary halite (Sicily, Calabria, Cyprus) and clastic gypsum deposits”. ↩

Hay, William W. et al.  “Evaporites and the salinity of the ocean during the Phanerozoic: Implications for climate, ocean circulation and life.”  Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 240(1–2):3–46.  2006.  A research paper by William Hay and five co-authors, published in a journal on ancient climate and geography, that totals the known evaporite deposits (rock left when seawater evaporates, such as salt) and uses the totals to reconstruct how salty the ocean has been through the Phanerozoic, the span of time since abundant animal life appeared.  Its models take the smallest and largest estimates of the salt deposits, and the authors note that the largest deposits are the least well known.  The article uses its halite inventory, which it gives as a minimum and a maximum, and its warning that the buried salt was never all dissolved in the sea at one time.

1. 11a.

   Page 5:  “The present total inventory amounts to a minimum of 9.1 × 10⁶ km³ of halite, equal to about 19.6 × 10¹⁸ kg or more than 50% of the total of halite dissolved in the ocean today (36.8 × 10¹⁸ kg); the maximum estimate is about 16.3 × 10⁶ km³ of halite, equal to 35.2 × 10¹⁸ kg, or 95% of the present total in the ocean.  If all this salt were in the ocean at one time, the salinity would have been 57‰ to 73‰, but as Holland (1984) noted there is no evidence that the total inventory of halite was dissolved in the sea at any one time.” ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 11b.

   Page 5:  “When Sigsbee Knoll was drilled on Leg 1 of the Deep Sea Drilling Project in 1967, a very major discovery was made: much of the Gulf of Mexico was underlain by a vast layer of salt (Ewing et al., 1969).  This was soon realized to be the offshore extension of the Jurassic Louann salt known from petroleum drilling in Louisiana and east Texas.  The idea that salt could be deposited in basins of oceanic depth was new, and the projected volume of the salt deposit was far larger than any known until then on land.” ↩

3. 11c.

   Page 6:  “Land (1995) explored the potential role of saline pore waters in the history of ocean salinity.  Using the maximum values of the Holser (1985) evaporite inventory, and adding his own estimate of the volume of halite in the Jurassic Louann Formation (3500 × 10³ km³), he estimated the known inventory of Phanerozoic halite to be approximately 9600 × 10³ km³ or 12.6 × 10¹⁸ kg Cl⁻.” ↩

Derived for this article.  7.07 × 10⁸ km³ of water is 7.07 × 10²⁰ kg.  Latent heat of vaporisation 2.26 × 10⁶ J/kg gives 1.60 × 10²⁷ J.  Divided by a year (3.156 × 10⁷ s) that is 5.07 × 10¹⁹ W, which against 1.74 × 10¹⁷ W of intercepted sunlight is a factor of 291.  The same energy spread through the whole ocean (1.37 × 10²¹ kg at about 4,000 J/kg·K) would raise its temperature by about 290 K. ↩ ↩

Derived for this article from Hsü 1973 Table 1.  12.87 cm³ of NaCl per litre of seawater, at halite's density of 2.165 g/cm³, is 27.9 g of NaCl per litre.  A litre of seawater weighs about 1.025 kg and is 3.5% salts, so it holds about 0.989 kg of pure water.  Scaling to 1,000 kg of pure water gives 1,011 litres of seawater carrying about 28 kg of NaCl.  Debure et al.'s yield of 20–27 kg of halite per 1,000 kg of pure water is therefore roughly 70% to 95% of the sodium chloride the water arrived with. ↩ ↩

Anderson, Roger Y. et al.  “Permian Castile Varved Evaporite Sequence, West Texas and New Mexico.”  Geological Society of America Bulletin 83(1):59–86.  Jan 1972.  A research paper, issued in January 1972, on the Castile Formation, a layered sequence of anhydrite (a calcium sulfate mineral) and halite (rock salt) in the Delaware Basin of west Texas and New Mexico.  The authors counted and measured every pair of layers, called couplets, through one cored section 447.2 m thick: 260,000 couplets, each read as one year's deposit, which geologists call a varve.  They found that the thin layers can be matched from one place to another up to 113 km apart, and the article relies on the count and on that matching, while printing the limit the authors set on it.

1. 14a.

   Page 59, section abstract:  “The thickness of each couplet in the 260,000-varve sequence (a total thickness of 447.2 m, 1467 ft) has been measured individually and recorded.” ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 14b.

   Page 59, section abstract:  “Laminae are correlative for distances up to 113 km (70.2 mi) and probably throughout most of the basin.  Each lamina is synchronous, and each couplet of two laminated components is interpreted as representing an annual layer of sedimentation—a varve.” ↩ ↩

3. 14c.

   Page 59, section abstract:  “The Bell Canyon-Castile sequence in the cores studied is apparently continuous, with no recognizable unconformities.”  Page 61:  The body says the same thing positively:  “The laminations continue in an uninterrupted sequence from the preevaporite phase below the Castile upward into the Salado Formation in a series of some 260,000 laminae couplets”. ↩ ↩

4. 14d.

   Page 59, section abstract:  “with about 1,000 to 3,000 units between major oscillations or nodular beds.  These nodular zones are correlative throughout the area of study and underly halite when it is present.”  Page 84, section conclusions:  The same claim, restated:  “The episodes of high sulfate deposition or nodule development are separated by 1,000 to more than 3,000 laminae couplets.” ↩

5. 14e.

   Page 73, table 2:  “the number and average thickness of varves in each unit”.  Salado (partial) 35,422 couplets, 12,660 cm, 0.36 cm average; Anhydrite IV 54,187 / 9,842 cm / 0.18 cm; Halite III 17,879 / 2,748 cm / 0.16 cm; Anhydrite III 46,592 / 9,554 cm / 0.21 cm; Halite II 1,758 / 801 cm / 0.45 cm; Anhydrite II 14,414 / 2,738 cm / 0.19 cm; Halite I 1,063 / 330 cm / 0.31 cm; Anhydrite I 38,397 / 5,092 cm / 0.13 cm; Basal Limestone 600 / 28 cm / 0.04 cm.  “Estimated totals (Castile Formation) 174,890”.  Bell Canyon 50,850.  “Combined totals 261,162”. ↩

6. 14f.

   Page 61:  “The core was slabbed, polished, and marked off at 5.08-cm (2-in.) intervals.  Photographs of the core were enlarged three times, and printed on strips of photographic paper.  Each couplet (for example, calcite-anhydrite) was interpreted, marked, and measured on the photographs, and the core measurements were recorded on computer cards.  The result is a time series of approximately 260,000 varve couplets beginning in the Bell Canyon Formation, about 10.67 m (35 ft) below the base of the Castile and continuing to a basal limestone breccia, probably of the Rustler Formation, that rests on top of the laminations in the lower part of the Salado Formation, a thickness of about 447.2 m (1467 ft).” ↩

7. 14g.

   Pages 76–77:  “Stratigraphic correlations of laminae, however, reveal that couplets in certain parts of the varve sequence maintain almost exactly the same thickness proportions and general appearance (for example, contact relations, color) over the 113 km (70.2 mi) distance.  Other parts of the sequence have couplets with thickness proportions sufficiently different to make lamina by lamina correlation extremely difficult, although the longer trends and more variable couplets can be readily matched (Figs. 7B and 11C).” ↩

8. 14h.

   Page 84, section conclusions:  The conclusions say the laminae.  “persist laterally for 113 km (70.2 mi) and probably extend throughout the basin.”  The conclusions also say:  “the onset and end of halite and anhydrite deposition is nearly synchronous over 113 km (70.2 mi) and probably over the entire basin, suggesting that the classical model of evaporite zonation must be modified for the Castile sequence.” ↩

Derived for this article from Anderson et al. 1972.  260,000 couplets in a year of 525,600 minutes is one couplet every 2.02 minutes.  447.2 m in 365 days is 1.23 m per day.  At Morton's tidal rate of two couplets a day, 260,000 couplets take 356 years. ↩ ↩

Heerema, Stef J. et al.  “The layered Castile probably originated from salt magma.”  Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism, 676–677.  Cedarville University.  Edited by J.H. Whitmore.  2023.  A two-page poster abstract in the proceedings of a creationist conference, by three authors, one of them a geologist at the Institute for Creation Research.  It reviews earlier work, concludes that no aspect of the Castile Formation has been adequately explained, and suggests that the Castile's minerals may come from a salt-rich igneous intrusion during the Flood year.  The article treats it as the only published answer to Morton's 1986 challenge about the Castile. ↩

1. 16a.

   Page 676:  “In the past, creation scientists have struggled to develop an acceptable origin for these extensive salt deposits within a Flood model.  Thus, the stratification of the Castile Formation is considered a showpiece for evolutionism and a Geologic Challenge to a Young Earth, as presented by Morton at the ICC in 1986.” ↩

2. 16b.

   Page 676:  “From a literature review, we conclude that no aspect of the Castile Formation has been adequately explained.” ↩

3. 16c.

   Page 676:  “We suggest that the mineralogy of the Permian Castile Formation may be the consequence of a salt-rich igneous intrusion during the Flood year.” ↩ ↩ ↩

4. 16d.

   Page 677:  The poster image.  Its headline reads.  “LAYERED CASTILE FORMATION NEW MEXICO AND WEST TEXAS EXPLAINED BY A FLOOD MODEL INVOLVING MOLTEN IGNEOUS SALT.”  Its captions read.  “The eruption of molten salt bulldozed newly-deposited Flood sediments into the 'reef-like' semicircular Capitan Limestone”.  “The 210,000 couplets of dense anhydrite and calcite have resulted from in situ crystallization from the melt”.  “The residual molten salt mixture filled the Greater Permian Basin from which salts of lower density like halite and sylvite crystallized”.  “Secondary, penetrating oil provided dark organic material in the calcite layers in the CastileFormation”.  Labelling the cross-section:  “Fault through which salt magma emerged.”  The figures are a Delaware Basin locality map, a Greater Permian Basin gypsum/anhydrite-and-NaCl map after Johnson et al. 2021, a west-to-east stratigraphic cross-section after Engle et al. 2016, and a photograph of Castile laminae after Scholle et al. 2007.  Under the heading.  “Readables”.  it lists two Journal of Creation papers by Heerema and van Heugten, the 2018.  “Salt magma and sediments interfingered”.  and a 2022 paper, 36(2),  “The igneous origin of salt deposits and structures; countering critics”. ↩

5. 16e.

   Page 676:  “The crystallization into 210,000 couplets is prescribed and controlled by forces at the molecular level similar to traditional layered igneous intrusions.”  No source is given for the figure 210,000, and it matches neither of Anderson's totals. ↩

Heerema, Stef J., and Gert-Jan H.A. van Heugten.  “Salt magma and sediments interfingered.”  Journal of Creation 32(2):118–123.  2018 (edition of 2022).  A creationist journal article, first printed in 2018 and put on creation.com on 30 June 2022, by Stef Heerema, the author of the magmatic model, and Gert-Jan van Heugten.  It argues that solid salt cannot creep far enough to explain salt sheets moved 200 km, and that the salt must have risen as a liquid.  The article uses it for that liquid-salt claim and for the authors' rejection of hydrothermal models, and sets the liquid-salt claim against a later poster by Heerema and van Heugten on the Castile Formation.

1. 17a.

   From the abstract.  “Hydrothermal models concerning the genesis of salt layers do not address salt tectonics and, superficially, seem to be strengthened by this rise of liquid salt.  However, it is highly likely that a flow of hot water would mix with the muddy overburden, preventing the formation of pure salt pillars.  So, hydrothermal models are incapable of explaining salt tectonics.” ↩

2. 17b.

   Figure 2:  “The Sigsbee Escarpment is the southern edge of an allochthonous sheet of Mid-Jurassic Louann Salt in the Gulf of Mexico.  It is displaced over 200 km southward from the position where the salt penetrated the overburden.  Even if the displacement rate of the solid salt were relatively fast with several metres each year, it would not fit in a biblical timeframe.” ↩ ↩

3. 17c.

   Section Conclusions:  “Evidence suggests the overburden and the salt both moved in a synchronic and fluid-like manner.  Synchronic flow of solid salt and solid rock is impossible.  Therefore, the empirical observations suggest the salt was liquid when it rose through a fluidized overburden at the time.” ↩

Not derived here:  Anderson et al. print both totals themselves, in Table 2 on p. 73 of the microfilmed issue, which lists each unit's varve count, thickness and average couplet thickness and then gives "Estimated totals (Castile Formation) 174,890 31,133 cm" and "Combined totals 261,162 44,717 cm".  The same itemised counts appear in the abstract at p. 59:  "The uppermost 9.2 m (30.3 ft) of the Bell Canyon Formation contains about 50,850 varve couplets; the Basal Limestone Member of the Castile about 600; the lowermost anhydrite member of the Castile (Anhydrite I) contains 38,397; Halite I, 1,063; Anhydrite II, 14,414; Halite II, 1,758; Anhydrite III, 46,592; Halite III, 17,879; and Anhydrite IV, 54,187.  The part of the Salado collected (126.6 m) contains 35,422 varve couplets."  They sum to Anderson's two printed totals.  174,890 is Warren's 175,000;  261,162 is the 260,000 of the abstract.  Heerema, van Heugten and Clarey's 210,000 matches neither. ↩

Hovland, Martin et al.  “Buried Hydrothermal Systems: The Potential Role of Supercritical Water, 'ScriW', in Various Geological Processes and Occurrences in the Sub-Surface.”  American Journal of Analytical Chemistry 5(2):128–143.  2014.  A 2014 review in a chemistry journal by three researchers in Norway, one of them at an oil company, arguing that supercritical seawater, which is hot, pressed seawater that stops dissolving salt, helps make salt deposits, volcanoes and earthquakes.  The same three authors had proposed the idea in a 2006 paper, so this is their own summary rather than independent confirmation.  The article uses it as the underground hydrothermal explanation for salt, and checks its numbers.

1. 19a.

   Section Abstract:  “It is well known that seawater that migrates deep into the Earth's crust will pass into its supercritical domain at temperatures above 407˚C and pressures above 298 bars.  In the oceanic crust, these pressures are attained at depths of 3 km below sea surface… A supercritical water vapour (ScriW) is formed with a density of 0.3 g/cc and a strongly reduced dipolar character.  This change in polarity is causing the ScriW to lose its solubility of the common sea salts (chlorides and sulphates) and a spontaneous precipitation of sea salts takes place in the pore system.” ↩

2. 19b.

   Section 2.1 Supercritical Brines:  Reporting Tester et al.:  “when the brines were passing into the supercritical region at a temperature of 407˚C and 298 bar pressure (the CP of seawater), they could see a 'cloud' formed by the onset of 'shock crystallization' of NaCl… The sudden phase transition occurred as the solubility of the salts declined to nearzero over a temperature range of only a few degrees C.  The resulting solids were found to consist of amorphous microscopic particles of sizes between 10 and 100 µm.” ↩

3. 19c.

   Section §3 Hydrothermal "Outsalting":  “This 'evaporite' explanation may be realistic for salt thicknesses some tens of metres, however, the accumulation of salt thicknesses of several thousand metres, as found in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and other places world-wide, is difficult to explain with the evaporite theory.” ↩

4. 19d.

   Section 2.3 Occurrence of ScriW on Earth:  “Because of the high regional porosity of the oceanic crust (mentioned above) it represents a huge reservoir of brine, located directly on top of the mantle, which has a minimum temperature of 1100˚C.  The volume of brine residing in the world's oceanic crust is of the same magnitude as that of the entire ocean.  It has been calculated that all oceanic water circulates in and out of the oceanic crust at least once per million years.”  Hovland's reference 18 for that sentence is Davis & Becker, 'Observations of Temperature and Pressure', in Davis & Elderfield (eds.), Hydrogeology of the Oceanic Lithosphere, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 225–271.  The ocean is 1.37 × 10²¹ kg, so 'at least once per million years' is at least 1.4 × 10¹⁵ kg/yr. ↩

5. 19e.

   Section §3:  In the same paragraph as the Outsalting passage.  “It is especially difficult to explain how large volumes of salt have accumulated in sedimentary basins such as in South-Western Canada, which contains volumes of salts approaching those of the entire world oceans.”  This claim is wrong by orders of magnitude against Hay et al. 2006 p. 5. ↩

Derived for this article from Hsü 1973 Table 1 and Hay et al. 2006 p. 5.  At 77.7 km³ of seawater per km³ of halite, Hay's minimum inventory of 9.1 × 10⁶ km³ needs 7.07 × 10⁸ km³ of seawater and his maximum of 16.3 × 10⁶ km³ needs 1.27 × 10⁹ km³.  The world ocean is 1.335 × 10⁹ km³, so the range is 53% to 95% of it.  Hay states separately that the buried halite is 50% to 95% of the ocean's dissolved NaCl, so two independent statements agree. ↩

Sunlight intercepted by the earth (the article's own calculation).  n.d.  A calculation by the article itself, not a published study.  The solar constant of 1,361 W/m² times the earth's cross-sectional area, π × (6.371 × 10⁶ m)² = 1.275 × 10¹⁴ m², gives 1.74 × 10¹⁷ W intercepted, day and night, over the whole planet.  The article sets this ceiling against the 5.1 × 10¹⁹ watts that Hay's minimum inventory needs, and no Flood model can raise the ceiling on any sunlight-driven process. ↩

Derived for this article.  10⁶ km³ of Messinian halite needs 7.8 × 10⁷ km³ of seawater at Hsü's conversion.  The Mediterranean holds 3.7 × 10⁶ km³ (Hsü 1973 p. 1211), so that is 21 basin volumes.  Compressed into a year, 7.8 × 10¹⁶ m³ ÷ 3.156 × 10⁷ s = 2.5 × 10⁹ m³/s, against the Amazon's roughly 2.1 × 10⁵ m³/s, a factor of about 12,000.  Evaporating that water in a year costs 1.8 × 10²⁶ J, or 5.6 × 10¹⁸ W, which is 32 times intercepted sunlight. ↩

CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.  Boca Raton: CRC Press.  93rd edition.  Edited by William M. Haynes.  2012.  A reference handbook of measured chemical and physical data, in its 93rd edition, with tables such as the solubility of inorganic salts at a range of temperatures.  The article uses its sodium chloride row to show how little salt a cooling brine gives up, and how much salt a saturated brine holds at 25 °C.

1. 23a.

   Pages 5–194:  The NaCl row of the table.  “Aqueous Solubility of Inorganic Compounds at Various Temperatures”.  , whose columns run 0, 10, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 °C: 26.28, 26.32, 26.41, 26.45, 26.52, 26.67, 26.84, 27.03, 27.25, 27.50, 27.78, 28.05.  26.45 mass % is 36.0 g per 100 g of water;  28.05 mass % is 39.0 g.  The table's note, at p. 5-190, says:  Pages 5–190:  “All solubility values are expressed as mass percent of solute”. ↩ ↩

Derived for this article from the CRC table above.  Take 1,000 g of saturated brine at 100 °C:  280.5 g of NaCl in 719.5 g of water.  Cool it to 0 °C, where saturation is 26.28 mass %, and 24.0 g of halite drops out, which is 8.6% of the salt the brine was carrying.  Nothing about this depends on the Flood;  it is why cooling a brine is a poor way to make a kilometre of salt. ↩

Derived for this article.  Heating 7.07 × 10²⁰ kg of seawater from 4 °C to 407 °C at 4.2 kJ/kg·K costs 1.2 × 10²⁷ J.  This is a floor, because water's heat capacity rises steeply near the critical point, and it is only about 25% less than the 1.6 × 10²⁷ J needed to evaporate the same mass. ↩

Alt, Jeffrey C.  “Hydrothermal fluxes at mid-ocean ridges and on ridge flanks.”  Comptes Rendus Geoscience 335(10–11):853–864.  2003.  A review article, written on invitation, that surveys how much heat and water hydrothermal systems move through the ocean crust, estimated from heat measurements and from the chemistry of altered rock.  The article cites this review rather than Elderfield and Schultz (1996), the primary source of the axial figure, which the review reports; the review also gives the mid-ocean ridge rate that the article uses as the measured throughput.

1. 26a.

   Page 855:  “Elderfield and Schultz [26] calculate an axial hydrothermal fluid flux of 3–6 × 10¹⁶ g/yr, assuming cooling of the entire crust to 350 °C.  If only latent heat is lost, this flux is reduced to 0.7–2.3 × 10¹⁶ g/yr.  Mottl [51] integrated heat capacity against temperature in order to more accurately represent heat transport, and obtained a similar hydrothermal fluid flux of 3.07 ± 0.49 to 5.87 ± 0.79 × 10¹⁶ g/yr.  His best estimate of hydrothermal heat transport (1.8 ± 0.3 TW) yields a fluid flux of 3.70 ± 0.51 × 10¹⁶ g/yr.”  10¹⁶ g/yr is 10¹³ kg/yr. ↩

2. 26b.

   Page 857, table 1:  “Estimates of global hydrothermal fluxes”.  The table's note (a) reads:  “hydrothermal fluid flux = 3.7 × 10¹³ kg/yr”. ↩

3. 26c.

   Page 858:  “Mottl's [51] best estimate of hydrothermal heat transport for active MOR systems (1.8 ± 0.3 TW) is only about 15% of the total oceanic hydrothermal heat flux of 11 TW [70], so the major portion of hydrothermal heat flux occurs in passive systems on ridge flanks.” ↩

Derived for this article.  7.07 × 10²⁰ kg divided by the axial flux of 3.7 × 10¹³ kg/yr (Alt 2003 p. 857) is 1.9 × 10⁷.  Divided by whole-crust circulation of 1.4 × 10¹⁵ kg/yr (Hovland et al. 2014 §2.3) it is 5.2 × 10⁵.  Both are ratios of a Flood-year requirement to a present annual rate, so both are the factor by which circulation would have to be sped up.  The whole-crust figure is a lower bound on the speed-up and an upper bound on the flux, because most of that water never gets near 407 °C. ↩

Clarey, T. L.  “Salt Deposits Confirm the Pre-Flood Pangaea.”  Acts & Facts 49(7).  Institute for Creation Research.  2020.  A short article on the website of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), written by one of its research associates, who holds a PhD in geology.  It argues that Late Precambrian salt rocks in the Middle East, Pakistan and India were laid down in the early Flood, and it tests that by placing the salt formations on a reconstruction of Pangaea, a single land mass that held the continents together, and comparing the fit with the rival Rodinia reconstruction.  The article cites it for two things: the young-earth placement of these salts inside the Flood, and the Pangaea argument, which it calls a fair move, the same kind the mainstream uses.

1. 28a.

   “ICR researchers recently examined some unusual Late Precambrian salt-rich rocks in Asia and the Middle East.  We think these deposits originated from the earliest days of the Flood, forming about 4,400 years ago during the bursting of the fountains of the great deep (Genesis 7:11).  The deposits are found across the Middle East, Pakistan, and India, and are often thousands of feet thick.”  “We conclude that Pangaea was already in existence when these massive salt-rich rocks were deposited, likely early in the Flood.” ↩ ↩

Derived for this article.  Halite's density of 2,165 kg/m³ makes a cubic kilometre 2.16 × 10¹² kg, so the Louann's 3.5 × 10⁶ km³ is 7.6 × 10¹⁸ kg.  Crystallising it (heat of fusion about 5.2 × 10⁵ J/kg) and cooling it from 850 °C to 50 °C (heat capacity about 900 J/kg·K) releases about 1.2 × 10⁶ J/kg, or 9.1 × 10²⁴ J.  In one year that is 2.9 × 10¹⁷ W, about 1.7 times intercepted sunlight, and it would warm the whole ocean by about 1.7 K. ↩

Derived for this article.  The conduction timescale for a slab of half-thickness L is about L²/κ.  For L = 500 m and a thermal diffusivity of 3 × 10⁻⁶ m²/s that is 8.3 × 10¹⁰ s, about 2,600 years, before any latent heat of crystallisation is added. ↩

Heerema, Stef J., and Gert-Jan H.A. van Heugten.  “The igneous origin of salt deposits and structures; countering critics.”  Journal of Creation 36(2):58–60.  2022.  A 2022 paper by the same two authors, directly answering critics of the idea that salt deposits are igneous, meaning that they formed from molten rock.  The article cites it as the place where answers to its carnallite and contact-metamorphism objections would be, but cannot say whether it contains them. ↩ ↩

Lowenstein, Tim K. et al.  “Oscillations in Phanerozoic Seawater Chemistry: Evidence from Fluid Inclusions.”  Science 294(5544):1086–1088.  Nov 2, 2001.  A research report in the journal Science.  The authors analyzed tiny droplets of ancient seawater, trapped inside salt crystals, from Late Precambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, Permian, Cretaceous and modern halite, and found that seawater chemistry has changed over time.  The article uses it for the claim that these salt crystals grew from brine at the surface of an evaporating sea, not from brine trapped during burial.

1. 32a.

   Page 1086:  “Fluid inclusions from halites (Fig. 1) trace out paths on Mg²⁺ and Na⁺ versus Cl⁻ plots that reflect changes in brine composition consistent with progressive evaporative concentration in the halite field.  Such brine evolution paths support the textural evidence that the inclusions analyzed were trapped during various stages of evaporation of surface brines and not during burial.”  A second quotation, three sentences earlier on the same page:  “Our data are from chevron halites that appear petrographically to be primary (i.e., unrecrystallized).” ↩

Derived for this article from Warren 2006 p. 378.  200 km at 2 m/year is 100,000 years.  At the Dashti glacier's wet-season peak of 0.5 m/day sustained every day of the year, 182.5 m/year, it is about 1,100 years. ↩

Derived for this article.  Hay's minimum halite inventory is 19.6 × 10¹⁸ kg of NaCl.  At 26.45 mass % that needs 7.4 × 10¹⁹ kg of saturated brine, and saturated NaCl brine has a density of about 1.20 g/cm³, so 6.2 × 10⁷ km³, which is 4.6% of the 1.335 × 10⁹ km³ world ocean.  A litre of that brine holds about 317 g of NaCl against seawater's 27.9 g, a factor of 11.4. ↩