First of all, hello

I have been following this site with interest for a long time. Thanks for doing it, mr. Plait.

But now, for the topic. Well, i'm not a believer actually, more of a person trying to put some sense into heads of others. Unfortunately, i'm not skilled enough in astronomy to debunk it correctly.

Well, the general idea- some kind of unknown planet passed very close to Earth some time ago. (for some reason my opponent claims it to be about 3000 BC, what is absurd anyway). The planet had strong enough gravitational pull / was big enough to cause disaster of Noah's scale- ie rising the ocean levels on one side of the planet several kilometers high, while draining the other part.

To me, it seemed that when object / planet capable doing this would pass us at much closer distance then Moon, not only would the oceans do such things, but whole Earth would crash down to that object like an average meteor. Well, as said, i'm not even amateur astronomer, so it's my not-so-educated guess. If i'm wrong, then i'm wrong... happens.

But then he countered with an argument that if the huge planet / object would pass us with enough speed, it would be enough to force the Noah flood, but definately not enough to affect Earth otherwise. After all, the speed is that fast... Now, i know this is as wrong as it can get, but unfortunately, i'm unable to prove it.

So i though that maybe you can help out?

hjarg

Welcome to the board.

Consider this: most of the planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) were known since we started recording history.
This happened because they can be observed by naked eye, and can be distinguished from the stars.
So, if there had been a planet that passed close enough to Earth, it would have been easily observed: we would have found plenty of records (not just in Europe or Near and Middle East, but anywhere on Earth).

You are right that a planet passing closer than the Moon would have had a more dramatic effect than just a flood.
I doubt that we would still have the Moon as it is now.
Even if the planet was fast, the effect would still have been disastrous and probably it would have changed the Earth's orbit (the important parameter is minimum distance between this planet and Earth, rather than speed).

Finally, as far as I know there is no evidence of a flood on planetary scale or a change in orbit.

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"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

Welcome to the BABB, hjarg!

I suspect that some of your associates may be closet-Velikovskians, although Immanuel didn't get into the flood thing (IIRC). But, here's a page that digs into his claims that has a lot of bearing on what you are asking about. The same lack of evidence for a worldwide "Venus" catastrophe applies equally as well to those "flood" claims.

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Eh, sounds like another misinterpretation of Sitchin where Nibiru comes closer than the asteroid belt.


Welcome to the BABB, hjarg!

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Welcome hjarg!

If the people who are proposing this close encounter are using it as a primary explanation for Noah's Flood, then you might want to read this thread and explore some of the links.

There is mounting evidence that the flood myth is not only not unique to Bible, but actually based in part of historical events. The current theory on the Black Sea flood is actually facinating science.

I think it is more correct to say that there is mounting evidence that the Black Sea has flooded (slowly but very profoundly) while there were humans living in the area, but that no one knows if the Biblical flood story is based on this flood, another one, a combination of many ones, or nothing at all (never underestimate the power of imagination). Apart from that, you're right of course.

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Well Mr. Hjarg, the burden lies with the party you are arguing with to present evidence to support his or her case, not with you to prove its wrong.

Fortunately for us, the earth has not experienced a close flyby of a planet-sized object for billions of years. Were such an event to have occurred a mere 3,000 years ago its not likely any of us would be around to wax eloquent about it.

But put more simply, there is no evidence for such a thing. In fact, there is no evidence for some kind of world-wide flood. To falsify the hypothesis that Noah's Flood is real, all one need do is dig a six foot hole in my backyard and examine the geology there. You will find no evidence that my humble residential lot was underwater for any period of time during the past 11,000 years. You will find plenty of evidence of glaciers from the Ice Age that preceded that time though.

Enjoy your debate, but make the dissenting party making such assertions prove their case with physical evidence.

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The way this was explained to me once that I found very intriguing and probaly the most simple answer for a complacated situation. When civilzation first started people always lived close to rivers to provide a source of water for drinking and irigation for crops. One of the things about rivers is they tend to flood and somtimes they flood A LOT. Enough flooding couled cause people to think maybe god is punishing them and that possibly the entire world is being flooded but also take into consideration any myth that includes the entire world may actually be a very very small place to those people. This seems to me the most likely explanation as why to the flood myth is a common myth among people around the world.

Nereth,

That's a very plausible explanation for why there are so many flood myths among so many different cultures.

By the way, the Talk Origins website at http://www.talkorigins.org/ is an excellent place for information and discussion about the Flood myth.

Regards,
Algorithms

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Yep, and when tribes meet one another: Hey, we had a big flood a few years back! Yeah, we too. Same here! Etcetera. Conclusion: it wasn't something in our village, the whole world was flooded!
Floods and Fires are the two most common dramatic (i.e. sudden) disasters for a non-technological (non-industrial) civilization, I think, so these are central to many myths, stories and religions. Perhaps storms as well, and diseases, but those tend to be less common in the stories.

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What if it was a major natural event, like the huge earthquake recently witnessed in south-east Asia? A huge tsunami would cover a large area, hence the world flooding stories. The area flooded from the south-east Asia quake was quite extensive. Is it possible, or even recorded that an event could/can happen in the middle-east ?

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Like Santorini blowing up?

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papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

Thanks for replies!

Well, in this particular case i have been shoving the thread full of facts and links, but the opposition, instead of debuking them, adds new ones. And i'm having a lot of fun debunking. Just the amount of crap people are willing to believe is simply amazing. And having a no critical filter in his brain, he comes up with several nice theories that are quite funny. No proof added, of course.

Neterh's explanation is the most plausible, yes

Probably not so. Krakatau's effecs in Mediterranian were awful indeed, but the Gilgamesh tablets are dated older then the Santorini. Latter happened around 1600-1500 BC, Sumerian myths of worldwide flood are dated (if i remember correctly) to around 2500BC.

Also, not quite likely. Again, if i remember correctly, tsunami waves demand a lot of water space to from and to grow. Smaller water bodies like Persian Gulf, Red Sea or Mediterranian aren't just big enough to allow forming of huge waves. Also, the tsunami just couldn't pass to Middle East for in west, Gibraltar straight would stop the wave, in south-east, Arabian peninsula would serve the same effect.

Hi Hjarg,

Welcome to the BABB.

I had a great time in Talinn a few years ago, very pretty city. Loved the old guilds section and the fort. Amazing amount of construction and rebuilding going on too.


On the flood theory, one I've always liked is the idea that "The Flood" originates in the opening of the Straits of Gibraltar, and consequent creation of the Mediterranean Sea. Fleeing a flood of that magnitude would be a legend making event.


cheers,
Robbo

It would have to be some legend, to survive 5.4 million years.

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Anybody mention the 'forty days and forty nights' when it rained cats and dogs? 8-[ Most likely story the Flood is an ancient Babylonian myth migrated into the scriptures, perhaps the flooding of the Black Sea, for which there is evidence, when Bosphorus Straights gave out to sea pressure from the Med.

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So, basically, we can say that flooding legends are so common because floods are also so common. Makes sense. At least more sense then stealh-global-disasters :P

Another reason why flood stories could be so common might be the rise in sea levels that happened at the end of the last ice age. Doubtless that must have had quite an effect on our ancestors' psyches.

- Maha "a flood of ideas" Vailo

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If his theory depends on the sea only rising on the near side of the earth then you could point out that any gravitational tidal force would cause a bulge on the near and far side of the earth.

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If logic doesn't work, then surely it does.

Yes, and the bulge would be in both the ocean and the crust underneath it. The bulge would move as the planet flew by. Aside from being pretty obvious in the geological record, this would have caused massive extinction that would have taken far more than a few thousand years for recovery. For that matter, there are trees older than this.

[edit - A correction. In the initial thread post I read "3000 BC" as "3000 years ago. My mistake. The tree mentioned above is 4700 years old, so it doesn't predate it. Still, given the purported event, few species of plants and animals would have survived, let alone grown and developed normally soon after.]

So, there are no planets around that could have done this, there is no evidence of disturbed orbits, and given that we are here to discuss the subject, there is no way this could have happened.

Actually he did. From:

http://www.pibburns.com/smsaturn.htm

](*,) Yeah, it hurts my brain too when I read that.

Thanks (I think) for that information.

All I've read of IV is Worlds in Collision. That was more than enough. That would explain why I didn't recall any flood stuff.

Now to very carefully and gently remove that paragraph from my memory before it starts to Fester and tries to take over my thoughts until I have to cry "Uncle"!

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Well, nice theory, but where did all the nice water go after causing all these Deluges and stuff?

Dear god, there must be a woo-woo theory about everything

You're correct.

woo-woo theory about everything

(although a cursory analysis reveals it's not a theory, but somewhere between speculation and hypothesis, with a large skew toward speculation)

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No. Nereth's contribution was entirely sensible and logical -- but there's much more to it than that.

It depends a lot where you live -- and in the modern towns and cities in which most people live these days, evidence of a flood is not evident. But in many places, amid the hills in the great outdoors, the evidence is there. It is in the marine features of the fossils, and in the marine nature of the sediments. There are many places in the world where to climb the hills above the village is to see the evidence that those hills were once submerged. (And so indeed they were, though they probably weren't hills at the time.)

There was indeed a great mystery to be explained here! Delve into the philosophical literature of the eighteenth century. Freethinking men lay aside the biblical account as a story, but they still believe in the flood. The evidence seems unassailable! Amid the efforts to account for it are explanations of an astronomical nature. None of the scenarios seems quite satisfactory, even at the time. But it is, to a degree, through the impetus to explain the flood that the science of geology is born.

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"True skepticism encompasses not dismissing evidence because it seems to defy rational explanation."

Absolutely correct. While many current researchers speculate the origins of the flood myth are connected to the Black Sea flood, chances are we'll never really know. Still, the story of the Black Sea flood (and the science and research going on around it) are facinating in their own right.

There's no great mystery. There was no global flood. The sediments you're referring to were laid down when the areas in question were beneath water, typically millions of years ago and multiple times. They follow in very close order the various geological eons, eras, periods, and epochs. The 18th century protogeologists soon shed the misconceptions of a global flood and moved ahead to modern geology.

Flood myths are typical products of early homo sapiens groups reacting to the end of the last ice age.

Perhaps you should just retreat to listening to the Holst work and considering its astrological origins.

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Umm, Maksutov, I didn't have the impression that mutineer still thinks that the Flood (whatever the origin) caused those sediments, but that he was expressing where Flood myths can come from. Indeed, when you walk on a mountain and see it covered in sea shells, the 'logical' conclusion would be: wow, once the sea came as high as this mountain.
I would have left out the 'probably' from his statement, but apart from that, what he says is right. And even the probably can be defended, as they could have been underwater hills and mountains before they raised even higher.

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Why yes, there is. :^o