World's oldest salt lake only a few thousand years old
Phanly, wikimedia commons
The whole Lake Eyre basin covers about 9,500 km2 (3,668 sq miles).
In 1984, scientists measured the amount of salt accumulated in Australia’s largest salt lake — Lake Eyre in South Australia. They found that it would have taken about 73,000 years to accumulate, assuming a flood occurred every 50 years.1
However, the South Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service in 1991 stated that “almost all its area is covered on average once in 8 years.”2 This reduces the time period for accumulation to only 12,000 years. This has to be a maximum time because the fossil evidence suggests that inland Australia was much wetter in the past, being covered in rainforest during the Tertiary Period when the lake was supposedly formed. With flooding every year, as could have occurred in the past, the minimum time for accumulation would be 1,500 years.
Evolutionists date the Tertiary between two and 65 million years ago. Even if Lake Eyre formed two million years ago, and we assume floods every eight years, 99.4 per cent of the expected salt is missing. If we assume it is older, and take into account the wetter climate of the past, the problem becomes even greater, with up to 99.99 per cent of the expected salt missing.
The scientists who did the work were puzzled by this discrepancy and could find no explanation for where the salt could have gone.
However, if only several thousand years have elapsed since the Flood of Noah’s time, as the Bible implies, then maybe all the salt is still there.
References and notes
- The estimated store of soluble salts in the Lake Eyre catchment in Queensland and their possible transport in streamflow to the lake, Gunn, R.H., and Fleming, P.M., Aust. J. Soil Res. 22(2):119–134, 1984 | http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/SR9840119. Return to text.
- Parkabout, National Parks and Wildlife Service of South Australia, Vol.1 No.6, 1991. Return to text.