Broken Fountains & Cosmic Impacts

Unified Evidence for the Fountains of the Great Deep During Noah’s Flood

New scientific findings on platinum-group elements (PGEs) like iridium and ruthenium, together with unmistakable impact signatures such as tektites, shock quartz, and shatter cones, beautifully align with the biblical record of Noah’s global Flood. In previous discussions, we examined the famous iridium anomaly at the K-Pg boundary and the striking ruthenium signatures in Hawaiian lava flows. Both point to the violent breaking open of “the fountains of the great deep” (Genesis 7:11). When we add the clear evidence of meteorite impacts (tektites, shock quartz, and shatter cones), the picture becomes even more compelling. These are not isolated ancient events separated by millions of years but integrated features of the single, planet-remaking cataclysm described in Scripture.

The Platinum-Group Elements: Iridium and Ruthenium Mobilized from Earth’s Deep Interior

Secular scientists often attribute the global iridium-rich layer at the K-Pg boundary to

a single large asteroid impact, such as the one supposedly forming Chicxulub crater around 66 million years ago. Yet the total iridium fluence across sites far exceeds what even a 10 to 15 km impactor could deliver, and the Chicxulub melt rocks themselves contain surprisingly little iridium. A 2025 study published in Nature adds powerful new data: researchers from the University of Göttingen detected elevated ruthenium-100 (¹⁰⁰Ru) in Hawaiian lava flows, with isotopic signatures pointing directly to Earth’s metallic core rather than the surrounding mantle.

Iridium Ore in The Flood Museum collection

Ruthenium, like iridium, is a siderophile (iron-loving) element that is extremely rare in Earth’s crust but concentrated in the core and lower mantle. These findings confirm that core-derived material can reach the surface through mantle plumes and volcanic systems. In the uniformitarian view, such leakage is portrayed as a slow, gradual process over hundreds of millions of years. But the data fit far more naturally within a biblical catastrophic framework.

Kilauea Lave (with Rutherium) in The Flood Museum Collection

During the Flood, the fountains of the great deep erupted with unimaginable violence. Catastrophic plate tectonics, massive rifting, intense mantle upwelling, and explosive volcanism would have dramatically accelerated the release of PGEs from deep within the Earth. These elements were then dispersed globally through volcanic plumes, hydrothermal activity, atmospheric circulation, and ocean currents. The iridium “anomaly” often appears as multiple spikes or smeared horizons rather than a single sharp layer. This is exactly what we expect from pulsed volcanic and tectonic activity throughout the Flood year, not one instantaneous event. The Hawaiian ruthenium discovery demonstrates the feasibility of terrestrial PGE sources. Scaled up to Flood intensity, it accounts for the observed quantities far better than secular models allow.

Impact Signatures: Tektites, Shock Quartz, and Shatter Cones from Meteorite Bombardment

Alongside the deep-Earth PGEs, we find widespread evidence of high-velocity meteorite impacts. Tektites are small, glassy pebble-like objects formed when terrestrial material was melted by intense heat and pressure, splashed into the atmosphere, and rapidly cooled into aerodynamic shapes. Shock quartz displays distinctive planar deformation features (PDFs): parallel planes of microscopic damage visible under polarized light that only form under extreme shock pressures exceeding 10 GPa. Shatter cones are distinctive striated, conical fracture patterns in bedrock that radiate from an apex and form at relatively lower shock pressures (typically 2 to 10 GPa). These features are widely recognized as unequivocal markers of meteorite impacts.

Sudbury, Ontario Shatter Cone in The Flood Museum Collection

In the Rahab model developed in our discussions, these impact features formed during the same Flood year when the fountains of the great deep burst forth. The violent tectonic upheaval and associated meteorite bombardment from the Rahab debris field (the breakup of a former celestial body) produced the extreme pressures and temperatures required. These signatures were then rapidly buried in the vast sedimentary layers deposited by the Flood waters. Multiple horizons of such features throughout the geologic record reflect repeated pulses of impact and volcanic activity during the cataclysm, not separate extinction events separated by eons.

A Modern Analog: Trinitite and the Effects of High-Heat Aerial Blasts

A striking modern parallel is trinitite, the greenish glassy residue formed when the intense heat of the 1945 Trinity nuclear test fused desert sand into glass. This material demonstrates exactly what happens when an aerial high-heat blast (whether from a nuclear detonation or a high-altitude meteorite explosion) melts and fuses surface materials almost instantaneously.

Just as the Trinity blast created trinitite in seconds, meteorite airbursts or surface impacts during the Flood would have generated tektites and shocked minerals on a global scale. The same rapid melting, vaporization, and quenching processes explain both the ancient impact glasses and the PGE-rich layers we observe today. This observable laboratory-scale example confirms that catastrophic high-heat events produce precisely the features uniformitarian models struggle to explain without invoking millions of years.

A Unified Picture: The Rahab Model and the Reliability of God’s Word

When we integrate the iridium and ruthenium evidence (deep-Earth mobilization via the fountains of the great deep) with the tektites, shock quartz, and shatter cones (meteorite impacts and airbursts), a coherent picture emerges. The global Flood of Noah’s day was no ordinary event. It involved both subterranean violence (all the fountains of the great deep were broken up) and heavenly bombardment from the Rahab debris field. These processes rapidly redistributed PGEs, melted and shocked rocks, and entombed countless creatures in sedimentary layers that now stretch across continents.

Our Creator designed Earth with incredible complexity: a dynamic core, convecting mantle, and mechanisms that, when unleashed in judgment, produced exactly the features we observe. The Rahab model integrates terrestrial PGE sources from the fountains with extraterrestrial contributions from cosmic debris, explaining the data without the contradictions of slow uniformitarianism or reliance on a single insufficient asteroid impact.

Findings like ruthenium in Hawaiian lavas, iridium spikes worldwide, tektites in sedimentary layers, shocked quartz in impact breccias, and shatter cones in crater floors remind us that observable geology today echoes the far greater activity of the Flood. They point back to the reliability of God’s Word over speculative deep-time narratives.