Kurt, you're taking me
some really interesting places. This is awesome! In the middle of a cave. Well, it's actually an airshaft
for one of the coal mines for one we were looking
at a little bit earlier. But the top of that
airshaft is collapsed so we can see some
of the rocks above it. Yeah. And we're seeing some things
we've already seen before: right up here you
see some fossil logs, but they're not in sandstone
like we saw before. They're actually in shale. And if we look a little
further above it, we've actually got a coal seam —
right up there — that runs right over our heads
and on from there. And notice an interesting thing about this cool seam
is the very flat top. Yes. So look at the coal has fallen
out; it's left a very, very flat surface. That's one of the
characteristics of coal. It's got a flat top. Almost every coal seam
has an incredibly flat top and a flat bottom. I can see this in the other side
of the exposure. So two of the features
of coal can be seen here. And another thing
that can't really be seen unless you look
at under the microscope — Steve Austin studied coal
for his Ph.D. dissertation — and looking at it
in a microscope he could identify
plant parts in the coal, specifically bark, in the coal. Okay, what's going on here? So the question is why
is it made of bark. And the idea is we've got
these logs — ultimately what Steve did was propose that there was a log mat
floating on a body of water — logs are floating
on the surface. And they're lichopod logs;
they're logs that are of trees that are hollow. They've got bark, but they do not have
any internal secondary wood. While they're floating
on the water, they roll against one another,
peeling the bark off. The bark gets waterlogged, and falls down
to the bottom. So as the water…
as the log mat floats about, it drops this layer of bark… Depositing bark all around
where it's floating… So it could float
out of that area and deposit bark someplace else. What that allows is — if you already have
a flat surface — the bark falls
on a flat surface, producing a flat bottom
to that pile of bark. And then when the log mat floats
out of that region, it leaves a flat top
on the pile of bark. Then, later, the bark
can be coalified into coal. And that would explain
the coal seams: the fact that they're made
of layers of bark, of pieces of bark, the fact that they're flat
topped and flat bottomed. And those are
difficult — actually, basically impossible to
explain any other way. Well, yeah, because, see, I was taught — under
the conventional paradigm — that coal takes
a long time to form, and it forms
in the bottom of a swamp. But that's not what
we're seeing here. No, that's not
what we're seeing. If it was a swamp, several things would be true
of what we're looking at. First of all, if it's a swamp,
you've got trees growing — rooted in soil. So you would expect to see
roots in the material underneath the coal. And when you see
these logs — I don't see… I don't see any roots in here. And underneath modern swamps, you've got lots of roots
all over the place. Right. So we don't see that. Plus, think of the bottom
of the swamp. Do you think the bottom
of the swamp is nice and flat? No, it's not. It's this uneven as the surface would be with all
these trees sticking up in it. We don't have trees growing
from… through the coal down into the material, and then we've got
this flat surface. All of a sudden we've got coal. And in a swamp if you dig up the stuff
in the swamp to see what kinds of plant material — there's lots
of plant material in there — but if you pick it up it's, well, Steve would describe
it as coffee grounds. It's a good description. More fine. Yeah, the… the roots growing through this stuff messes
it up — bioturbates it is what we call it —
and destroys the structure. You can't find pieces
of bark in there! They're not recognizable;
they're tiny little fragments. You can't find branches; they've been broken up
and they're unrecognizable. Leaves are unrecognizable. So if that's what
coal was formed from, you wouldn't find
pieces of bark in it. But that's what Steve
was finding in his coal seam: chunks of bark. So he's got a flat bottom,
chunks of bark, and then a flat top. If you've got
a forest growing there, how do you shave the forest off flat so that the coal
stops all of a sudden…. Yeah. And... it allows
you to get a very, very flat surface. How does that happen? Doesn't make any sense. So the conventional explanation, with a swamp over
long periods of time, just didn't work. As a matter of fact, what Steve did is…
he was interested in doing a dissertation on coal, went to an institution famous
for studying coal — Penn State — and then asked, okay, of all the coal seams
that you're familiar with in the United States, what's the best example
of a marsh-produced coal? And they directed him
to the Kentucky 12 coal and that's what he did
his dissertation on. But when he looked at it,
he found a flat base, a flat top, and besides that, even seats in it — thin layers of shale
in the middle of the coal with flat bottoms and tops to even
those thin layers and pieces of bark in the coal. And he concluded, I can't explain this
in that model. Standard way. So what he did was develop for
his dissertation a new model. If this log mat blew away you
could have a layer of bark, and then a layer of mud could come in — an inch
of mud could come in place — and cover the bark
that's already here. Then the log mat can float in, deposit more coal,
flow back out again, get another thin layer of mud. And he could repeat
this any number of times, perhaps as much as the 120 times you've got coal seams
in the Illinois Basin, for example, as you float this
back and forth. And he defended
this interpretation of the Kentucky 12 coal seam
for his Ph.D. dissertation. Then it was accepted. And then, of course,
the comment was something like, well, we just, I guess, we just happened
to find the one coal that has those characteristics. The wild theory. But all the coals I've ever seen
have those same characteristics: flat bottoms, flat tops, and they just can't be explained
by these marsh theories. So, Kurt, help me here because if we have a layer
of peat from the bark that is a deposit on the bottom, and then we have a mud layer
that comes over the top, it would appear to me that the mud layer… shouldn't it
just destroy that peat layer? How does it get over the top? Well, subsequent to that kind
of research — Steve's and some other research
in trying to explain how mud layers are formed, and sand layers are formed, and — well, I think he's
already talked to you about…. Mudflows, yes. …the nautiloid bed. Well, the nautiloids
are in a lime mud. And the idea there is
that that's a mud flow that flowed over the surface of
the bottom of a body of water. And it hydroplanes;
it's going so fast that there is a layer of water between it
and the substance underneath and just shoots straight across… Well it doesn't deform
when it's hydroplan … like if you hydroplane
on your vehicle… on the car. It doesn't leave
any skid marks…. Sure. … okay? It doesn't mess up the surface — because you're not
on the surface, you're on water. So if there was a thin layer of
water on top of your bark layer, you could have a mud flow come in an inch thick —
three inches thick, a foot thick — and not disturb the bark
that's already there, nicely deposit it on top and…. Well, if that's the case, then one would expect —
from a Genesis model — that that thin layer of mud in between
would contain fossils. But do we find fossils in there? Actually sometimes it does. And when it does [they] almost invariably
are marine fossils. Now that's really weird. Where are the
marine fossils coming…. Sure. So you've got this forest, this swamp that was
destroyed on the land, and then got this mud that comes in with fossils
from the ocean? And then, somehow, after this deposit
was made a new forest grew without disturbing
that one inch thick layer? How do you grow trees
in the mud layer now? Right. This makes no sense. However if you've
got the concept of this floating log mat, then the log mat can drop
a pile of bark in, can float off — be blown
off to another area. You can have marine mud
or non-marine mud — whatever, I mean — can come
in and deposit. Then the log mat floats back over the area
and deposits more bark, and then floats away, and you could repeat
this any number of times in any sequence you want. And, again, you explain
all the features found in coal seams: flat bottoms, flat top, seats
with flat bottoms, flat tops — even
marine fossils in there. It could… it's all easy,
except for one thing. What's interesting
about these coal seams, is you can trace them from here
all the way up into Canada, and all the way down
into the Gulf of Mexico — underneath the Gulf of Mexico — and trace them west all the way
across the length of Tennessee, past the Mississippi
River into Missouri, and trace them east. Skip the Atlantic Ocean, they're in Europe — all the way
across Europe into Russia. The size of this mat of logs
is the size of a continent. How did we get that much? See, and think of that flood concept that
the Bible talks about. And if it's a global flood, you've got North America
and Europe covered, and at the point these rocks
are deposited, North America smashed into Europe. And they're connected. So this log mat could float back and forth across — all the way
from what's now Moscow, all the way over
to the Mississippi River and back again — depositing coal seams over both
of these continents…. That are consistent
across both continents, yet now separated
by the Atlantic. …in exactly the same… yeah. And in the Atlantic you
don't find any coal, you don't find any fossils. When you find the fossils, these lichopods are
the exact same lichopods that are over there in Europe. Exactly the same. They're exactly the
same… In fact, the entire coal seam layer, the entire Carboniferous as they call it in Europe is…
has got the same species — the same pollen — all the way through what's conventionally understood
to be 100 million years of time. Same plants, same animals. In fact; for my dissertation
I worked on lingula, which is a brachiopod species
— bivalve species — and the same species
of lingula metaloides and lingula squamiferus
are found from the base of the Carboniferous to the top of the Carboniferous —
exactly the same species. Another person I know — did
a dissertation on pollen — finds exactly the same species
all the way through. It's the same. It's the same forest. All over. It's been deposited
over all of that region. It makes sense in a flood model; it makes no sense whatsoever
in the conventional. Okay. Kurt, there is
a question I'm sure that's in a lot
of people's minds — just as it would be in mine. The conventional paradigm, when it talks about coal,
says that coal forms over a long period of time. It's not a
quickly-formed substance. What have we found? Yeah, well, that's
what I was taught. That's what I understood. I got the impression that it has to be made
over a long period of time. I had the opportunity
when I was at the University of Chicago as an undergraduate
to work in the high energy, high temperature,
high pressure physics lab. Geophysics lab, I'm sorry. And we made rocks. This is a really cool job! Usually we are making
metamorphic rocks, which would be… we've got
a metamorphic mineral of some sort — that's a mineral that's been changed
from some previous rock. We have a theory about what rocks were changed
to produce this. So the idea was to grind up the rocks we thought
they were made from, mix them together, put them in a little capsule —
a little gold capsule — put them in a thermos and a heater which goes up to a temperature we think
would form that mineral, and then put pressure on it
that we think was necessary. And wait whatever period
of time it takes for the chemical
reactions to occur. Take it out, X-ray it, see if we got
the mineral we hypothesize. So, I shouldn't say
I was doing it … I was just the undergraduate,
just doing the stuff and it was really cool. We made all sorts of rocks. And it was interesting to me that those rocks
didn't take long to form. In fact most of the time
the rocks we were dealing with at high temperatures
only took minutes. I could run this in an hour
for almost all rocks. Now when you're dealing
with rocks that are made at lower temperatures,
cooler temperatures, it took longer. And the slowest- forming rock
that I ever formed was, in fact, coal. And we made coal. and it took forever. It took three or four weeks…. Oh, my goodness. …to form coal. It was… and… and. That's instantaneous. I mean it's crazy! I thought, you know,
it takes a long time, but that's the longest… that's when you're basically
at the boiling point of water — so it's really low temperature
compared to the temperature of most rocks — and it took a long time. What's interesting too —
here, this is cool. I just can't resist this… If you just put plant material
into the oven, it'll never form coal. You just sit it there
and nothing would happen. But if you added a catalyst,
the thing happened quickly. It would happen
in the three weeks. And so the catalyst… of course, a catalyst in general is
some substance that you add to a chemical reaction
— doesn't change, it… doesn't change the catalyst, but the catalyst
speeds the reaction. So these…this catalyst
would make it possible to form coal very rapidly. And the catalysts, there's all… We experiment
with all sorts of things, and it turns out that a whole bunch of clay minerals
— montmorillonite, illomite, and so on — if you put it into the plant material
it acted as a catalyst, and the thing goes
to coal very quickly. Oh my goodness. Now think about this. If you burn coal, you get an ash
that results — that is unburnable. It is the catalyst. So coal is full
of the catalysts. And guess where the montmorillonite and all
that stuff comes from? Volcanic ash. It actually falls
down from the sky from volcanic eruptions. So all you need are
volcanic eruptions — which are occurring all the time
during this this whole thing — raining down this volcanic ash. And you've got what you need to form coal in the matter
of three or four weeks. So in the history that we have recorded for us
in Genesis and all that we have seen, we have this mat of logs producing this peat
building up on the bottom, and then we have
these laminar mud flows that come in over the top, and more peat
and more peat. And what you're saying, then, is that all of that
can produce coal seams within a matter of weeks. Yes. In the course
of a yearlong flood — like we describe in Genesis — we could produce
the 150 plus coal seems that we see
on the earth right now. So by the time Noah
gets off the boat, we have all of those
coal seams in place? Yeah, it's already there. It's already there. It's ready for people to burn and develop culture
following the flood. If we go to another site
down the trail … Okay. I can show you some other
evidence from that forest that was destroyed
in the pre-flood world to produce
this floating mat of logs. Okay. So let's go take a look at that. I'm right behind you.
