As with the 24 other features listed on page 118, we have examined the origin of asteroids, meteoroids, and TNOs from two directions: “cause-to-effect” and “effect-to-cause.”
Cause-to-Effect. Given the three assumptions listed on page 128, consequences naturally followed: subterranean water became supercritical, the fountains of the great deep erupted; large rocks, muddy water, and water vapor were launched into space; gravity and gas assembled asteroids; and gas pressure powered by the Sun’s energy (the radiometer effect) herded most small asteroids into the asteroid belt and large asteroids out beyond Neptune. Isolated rocks, still moving in the solar system, are meteoroids.
Effect-to-Cause. We considered twenty-one effects (pages 361–367), each incompatible with present theories on the origin of asteroids and meteoroids. Each effect was evidence that large volumes of rocks and water vapor were launched from Earth.
Working both from cause-to-effect and effect-to-cause is similar to untangling a large ball of twisted and knotted string. Progress is faster when both ends of the string can be used. Too often in science we use only “one end.”
Portions of Part III will examine this global flood from a third direction: historical records from claimed eyewitnesses. All three perspectives reinforce each other, illuminating in different ways this catastrophic event. But first, we must understand where all the energy came from that launched all the fountains of the great deep. That will be the subject of the next chapter, “The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity.”