Petrified wood does not require millions of years to form. Several laboratory experiments have shown that under certain conditions wood can be petrified quite rapidly. During one field experiment, researchers lowered a block of wood into an alkaline spring in Yellowstone National Park. After one year in the hot silica-rich water, a substantial amount of the wood had been converted into stony material.
Furthermore, artificially pertified wood is even being commercially produced to make true “hardwood” floors. During the petrifaction process, minerals fill the pores and cavities of an organic structure. Next the tissue is dissolved, leaving spaces, where it once was. In the final stage, minerals solidify into the voids left by the missing organic matter. It takes the right conditions, not necessarily long periods of time, to petrify wood. Ground water percolating through hot volcanic ash (which typically is rich in silica) is thought to be the ideal natural environment for the rapid petrifaction of wood. These conditions would have been found worldwide during and after the Flood of Noah.
Petrified trees in national parks from Arizona to Montana are not a testimony to millions of years of Earth history, but to the relatively recent worldwide Flood which our planet has experienced.
From A Closer Look at the Evidence by Kleiss, December 7.
August 4, 2019 @ 4:03 pm
Where can one learn more about the industrial petrification of wood? I have long had the idea of making wooden souvenirs with pressed-in messages and petrifying them to offer at creationist museums, or venues of creationist speakers.