The Department of Silly Research

Even with 70,000 animals on board, Noah’s Ark could have floated, say researchers at the University of Leicester. If the Ark was 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high it could have accommodated samples of all the planet’s animal species (estimated to have been numbered around 35,000). The team, at the University of Leicester, worked out that the Ark was around 472ft long (roughly half the length of the Titanic). They then estimated the weight of the animals that would have needed to get on board, the density of the water, and its buoyancy force.

Fellas, it’s just a story. It might possibly have a tenuous, historical basis, but mainly it’s a tale to illustrate a religious point about god’s wrath etc, a story to frighten the believers (frightening is big in the bible). Epicurus would have been all in favour of the description of the flood, as presented in the wonderful English of the King James bible. But he would have treated it as literature, not fact. Don’t take it so seriously. And go and do something scientifically useful for the rest of us!

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