Young Earth Creationism: Magma Rates
12/09/2025
Samuel Clifford
Introduction:
Recently, I was reading the book Volcanoes: Earth’s Explosive Past, which is part of the Creation Collection and published by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). In chapter 21 (pg. 111) the author Timothy Clarey argues that a new discovery in the rate of magma (how fast molten rock moves upward through the earth) fits a Young Earth Creationist perspective. In this article, we will discuss this.
For decades, many scientists taught that magma rises slowly upward through the earth’s crust and takes thousands or even millions of years to reach the surface. This “slow and steady” view fit neatly into old‑earth theories that require vast amounts of time to explain the formation of mountains, volcanoes, and granite bodies. However, recent studies are beginning to overturn this idea and show that magma can rise quickly, even catastrophically.
What Do We Mean by “Speed of Magma”?
When scientists talk about the speed of magma (or “rate of magma”), they mean how fast molten rock moves upward through the earth. It can be expressed in feet per day, miles per year, or meters per second. If magma moves slowly, it could take thousands or millions of years to reach the surface. However, if magma moves quickly, it can rise in months or years, leading to sudden volcanic eruptions.
2013 Discovery
In 2013, Philipp Ruprecht and Terry Plank published a groundbreaking study in Nature on the Irazú volcano in Costa Rica. They examined rocks from its 1963–1965 eruption and discovered that magma had traveled from the mantle (22 miles deep) to the surface at astonishing speeds—150 to 300 feet per day, and possibly even faster.
In their 2013 study of Costa Rica’s Irazú volcano, Philipp Ruprecht and Terry Plank focused on tiny green minerals called olivine crystals found in the erupted rocks. These crystals preserved the chemical “fingerprint” of the mantle from more than 20 miles below the surface. What made this discovery so important was that the olivine showed almost no signs of chemical mixing. If magma had taken thousands of years to rise, the crystals would have blended with surrounding melt and lost their original mantle signature. Instead, the preserved chemistry revealed that the magma must have traveled upward extremely quickly—hundreds of feet per day, reaching the surface in just a matter of months.
Olivine is a mineral rich in magnesium and iron that forms under the high heat and pressure of the mantle. Because it is stable deep underground but reacts quickly once conditions change, olivine acts like a natural stopwatch. If magma ascends rapidly, olivine crystals arrive at the surface still carrying their mantle chemistry intact. If magma moves slowly, the crystals have time to react and mix, erasing those clues.
Other Examples:
There are a few more examples of rapid magma movement such as granites in Colorado and British Columbia that show ascent rates of 0.5 to 9 miles per year which are still far faster than uniformitarian models allow. Even massive batholiths like the Sierra Nevada in California, traditionally thought to form over 40 million years, could have formed in just over 1,000 years based on newer ascent‑rate data.
Sources:
Petford, Nick, et al. “Granite Magma Formation, Transport and Emplacement in the Earth’s Crust.” Nature, vol. 408, no. 6813, 2000, pp. 669–673.
Ruprecht, Philipp, and Terry Plank. “Feeding Andesitic Eruptions with a High-Speed Connection from the Mantle.” Nature, vol. 500, no. 7460, 2013, pp. 68–72.
Snelling, Andrew A. Earth’s Catastrophic Past. Vol. 2, Institute for Creation Research, 2009, pp. 987–993.
Woodmorappe, John. “The Rapid Formation of Granitic Rocks: More Evidence.” Journal of Creation, vol. 15, no. 2, 2001, pp. 122–125.
Deer, W. A., R. A. Howie, and J. Zussman. An Introduction to the Rock-Forming Minerals. 2nd ed., Longman Scientific & Technical, 1992.
Klein, Cornelis, and Barbara Dutrow. Manual of Mineral Science. 23rd ed., Wiley, 2007.
The two images you see above are from my personal collection. It is 107G Natural Olivine Rock Specimen Deposits On Lava Stone.