Sand … and arithmetic

Gary Gilligan has been looking at sand once again – adding a bit of arithmetic. The Nubian Sandstone geology underlies a great part of NE Africa and Arabia – as far north as Petra (where it outcrops) and most of Jordan and Israel. He claims there is an anomaly between the uniformitarian expanation on how it formed – from quartz crystals in granite, ground down by endless erosional processes over millions and millions of years, the size of the deposit and the much bigger amount of granite required in order to create the sand. The sandstone formation comprises 700,000 cubic km of sand – in total (at the very least). Qhartz grains in granite make up 20 per cent of the total – hence five times as much granite is required as the origin of the sand (and therefore of the sandstone). He works this out as 3,500.000 cubic km of granite – and all that granite had to be exposed in order for it to erode. As he says, the more he researches the subject the more it becomes apparent that the primary origin of sand is unknown – or at the least, based on some speculation.