[This article is based on one originally published in Mensa magazine]
Three-quarters of the Earth's surface is covered in sedimentary rocks, and since Charles Lyell first enunciated his theory in 1833, it has always been assumed that the layering was an indication of successive episodes in a time sequence. The general idea is that each layer is younger than those underneath it, and that the joins between layers represented pauses in sedimentation.
In 1985, a French Geologist, Guy Berthault, began
experiments to test this theory by dumping sediments into large tanks of moving
water to study how lamination takes place. His studies began in
Papers were published initially in 1988, and again in 1993 (Geological Society of France), which now suggest that mass (of the sedimentary particles) and current flow or turbulence, are more responsible for layering than time alone. It was found that lamination could be produced very rapidly following major upheavals - field observations were undertaken from natural disasters (Colorado "Bijou Creek" flood in 1965; the formation of sediments following the Mount St. Helen's eruption in 1980; Ocean drilling by the Glomar Challenger survey vessel in 1975), and that upstream or peripheral flow strata were being formed in advance of lower layers downstream - pretty obvious on a short-term basis I would have thought, but this is still contrary to the popular theory that hundreds of metres of layering are an indication of massive time-scale.
Richard Milton in his article "Rock of Ages" in Mensa magazine for October 1995,
repeated the conclusions reached by Berthault that
"These experiments contradict the idea of the slow build-up of one layer
followed by another. The time-scale is reduced from hundreds of millions of
years to one or more cataclysms producing almost instantaneous laminae."