The animals float two by two, hurrah...

That's the title of a new research paper released on the 3rd April by students at the University of Leicester.

From the university's own press release:

This month, the classic biblical tale of Noah’s Ark will receive a Hollywood makeover with the release of the movie Noah - and Physics students at the University of Leicester have found that the ark would have indeed been able to float with all of the animals on board.

A group of fourth year master’s students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy have calculated that Noah’s ark, built to accommodate at least two of every animal species, would have floated using the dimensions ordained in the Bible.

In the book of Genesis, chapter 6:13-22, Noah is commanded to build an ark to survive a flood. Noah is provided exact dimensions for the boat which should be: 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high and should hold Noah, his family, and at least two of every species of animal for the duration of the flood.

Using these dimensions, Archimedes’ principle and suitable approximations, University of Leicester Physics students Oliver Youle, Katie Raymer, Benjamin Jordan and Thomas Morris tested the instructions and were surprised with their results.

The students found that the ark could carry up to 35,000 individual animals. Well within the number of animals estimated by Dr Hugh Ross (see Let Us Reason: Noah's Floating Zoo).

The full paper, ‘The animals float two by two, hurrah!’ can be found at: http://physics.le.ac.uk/journals/index.php/pst/article/view/676/475

The paper is very short, at only two pages, and easy to read.

The RTB website has a wealth of information on the Genesis Flood account. If you want to delve deeper into this topic, got to the Reasons to Believe website and type in 'Noah', or 'the Flood' into the search engine.