From the Australian Telegraph.

Excerpt:

The students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester who came to this conclusion used the dimensions for the boat that were given in the Bible.

In the book of Genesis, Noah is commanded to build an ark which is 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high to house himself, his family and two of every species of animal.

For the study, the students settled on a cubit being 48.2cm long and found the ark could support the weight of 2.5 million sheep. The university said that previous research suggested there were approximately 35,000 species of animals in Noah’s time.

The students said it was not clear if all the animals would actually be able to fit on board. But if they did, the boat would still float.

Student Thomas Morris, 22, said: “You don’t think of the Bible necessarily as a scientifically accurate source of information, so I guess we were quite surprised when we discovered it would work. We’re not proving that it’s true, but the concept would definitely work.”

The full paper, The animals float two by two, hurrah!, was published in a peer-reviewed student journal.

Research lead Oliver Youle, 22, explained the science behind the study.

“Every object when immersed in a liquid has an upwards force acting against it — a buoyancy force; it also has a weight acting downwards — a downwards force, and in order for it to float, these two forces need to be equal.”

His colleague Benjamin Jordan added: “Using the dimensions of the ark and the density of the water, we were able to calculate its buoyancy force, which, according to Archimedes’ principle, is equal to the weight of the volume of fluid the object displaces. This meant we were then able to estimate the total mass the ark could support before the gravitational weight would overcome the buoyancy force, causing the ark to sink, which we calculated as 50.54x106kg.”