Did a cosmic impact cause the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom?

While the inhabitants of an ancient city in the Middle East, known in Bible stories as Sodom, now call Tall el-Hammam As they went about their daily activities one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea that an invisible icy space rock was approaching them at a speed of about 38,000 miles per hour (61,000 km / h).

Flashing through the atmosphere the rock exploded into a huge fireball about 4 kilometers above the ground. The explosion was about 1,000 times more powerful than Hiroshima’s atomic bomb. The shocked townspeople watching her were instantly blinded. The air temperature rose rapidly above 2000 degrees Celsius. The clothes and the wood immediately caught fire. Swords, spears, adobe, and pottery began to melt. Almost immediately the whole town caught fire.

Seconds later, a massive shock wave swept through the city. Traveling at around 1,200 km / h, it was more powerful than the worst tornado on record. Deadly winds swept through the city, demolishing all buildings. They cut the first 12 meters of the 4-story palace and threw the scrambled rubble into the sinext valley. None of the town’s 8,000 people or animals survived.

About a minute later, 22 kilometers west of Tall el-Hammam, winds from the blast hit Jericho. The walls of the biblical city collapsed and the city burned down.

The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah appears in the book of Genesis of the Bible, there it is described that God caused a storm of fire and brimstone to fall on these cities as a punishment for the sins of their inhabitants. As a result of divine wrath, these two cities on the shores of the Dead Sea were destroyed.

It all sounds like fiction, it almost feels like the climax of a Hollywood disaster movie. How do you know that all of this really happened near the Dead Sea in Jordan millennia ago? It took almost 15 years of painstaking research by hundreds of people to get the answers. It also involved detailed analyzes of material excavated by more than two dozen scientists from the United States, Canada and the Czech Republic. When the group finally published the evidence recently in Scientific Reports, the 21 co-authors included archaeologists, geologists, geochemists, geomorphologists, mineralogists, paleobotanists, sedimentologists, cosmic impact experts, and physicians.

Firestorm throughout the city

Years ago, when archaeologists examined the excavations of the ruined city, they could see a dark and messy layer of about 1.5 meters of coal, ash, molten adobe and molten pottery. . “It was obvious that an intense firestorm had destroyed this city a long time ago,” said Christopher R. Moore, archaeologist and director of special projects for the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program and the Institute of Archeology. and Anthropology of South Carolina, University. Caroline from the south. This dark group was renamed the Destruction Cloak.

“No one knew exactly what happened, but this layer was not caused by a volcano, an earthquake or a war. None of them is capable of melting metal, adobe and ceramic, ”the study said.

To find out what could have done it, the group used the online impact calculator to model scenarios that match the evidence. Built by impact experts, this calculator allows researchers to estimate the many details of a cosmic impact event, based on known impact events and nuclear detonations.

It appears that the culprit behind the destruction of Tall el-Hammam was a small asteroid similar to the one that knocked down 80 million trees in Tunguska, Russia, in 1908. It is believed to be a much smaller version of the rock. giant who pushed dinosaurs to extinction makes 65 million. “We probably had one culprit,” Moore said. Now we needed proof of what happened that day in Tall el-Hammam. “

The investigation revealed a wide variety of evidence. At the site, there are finely fractured grains of sand called impacted quartz that only form more than 300 tons for every 2.5 square centimeters of pressure, which is equivalent to 5 gigapascals.

The destruction layer also contains tiny diamonoids as hard as diamonds. Each is smaller than a flu virus. It seems like the woods and plants of the area were instantly transformed into this diamond-like material by the pressures and high temperatures of the fireball. Experiments with laboratory furnaces have shown that bubbled ceramics and mud bricks in Tall el-Hammam liquefied at temperatures above 1,500 degrees Celsius. It’s hot enough to melt a car in minutes.

The destruction layer also contains tiny balls of molten material that are smaller than the airborne dust particles. Called spherules, they are made up of vaporized iron and sand that melted at around 1,590 C. In addition, the surfaces of molten glass and ceramic are dotted with tiny molten metal grains, including iridium with a melting point. of 2466 C, platinum. at 1768 C and zirconium silicate at 1540 C.

Generally, All of this evidence shows that temperatures in the city have risen more than those of the city’s normal volcanoes, warfare, and fires. The only natural process that remained was a cosmic shock. The same evidence is found at known impact sites, such as Tunguska and Chicxulub Crater, created by the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

A remaining puzzle is why the city and more than 100 settlements in other regions were abandoned for several centuries after this devastation. It is possible that the high levels of salt deposited on impact made cultivation impossible. “We’re not sure yet, but we believe the explosion may have vaporized or splashed toxic levels of Dead Sea saltwater throughout the valley. Without crops, no one could live there for up to 600 years, until the minimum precipitation in this desert climate washes away the salt from the fields, ”the researchers concluded.

Another argument put forward by the multidisciplinary team is that an oral description of the destruction of the city may have been handed down for generations until it was recorded as the biblical story of Sodom. The Bible describes the devastation of an urban center near the Dead Sea: stones and fire fell from the sky, more than one town was destroyed, thick smoke rose from the fires, and the townspeople are dead. “The destruction of Tall el-Hammam is perhaps the second oldest destruction of a human settlement by a cosmic impact event, after the village of Abu Hureyra in Syria some 12,800 years ago. It is important to note that this may be the first written record of such a catastrophic event, ”said one of the study’s authors.

What is not encouraging is that these actions were not exceptional. Currently, there are over 26,000 known near-Earth asteroids and around 100 near-Earth comets. “You will inevitably meet us,” says Moore. Millions more go undetected. Unless telescopes on the ground or in orbit detect these rogue objects, the world may not have any warning, as the people of Tall el-Hammam do. “

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