by Bob Walsh
The
city is now called Tall el-Hammam. About 2.5 miles in the sky above
the city maybe 3,500 years ago a good size asteroid exploded with the
force of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. The air temperature would have shot to
2,000 degrees celsius, hot enough to melt mud bricks and swords. (I
didn't know you could melt a mud brick.) The shock wave moving at 740
mph would have leveled what was left of the city. None of the 8,000
people nor any of their livestock survived. Their remains would have
been literally pulverized.
This
was surmised by a couple of dozen scientists excavating the site. They
found a dark strata about five feet thick, including melted mud bricks
and melted pottery. No other natural occurance, including a volcano,
can melt pottery and mud bricks.
The
proof includes the presence of shocked quartz, that only forms at
725,000 psi. It also includes microdiamonds, formed apparently by
instant application of extreme heat and pressure placed on organic
material. This melted material also contains iridium, very rare on
earth but not so much in asteroids. It was in fact largely the
distribution of iridium that convinced scientists that a large asteroid
smeared the dinosaurs.
It
is further surmised (speculated?) that the shock threw much of the
contents of the Dead Sea into the area, raising the salinity of the
ground to the point where it could not support agriculture or animals
for about 600 years.
2 comments:
I would think that if the Creator of all things wanted to destroy a city with an asteroid it would be a simple matter for him.
I can figure out why God would have been pissed at the people of Sodom, but what were the folks in Gomorrah up to to make him so angry? (Stan Freeberg did a real great bit on this many years ago.)
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