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I have heard of this sometime before but I will not vouch for its accuracy.
It really wasn't Gollum? My adolescence has just been destroyed!Physics Guy wrote: ↑Thu Sep 28, 2023 6:14 amIf there were new evidence of an asteroid striking an ancient city, it would have been bigger scientific news than this. An asteroid impact is an obvious guess if you want to make the Biblical destruction of the Cities of the Plain into a real historical event, and that's a story that would appeal to a lot of readers, so clickbait production seems a more likely cause for the story.
Supposing that an asteroid did level Sodom, however, saying that God didn't do it because an asteroid did it would be like saying that Tolkien didn't destroy the One Ring, it was Gollum.
Res Ipsa, the difference between meteor and asteroid is size. I puzzled a moment by the article calling it asteroid which suggests something large enough to create a big crater. Asking google about he difference I did not see an exact demarcation line.Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Thu Sep 28, 2023 4:08 pmSorry, but a theologian who doesn't know the difference between a meteor and an asteroid is not a qualified expert on the subject. I'm extremely skeptical about the possibility of eyewitnesses to ground zero of an asteroid impact surviving the experience. (Tunguska was a meteoroid explosion -- not an asteroid and not an impact -- and set a man's clothing on fire who was 40 miles from the blast.
Take a look at this meteor crater in the Arizona Desert. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Crater It's about 3/4 of a mile across and 50,000 years old. Now go back and look at the archeological site in Jordan. Where did the crater go? It would be less than 4000 years old.
When a scientist with expertise in impacts publishes a paper that concludes an impact of some kind occurred on that location, I'll give it a look.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_eventThe Tunguska event (occasionally also called the Tunguska incident) was an approximately 12-megaton[2] explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of 30 June 1908.[1][3] The explosion over the sparsely populated East Siberian taiga flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 km2 (830 sq mi) of forest, and eyewitness reports suggest that at least three people may have died in the event.[4][5][6][7][2] The explosion is generally attributed to a meteor air burst: the atmospheric explosion of a stony asteroid about 50–60 metres (160–200 feet) in size.[2][8]: p. 178 The asteroid approached from the east-south-east, and probably with a relatively high speed of about 27 km/s (60,000 mph) (~Ma 80).[2] Though it is classified as an impact event, the object is thought to have exploded at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) rather than having hit the surface of the Earth, leaving no impact crater.[9]
Yes, it’s a difference of size. But asteroid events affect massive areas and cause mass extinctions. Scientists have looked for and identified evidence of asteroid impacts, and the effects are massive. I’ve seen no hint of scientists suggesting evidence of an asteroid impact or explosion in the area. The theologian claims that the event was more powerful than the Tunguska event, yet there is no record of any location other that these two cities being affected.huckelberry wrote: ↑Thu Sep 28, 2023 4:31 pmRes Ipsa, the difference between meteor and asteroid is size. I puzzled a moment by the article calling it asteroid which suggests something large enough to create a big crater. I did not see a clear demarcation line.Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Thu Sep 28, 2023 4:08 pmSorry, but a theologian who doesn't know the difference between a meteor and an asteroid is not a qualified expert on the subject. I'm extremely skeptical about the possibility of eyewitnesses to ground zero of an asteroid impact surviving the experience. (Tunguska was a meteoroid explosion -- not an asteroid and not an impact -- and set a man's clothing on fire who was 40 miles from the blast.
Take a look at this meteor crater in the Arizona Desert. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Crater It's about 3/4 of a mile across and 50,000 years old. Now go back and look at the archeological site in Jordan. Where did the crater go? It would be less than 4000 years old.
When a scientist with expertise in impacts publishes a paper that concludes an impact of some kind occurred on that location, I'll give it a look.
This article about Sodom would be speculating an event like the Tunguska explosion which left no crater.
from Wikipedia;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_eventThe Tunguska event (occasionally also called the Tunguska incident) was an approximately 12-megaton[2] explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of 30 June 1908.[1][3] The explosion over the sparsely populated East Siberian taiga flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 km2 (830 sq mi) of forest, and eyewitness reports suggest that at least three people may have died in the event.[4][5][6][7][2] The explosion is generally attributed to a meteor air burst: the atmospheric explosion of a stony asteroid about 50–60 metres (160–200 feet) in size.[2][8]: p. 178 The asteroid approached from the east-south-east, and probably with a relatively high speed of about 27 km/s (60,000 mph) (~Ma 80).[2] Though it is classified as an impact event, the object is thought to have exploded at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) rather than having hit the surface of the Earth, leaving no impact crater.[9]
Res Ipsa , Thankyou for sharing this article. I can see it's point though I was disappointed that it lacked any presentation of better interpretations of the site in question. I am not trying to defend the Sodom interpretation, your skepticism makes sense.Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Thu Sep 28, 2023 5:01 pmTurns out this sounds like religiously motivated pseudo-science akin to the dramatic search for Noah’s ark. https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/tall-el-hammam/
Archeology conducted with the goal of confirming Bible stories is inherently untrustworthy.