A few weeks ago, my buddy asked me to pick him up a (treyf) turkey.   (No, not a politician, silly!) Shoppers was selling turkey for 39 cents a pound, if you spent a fair amount of money in their shop.   Since Shoppers is one of the very few grocery stores to sell a full line of kosher food, it is where I do spend the bulk of my grocery budget.

After I picked it up, I dropped it off at his house.  (I won’t bring non-kosher food into my home.)  And, as the two of us are wont to do, we began discussing a little bit of this and a lot of that.  (Thankfully, I have smart friends- with a wide range of political thought.)

While we were talking, my phone buzzed with a special eMail.  One of my other buddies was sharing a blurb (one that would necessitate a fair amount of web surfing to obtain the full citation and background) that he was positive was something I needed to see.  (No, it wasn’t a new BioChemE concept or pharmaceutical or water reuse device…)

He was right.  And, it’s so cool I’m sharing it with you.

But, first, some background.

Breishit (Genesis) 13, Verses 10-12 (Roughly the Early Bronze Age, roughly 1700 BCE)

And Lot raised his view upon all the plain of the Jordan.  He noted it was well watered everywhere, before Hashem destroyed Sodom and Gomorra, like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt…. So Lot chose all the plain of the Jordan; this required Lot  to journey east; Abram and Lot separated from one another.  Abram dwelt in Canaan, while Lot dwelt in the cities of the Plain, and moved his tent as far as Sodom.

Breishit (Genesis) 19, Verses 24-25

Then Hashem caused to rain upon Sodom and upon Gomorra brimstone and burning sulfur from the LORD out of heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew up on the ground.

We’ve all known these ‘stories’ forever.  But, many doubt that these accurately reflect the facts that obtained.   I’m here to tell you that it’s time to put those doubts to bed.  (Of course, I am!)

Over the past 16 years, a bunch of archaeologists and scientists from New Mexico Tech, Northern Arizona University, North Carolina State University, Elizabeth City (NC) State University, De Paul University, Trinity Southwestern University, and Los Alamos National Laboratories, in conjunction with folks from the Department of Antiquities of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan have been studying a region east of the Dead Sea, called the Kikar (disc) of the Yarden (Jordan) in the Tora.  (By the way, the Tora describes the fact that long ago the Yarden overflowed its banks routinely, just like the Nile.)

And, those scientists have now found the proof that there was a high heat, explosive event that devastated some 500 km² of the Kikar- immediately north of the Dead Sea, almost instantaneously.  This meteor shower wiped out the five cities mentioned in the Tora, but converted the once-fertile soil region into a briny mess of anhydride salts.  It was so devastating an event, that it took 600 years for agriculture to be possible once again in the region.

Dr. Steven Collins (Trinity Southwest) is the director of the Tel el-Hammam (the modern-day description for S’dom, in the center right of the diagram above) Excavation Point study; his erstwhile PhD student (now Dr.) Phillip Silvia is the Scientific Director.   Collins’ decade-plus long research has shown that S’dom flourished as a civilization for some 2500 years- which abruptly ended, and left the area bereft of citizenry and agricultural for some 600  to 700 years.

These results were presented at the American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting, Denver, November 17, 2018.  [I also reviewed a slew of papers by Drs. Collins and Silvia. Given the number of institutions funding this program, it’s not surprising how many co-authors exist for the results.  The lead author is Phillip J. Silvia (Trinity Southwest University); ;along with A. Victor Adedeji (Elizabeth City State University), Ted E. Bunch (Northern Arizona University), T. David Burleigh (New Mexico Tech), Robert Hermes (Los Alamos National Laboratory), George Howard (Restoration Systems), Malcolm A. LeCompte (Comet Research Group), Charles Mooney (NC State University), E. Clay Swindel (Comet Research Group), Allen West (Comet Research Group), Tim Witwer (Comet Research Group), James H. Wittke (Northern Arizona University), Wendy S. Wolback (DePaul University), and Dale Batchelor (EAG Laboratories).]

The study has found that pottery became vitrified and formed zirconium crystals and bubbles when it subjected to temperatures of some 4000 C.  Because all the melted clay is less than 1 mm thick  and thermal discoloration extended through some 5 mm, the temperature of the event can be fixed between 8000 C and 12000 C (as if a 4000 degree range can be called ‘fixed’) with a duration of a few milliseconds.

Part of this data became possible to interpret after the Chelyabinsk (Russia) meteor event of 15 February 2013.   The event was localized about 12 km above the earth, which provided one set of data points.  An earlier event (30 June 1909) that was the much larger event over Tunguska (Siberia), which downed 80 million trees, laid radially outward in a 30 to 40 km radius, with a central point (2000 km²)- an area  larger than the city of Rome.

Moreover, this research can also serve to explain the situation of Lot’s wife.  While Lot and his 2 daughters were hightailing it out of Dodge (OK,  S’dom), south towards Zoar (contiguous to the Dead Sea), Lot’s wife dawdled- and became vitrified (i.e., became the pillar of salt) as a result of  this meteor shower.

 

Today is the second day of Chanuka, the festival of lights.  May your light continue burning brightly!