It's funny how this Bible thing keeps being proven true:
Scientists believe they have found physical evidence that an exploding space rock could have inspired one of the most infamous stories in the Bible, archaeologist Christopher R. Moore wrote, Yahoo News reported.
Scientists may have found proof of an icy space rock hurtling through the atmosphere at about 38,000 mph toward the ancient Biblical city Sodom, now called Tall el-Hammam, roughly 3,600 years ago, Moore wrote. The Bible describes the destruction of an urban center near the Dead Sea, with stones and fire falling from the sky.
Here's a piece of the biblical excerpt from Genesis 19. Note that the Bible explicitly mentions how depraved and evil these cities were before all this happened:
Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.
Yeah, that's pretty dang dramatic, right?
Now imagine all that happening due to a meteor that had 1,000 times the explosive force of the atomic bomb that obliterated Hiroshima in WWII.
The discovery is the result of 15 years' worth of excavation work, Moore wrote. Scientists suspect a firestorm led to the city's destruction due to the presence of a roughly 5-foot-thick jumbled layer of charcoal, ash, melted mudbricks and melted pottery, called a destruction layer.
The group was able to determine through analysis that the only event that could have raised temperatures enough to melt many of the materials found at the site was a cosmic impact, Moore wrote. Similar evidence was found at other suspected cosmic impacts, such as the crater created by the asteroid that triggered the dinosaur extinction.
Scientists used the Online Impact Calculator, which "allows researchers to estimate the many details of a cosmic impact event, based on known impact events and nuclear detonations," to aid their efforts to learn about the cause.
Scientists estimate the rock exploded about 2.5 miles above ground, creating a blast around 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Moore wrote. Air temperatures would have then skyrocketed to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius), setting the entire city on fire.
Makes sense now why Abraham would have seen the entire land covered in "smoke of a furnace"...
That's not all. As all fans of explosive things know, if the initial bang doesn't kill you, the shockwave will:
A massive shockwave would have followed, moving at roughly 740 mph, faster than any tornado on record, demolishing every building and killing all inhabitants, Moore wrote.
Now it kinda makes sense why God told Lot and his family to run as fast as they could without looking back, and why Lot's wife became a "pillar of salt" when she delayed.
Here's an 1810 painting by Benjamin West depicting the scene:
Crazy stuff.
Then again, Christians don't believe in a "god of the gaps."
They believe in a Creator who created and controls everything we study in the universe, from the mitochondria in cells to the the stars and the galaxies... and yes, asteroids that fall on ancient Middle Eastern towns.
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