A study indicated that the biblical story of Sodom was inspired by the “cosmic air explosion”, which was classified as greater than the Tunguska explosion.
A new study recently published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports has raised the hypothesis that the ancient city of Tel al-Hamam, which flourished in the Jordan Valley more than 3,500 years ago, was destroyed by a powerful “cosmic atmospheric explosion” around 1650 BC.
In their study, the researchers hypothesized that the “proposed atmospheric explosion” was larger than the Tunguska event in 1908, in which a bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb was detonated.
Scientists refer to a “destruction layer rich in carbon and ash 1.5 meters thick” at the archaeological site, where the city once stood, and this layer appears to date back to the time period in question.
“We’ve seen evidence of temperatures above 2,000 degrees Celsius,” said James Kennett, professor emeritus of Earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the authors of the new research.
A study in @SciReports presents evidence that a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea, about 3,600 years ago. https://t.co/AR6mo5SLGW pic.twitter.com/U0jco8iX6s
— Nature Portfolio (@NaturePortfolio) September 22, 2021
The team added: “A remarkable catastrophe, such as the destruction of Tel al-Hamam with a cosmic body, may have created an oral tradition that became circulated through successive generations, becoming the source of a written story about the biblical Sodom in Genesis.”
Kenneth was quoted by the media as saying: “All the observations in Genesis are consistent with a cosmic air explosion, but there is no scientific evidence that this ruined city is really Old Testament Sodom.”