Pottery found at the city of Tall el-Hammam, a site near where Sodom and Gomorrah were believed to stand, showed that the mud-brick walls were suddenly eradicated and pottery shards were found to have melted into glass, signs indicative of extremely high temperatures as the meteorite raced overhead. The fragmented meteorite did not leave a traditional impact crater which made it difficult for scientists to locate it, but the trail of destruction it left behind as it hurtled over the Mediterranean and Middle East would have been inconceivable to the ancients.Īs the meteor raced close to Earth’s surface, it would have superheated the air around it and the ground below it. The meteor began to fragment in the atmosphere before slamming into the Austrian Alps at Kofels and causing a landslide that was over three miles wide and over 400 yards deep. Thus He overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities–and also the vegetation in the land…Abraham looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.” According to science, this catastrophic destruction may have been the result of a low-altitude meteor that passed over the area. looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.According to the Bible, “the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah–from the LORD out of the heavens. "Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven and he overthrew those cities and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities. The researchers say that the asteroid's impact would explain why at Köfels there is evidence of an ancient landslide 3 miles wide and a quarter of a mile thick. Hempsall and Alan Bond, of Reaction Engines Ltd., are published in a book, "A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact Event." As it traveled close to the ground it would have left a trail of destruction from supersonic shock waves and then slammed into the Earth with a cataclysmic impact.ĭebris consisting of up to two-thirds of the asteroid would have been hurled back along its route and a flash reaching temperatures of 400 Centigrade (752 Fahrenheit) would have been created, killing anyone in its path.Ībout one million sq kilometers (386,000 sq miles) would have been devastated and the impact would have been equivalent to more than 1,000 tons of TNT exploding.ĭr Hempsall said that at least 20 ancient myths record devastation of the type and on the scale of the asteroid's impact, including the Old Testament tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the ancient Greek myth of how Phaeton, son of Helios, fell into the River Eridanus after losing control of his father's sun chariot. He said the size and route of the asteroid meant that it was likely to have crashed into the Austrian Alps at Köfels.
Sodom and gomorrah movie meteor cracked#
Mark Hempsell, one of the researchers from Bristol University who cracked the tablet's code, said: "It's a wonderful piece of observation, an absolutely perfect piece of science." In the past 150 years scientists have made five unsuccessful attempts to translate the tablet. The other symbols record the positions of clouds and constellations. Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123 B.C.Ībout half the symbols on the tablet have survived and half of those refer to the asteroid. He referred to the asteroid as a "white stone bowl approaching" and recorded it as it "vigorously swept along." copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky. The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700 B.C.
Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across. Just like the brimstone that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah did not exist until the time of. A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness's account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The movie Deep Impact imagined exactly such a scenario.