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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Betsy Johnson, Brad Witt, Former President Trump, Henry Heimuller, Joe Biden, Pat Robertson, Joe Biden’s dogs, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Bill’s Standard Disclaimer
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Sodom Burns
Meteor Strikes.
This week’s article will no doubt raise the ire of the Christian community. It will debunk the Bibles story or Christian belief that the city of Sodom was smite down by the wrath of God, because of their immoral lifestyle. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The inhabitants of the ancient Middle Eastern city called Sodom went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph. Rushing through the atmosphere, the rock exploded in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles above the ground. The blast was around 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The shocked city dwellers who stared at it were blinded instantly. Air temperatures rapidly rose above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Clothing and wood immediately burst into flames. Swords, spears, mudbricks and pottery began to melt. Almost immediately, the entire city was on fire.
Some seconds later, a massive shockwave smashed into the city. Moving at about 740 mph, it was more powerful than any tornado ever recorded. The deadly winds ripped through the city, demolishing every building. The winds sheared off the top 40 feet of the 4-story palace and blew the jumbled debris into the next valley. None of the 8,000 people or any animals within the city survived, their bodies were torn apart and their bones blasted into small fragments.
About a minute later, 14 miles to the west of Sodom, winds from the blast hit the biblical city of Jericho. Jericho's walls came tumbling down and the city burned to the ground. For centuries no one really knew what caused the destruction of both cities. The conspiracy theorists of the time, or religious scholars whatever you want to call them, decided God did it because they really didn’t know what happened and since they were scared of just about everything and didn’t understand things of science but attributed strange events to God it seemed appropriate to give the credit to God.
To figure out what had caused the destruction experts used a method built by impact experts, this calculator allows researchers to estimate the many details of a cosmic impact event, based on known impact events and nuclear detonations. It appears that the culprit at Sodom was a small asteroid comparable to the one that knocked down 80 million trees in Tunguska, Russia in 1908. It would have been a much smaller version of the giant miles-wide rock that pushed the dinosaurs into extinction 65 million ago.
Scientists found and array of evidence at the site to support their assumption. The site had finely fractured sand grains called shocked quartz that only form at 725,000 pounds per square inch of pressure. For example, in comparison imagine six 68-ton Abrams military tanks stacked on your thumb. The destruction layer also contains tiny diamonoids that, as the name indicates, are as hard as diamonds. Each one is smaller than a flu virus. It seems that wood and plants in the area were instantly turned into this diamond-like material by the fireball's high pressures and temperatures.
Experiments with laboratory furnaces showed that the bubbled pottery and mudbricks at Sodom liquefied at temperatures above 2,700 F. That's hot enough to melt an automobile within minutes. The destruction layer also contains tiny balls of melted material smaller than airborne dust particles. Called spherules, they are made of vaporized iron and sand that melted at about 2,900 F. In addition, the surfaces of the pottery and melted glass are speckled with tiny melted metallic grains, including iridium with a melting point of 4,435 F, platinum that melts at 3,215 F and zirconium silicate at 2,800 F. Collected, all this evidence shows that temperatures in the city rose higher than those of volcanoes, warfare and normal city fires. The only natural process left is a cosmic impact. The same evidence is found at known impact sites, such as Tunguska and the Chicxulub crater, created by the asteroid that triggered the dinosaur extinction.
There was one troubling question was why the city and over 100 other area settlements were abandoned for several centuries after this devastation. It may be that high levels of salt deposited during the impact event made it impossible to grow crops. Scientists are not certain yet, but they think the explosion may have vaporized or splashed toxic levels of Dead Sea salt water across the valley. Without crops, no one could live in the valley for up to 600 years, until the minimal rainfall in this desert-like climate washed the salt out of the fields.
Could there have been eye witness to the event? It's possible …that an oral description of the city's destruction may have been handed down for generations until it was recorded as the story of Biblical Sodom. The Bible describes the devastation of an urban center near the Dead Sea, stones and fire fell from the sky, more than one city was destroyed, thick smoke rose from the fires and city inhabitants were killed. Could this be an ancient eyewitness account? If so, the destruction of Sodom may be the second-oldest destruction of a human settlement by a cosmic impact event, after the village of Abu Hureyra in Syria about 12,800 years ago. Importantly, it may be the first written record of such a catastrophic event. The scary thing is, it almost certainly won't be the last time a human city meets this fate.
As of September 2021, there are more than 26,000 known near-Earth asteroids and a hundred short-period near-Earth comets. One will inevitably crash into the Earth. Millions more remain undetected, and some may be headed toward the Earth now. Unless orbiting or ground-based telescopes detect these rogue objects, the world may have no warning, just like the people of Sodom.
Whether you believe the Bible stories, or science, it’s a fact that earth will be hit with a fire ball like this sooner or later.
Tammy
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