Posted on 03/31/2008 4:48:42 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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.
Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.
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. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.
He referred to the asteroid as a "white stone bowl approaching" and recorded it as it "vigorously swept along."
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.
About half the symbols on the tablet have survived and half of those refer to the asteroid. The other symbols record the positions of clouds and constellations. In the past 150 years scientists have made five unsuccessful attempts to translate the tablet.
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."
He said the size and route of the asteroid meant that it was likely to have crashed into the Austrian Alps at Köfels. 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.
Debris 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“Which book of the Bible is that passage from?”
It is not - I wrote it.
Sorry if I offended you.
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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I can understand how there would be blast effects from an asteroid, but I don't think an asteroid impact would cause radiation sickness.
The most ancient stories (check some of the stone carving/paintings in Nikel Oblast in Russia) have it that the woman turns into a stone ~
Well now, that would depend on the compostion of the rock, don’t you think?
I once read a story that if it were not for Hollywood movie reviewers “Ishtar” might have been a smash flick.
Flash to ash seems more likely.
But what do I know?
Nada.
That makes sense, especially since Iridium is a marker of the K-T boundary.
A stone.
Now, there is a world of opportunity here, to write something.
But I am in so much trouble already, for pissing off “true believers” - in a number of religions.
Maybe I should quit while I am behind.
Thanks FT, alas, a duplicate.
Who knew.
Multitasking???
One might suppose the folks in the vicinity of Sodom did pretty much the same thing.
So, the story comes down to us as "stone" instead of "crispy critter".
A Sumerian Observation
of the Kofels' Impact Event
by Alan Bond
and Mark HempsellComet/Asteroid Impacts
and Human Society
ed by Peter T. Bobrowsky
and Hans Rickman
intro (PDF)
due to links hereAsteroids:
Deadly Impact
National Geographic
ooooh, more stuff to think about.
nd maybe write.
as an aside: 3300 BC is at least 1100 years before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Whoops. 3123 B.C. is at least 900 years before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Watch out for that asteroid, San Fransicko!!
I was thinking that it was this 'swarm' that did it:
Great Comets, Great FloodsAuthors Edith Kristan-Tollmann and Alexander Tollmann, both of the University of Vienna's Geological Institute in Austria, suggest that a cometary crash is the cause of the flood we usually associate with Noah... By combining historical record with geological clues, the Tollmanns picture several cometary fragments -- probably seven of them -- smacking into the earth about ten thousand years ago. The great splashdown took place near the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, spring in the Southern, with the major fragments hitting the oceans over a span of days at most. (Oddly, the Tollmanns are less certain of the year than of the time of year; because of the many internal clues in the tales and commentaries worldwide, Mesopotamian and Scandinavian sources agree on the season.) ...The geologic evidence is--or should be--less arguable. The Tollmanns think they've found described in the scientific literature a worldwide array of tektites of the right age, for example. Tektites are rocks melted by an impact and splashed away as molten drops that then solidify again as they cool. Because they are inorganic, they are usually dated by stratigraphy -- the age of the layers within which they lie -- and that is an admittedly imperfect science.
by Carla Helfferich
Alaska Science Forum
July 13, 1994
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