Free Republic

MOUNT SODOM, ISRAEL — Israeli researchers said Thursday they have surveyed what they now believe to be the world’s longest salt cave, a network of twisting passageways at the southern tip of the Dead Sea. A recently completed survey of the Malham Cave determined the labyrinthine cavern stretches more than 6 miles in length. That puts it well ahead of Iran’s Namakdan Cave, previously thought to be the longest salt cave. **SNIP** The Malham Cave’s main outlet yawns not far from a salt pillar named “Lot’s wife,” after the biblical character who was petrified for looking back at the destruction...

A large crack that has suddenly appeared in Kenya’s Rift Valley is evidence that Africa will eventually break apart. The crack already stretches several miles and continues to grow, but it does not go all the way across the surface. If it does, it will split the continent into two. The crack has caused part of the Nairobi-Narok highway to collapse and also accelerating seismic activity in the area, leading researchers to believe that something dramatic could happen in the future. “The Great Rift splits Africa into two plates. With what is happening we have established one plate which is...

The Dead Sea nearly disappeared about 120,000 years ago, say researchers who drilled more than 1,500 feet below one of the deepest parts of the politically contentious body of water. The discovery looms large at a time when the Dead Sea is shrinking rapidly, Middle Eastern nations are battling over water rights, and experts hotly debate whether the salt lake could ever dry up completely in the years to come. New data from drilled deposits are also helping piece together geological history that slices through Biblical times. Further research may offer opportunities to verify whether earthquakes destroyed the cities of...

EIN GEDI, Israel — Five miles out, nearly to the center of the Dead Sea, an international team of scientists has been drilling beneath the seabed to extract a record of climate change and earthquake history stretching back half a million years. The preliminary evidence and clues found halfway through the 40-day project are more than the team could have hoped for. The scientists did not expect to pull up a wood fragment that was roughly 400,000 years old. Nor did they expect to come across a layer of gravel from a mere 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. That finding...

An int'l research team at urging of TAU, Hebrew U. professors will drill half a kilometer to study year-by-year climate change from 500,000 years ago... The International Continental Scientific Drilling Program chose the Dead Sea as the site of its next drilling at the urging of Tel Aviv University's Prof. Zvi Ben-Avraham and the Israel Geological Survey's Dr. Mordechai Stein... sponsored by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities... "We will be taking out a vertical piece about half a kilometer long which will allow us to get a picture of climate change on a year-by-year basis going back 500,000...

Environmentalists concerned about the threat to its unique eco-system. Water levels in the lowest and saltiest body of water on the planet are falling by more than four feet a year, giving rise to quips that the Dead Sea is dying. The government in Amman has said it is planning to extract more than 10 billion cubic feet a year from the Red Sea 110 miles to the south, feed most of it into a desalination plant to create drinking water, and send the salty waste-water left over to the Dead Sea by tunnel. Similar plans are already the subject...

Olmert: Syrian peace overtures not genuine PM Olmert says Israel is for making peace with all its neighbors, describes Assad's peace overtures as false pretenses Ronny Sofer Latest Update: 12.20.06, 15:16 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert renewed his opposition to peace talks with Syria , describing recent peace overtures by Syrian President Bashar Assad as false pretenses. "Syria continues to support terror in Iraq, is collaborating with the Iranian President and is sparing no effort to topple the government of (Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad) Siniora," Olmert said during a joint press conference with his Norwegian counterpart Jens Stoltenberg in Jerusalem. "We...

There would be sweet Zionist vindication were the Dead Sea rehydration project to actually be implemented with full Jordanian, Palestinian and world partnership. After all, the vision of refilling the Dead Sea, using water from the Mediterranean, was floated back in Theodor Herzl's seminal 1902 Altneuland. True, Herzl envisioned the project for generating hydroelectric power, while today's updated version of his dream would call for channeling Red Sea water for desalination purposes. Yet there's no denying that the very notion captures the imagination and raises our hopes of peaceful cooperation belying the ever-rampant regional belligerence and boldly charting the mutually...

Regeneration of the Biblical Dead Seaby Leslie J. Sacks Amid the constant turmoil and angst boiling over in Israel and the West Bank, at the center of the Middle East, lies the Dead Sea. [3] This salt-laden desert sea is rapidly diminishing in size as its source, the Jordan River, dries up: the Syrians (via the Yarmuk, a source for the Jordan), Israelis and Jordanians all draw an ever-increasing amount of water from this biblical tributary. [1] We think of the Dead Sea as a tourist haven for spa treatments and beauty products, as a relief for psoriasis sufferers;...