The city of Sodom in the story of the Prophet Lut, was destroyed by the punishment of Allah with a hail of stones. A team of archaeologists prove it really happened. The hailstones are asteroids.
Archaeological excavations have revealed an air blast event from an asteroid that collided with Earth's atmosphere, possibly causing the demise of civilization near the Dead Sea in Jordan thousands of years ago.
It took 15 years of digging to get this information. Excavations involved hundreds of people and detailed analysis of material excavated by more than 20 scientists in 10 countries from the US, Canada and the Czech Republic.
Researchers and archaeologists describe a violent firestorm that destroyed the entire ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam. Based on the excavations they carried out, found evidence such as layers of charcoal, ash, melted mud brick, and melted pottery 1.5 meters thick.
Experiments with laboratory furnaces show that the bubbling pottery and mud bricks at Tall el-Hammam melt at temperatures above 1,500 degrees Celsius. This temperature is too hot to melt a car in just a few minutes.
No one knows for sure what happened. But the layers are not caused by volcanoes, earthquakes, or wars. None of them were capable of melting metal, mud bricks, and pottery. The only natural processes that remain are cosmic impacts from outer space.
Quoted from Science Alert, Wednesday (22/9/2021) to find out the possibility of an event that destroys the city, the research team used the Online Impact Calculator to create a scenario model that fits the evidence.
Designed by collision experts, this calculator allows researchers to estimate the many details of cosmic collision events, based on known collision events and nuclear explosions.
The results of these calculations suggest that it is likely that Tall el-Hammam had an asteroid similar to the asteroid that knocked down 80 million trees in Tunguska, Russia in 1908, and the Chicxulub crater that triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs.
It is possible that oral descriptions of the story of the destruction of this city have been passed down from generation to generation and recorded as the story of the Sodomites and the Prophet Lut in the holy books of the Samawi religion (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). For example, the Qur'an narrates the doom of this hailstone in Surah Al A'raf verse 84:
اَÙ…ْØ·َرْÙ†َا Ù„َÙŠْÙ‡ِÙ…ْ اۗ انْظُرْ انَ اقِبَØ©ُ الْÙ…ُجْرِÙ…ِÙŠْÙ†َ
And We showered them with rain (stones). So look at the end of the one who sinned.
In various studies that were previously conducted, Tall el-Hammam which became the scene of the calamity of the people of the Prophet Lut was the City of Sodom, in an area now known as the Dead Sea aka the Lake of Lut which is located on the border between Israel and Jordan.
Tall el-Hammam itself is a city from the Bronze Age. According to scientists, Tall el-Hammam is a city-state in the region called Middle Ghor. The area has been inhabited for 2,500 years and is protected by a wall 30 meters thick, 15 meters high, and 2.5 kilometers long.
But the solid wall fell apart when it was hit by an object falling from the sky, and the resulting blast wave swept across the area.
Scientists say a meteor explosion over the area has triggered a powerful heat wave. The heat wave not only swept across Tall el-Hammam but also destroyed an area of 500 square kilometers around it. The area of the former disaster itself was then no longer inhabited by humans until 700 years after the event occurred.