Layard Tablet

[ewx]

Since it seems to be quiet today... Clay tablet identified as asteroid that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Well, sort of. Other articles suggest that geologists date the Köfels landslide to 8-9K years ago (i.e. well before the Sumerians) and the connection to the story in Genesis 19 appears to be completely speculative.

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

...and the fact that Sodom and Gomorrah were not in the Austrian Alps.

Hats off to the Sumerian astronomer who recorded it, though.

(The Telegraph also makes the erroneous claim that the Sumerians were the first known civilisation. This is incorrect; rather, they, along with the Egyptians, were the first to record themselves in writing so we know more about them than merely examining the ruins they left tells us.)

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I think this (http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2008/212017945233.html) is the press release it's all cribbed off. No proper publications that I can find.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

When I ask the impact-effects calculator http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ for a 1km asteroid impacting at a six-degree angle at cosmic speeds, it gives a 3-gigaton explosion, and the largest crater in the three-by-thirty-mile crater field is a mile across. The blast wave would demolish steel-framed buildings at 20km; but, thanks to the inverse-square law, 2000km away in Israel a loud noise would be heard. The asteroid started breaking up about 700km out from impact at an altitude of 70km, and deposited 24Gtons of energy over that period.

Kofels doesn't look like a field of one-mile craters and isn't full of shocked quartz; there is some melted rock, but I'm prepared to accept that when a mountain is sliding at 30kmph the friction is quite enough to melt rock.

I could just about believe a Sumerian description of an impact; but I don't believe the connection with Kofels in the slightest.

[sunflowerinrain.livejournal.com]

After staring at the headline in bemusement I conclude that it was written, or edited, by someone who hadn't read the article.