Sodoma and Gomorra weren’t destroyed by the influence of an extraterrestrial object | Science | EUROtoday

The information went around the globe. “A gigantic meteorite could have destroyed the biblical city of Sodoma,” the journal titled Forbes. A crew of American scientists had simply introduced proof that “a cosmic explosion in the air” destroyed Tall El-Hammam, a inhabitants within the Jordan River Valley, within the present Jordan. The researchers confirmed photographs of the “destruction layer” discovered within the archaeological web site, with melted metals that instructed that temperatures exceeded 2,000 levels. A salt cloud raised by the outbreak would have brought about the abandonment of the complete area for hundreds of years. And the authors argued that the reminiscence of this disaster may have been the origin of the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom. The scientific journal that printed that research in September 2021, Scientific Reportshe has retired this Thursday as a result of the editors have found “clear errors” and the conclusions are now not believed.

The God of Christians “rained on Sodom and Gomorra sulfur and fire from heaven,” in accordance with the Bible, as a result of their inhabitants “were evil and sinned against the Lord.” The biblical story is complicated, however it has historically been interpreted that sodomitous males had intercourse between them freely. The Qur’an is clearer, attributing these phrases to Pastor Lot: “Do you give yourself to an abomination that no one in the world has committed before? You go to men with desire, instead of women: you really, really, an unfortunate people!” Lot’s spouse, wanting again in her escape from Sodom’s divine destruction, grew to become salt statue.

The retired research was the work of a number of founders of the Comet’s Research Group, a crew of scientists, particularly Americans, with the declared mission of “finding evidence impact evidence and raising awareness about them before your city is next”, in accordance with their web site. The director of the group, the geologist Allen West, is outraged. “My co -authors and I are in total disagree with retracting,” he explains to El País.

West, common for documentaries about previous catastrophes, acknowledges that, as cosmologist Carl Sagan proclaimed, “extraordinary statements require extraordinary evidence”, however recollects one other phrase of the identical writer: “The suppression of uncomfortable ideas can be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge and has no place in science.” The geologist argues that “a small but noisy group of scientists has actively sought to silence the debate on the air explosion in Tall el-Hammam.” He and his colleagues, he says, will publish the research once more, incorporating “new data on the directionality of the shock wave and the deformed quartz” on the bottom of the location.

The founders of the comet analysis group are satisfied that in that place in Jordan there was an air explosion better than that occurred in 1908 on the Tunguska Siberian area, the place an extraterrestrial object disintegrated within the ambiance, inflicting a “thousand times higher” power to that of the Hiroshima Atomic Pump. “Critics thought they could suppress this discussion, but they have failed. We are just dodging them so that the debate on these extremely dangerous aerial explosions can continue,” says West.

The journal that printed its research, Scientific Reportsit belongs to the identical editorial group that Naturereferent of one of the best world science. The high quality of each, nevertheless, may be very totally different. Nature It is choose. Scientific Reports It is the journal that publishes essentially the most research on this planet, with greater than 20,000 jobs a 12 months. The German professional Stefanie Haustein has calculated that this megarrevista entered 100 million euros in 4 years because of the charges charged to the authors for publishing with open entry for readers: about 2,400 euros for every research. With the present enterprise mannequin, 1000’s of magazines have a perverse incentive: the extra research publish, the extra they may win, no matter high quality.

The announcement of the alleged aerial explosion that may have impressed the biblical story of Sodoma brought about a direct controversy, however the editor in chief of Scientific ReportsRafal Marszalek chemist defends his efficiency throughout these 4 years. “It has been a complex case, in which various concerns arose over several months, but the final objections raised have undermined the conclusions of the article, making its retraction necessary,” he explains to this newspaper. The journal already detected in 2022 “an inappropriate manipulation level” in tens of the pictures of the supposed influence. In March of that 12 months, the geologist Steven Jaret, of the United States Natural History Museum, argued that the alleged minerals melted by the extraterrestrial object could possibly be fairly stays of ceramic containers baked by the inhabitants of Tall El-Hammam.

The chief editor states that his reevaluation has been based mostly on the validity of the outcomes, “never on the ideological positions of the parties involved.” Scientific Reports He printed two days in the past one other evaluation of two impartial consultants in regards to the “misunderstandings” across the explosion of Tunguska, which might have brought about the “erroneous interpretations” of the indications present in Tall el-Hammam. In that textual content, Andy Bruno and Mark Boslough, from the colleges of Indiana and New Mexico, criticize that the Comet Research Group has given by good false knowledge that has been circulating for many years, akin to that Tunguska’s occasion knocked greater than 80 million bushes of the Siberian Taiga.

In his opinion, an identical occasion, if it existed, wouldn’t have been ample to generate the destruction described by Geologist Allen West and his colleagues. The editor -in -chief of the journal believes that this new evaluation “demonstrates clear errors” and confirms the issues arising from the primary second. “The editors no longer trust the reliability of the conclusions presented and have decided to retract the study,” says Marszalek.