[meteorite-list] On Now! - Sodom & Gomorrah on Science Channel

[Paul H.]

In http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/2010-March/062654.html
Darren Garrison quoted GeoZay as stating:

“I just watched this program. It's left me wondering where are all 
those meteorites from billions of tons of debris that supposedly fell 
on Sodom and Gomorrah? If that one nearby town was found, then
surely nearby there should be a fanny load of meteorites laying 
about just waiting to be scooped up.

David repsonded:

“I haven't seen the show Isounds like National Enquirer quality 
stuff though) but not only does nobody know where Sodom and 
Gamorrah were, nobody knows for sure if they even actually 
existed, or if they did exist-- when. Here's an article from mid-2009 
which (along with the comments at the end) show how little 
agreement there is on the subject:

http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/sodom-and-gomorrah.asp

Will their next episode be postulating bioluminescent bacteria as the
explanation of why Rudolph's nose glows so bright?”

The episode of “Biblical Mysteries Explained” about Sodom and 
Gomorrah is largely based upon a popular, self-published book 
that recycles long discredited claims about the large Kofels 
Landslide near Tyrol, Austria, being of impact origin. The book is:

Bond, A., and M. Hempsell, 2008, A Sumerian Observation of the
Köfels' Impact Event, Writersprintshop, 2008, ISBN: 1904623646

They argue that the impact of an asteroid over a kilometer in 
diameter created the Kofels landslide about 5123 BP near Tyrol, 
Austria. They argue that the “back plume from the explosion”
was hurled back along its entry path / “bent over the 
Mediterranean Sea” and  re-entered the atmosphere some 
1,600 miles away over the Levant, Sinai, and Northern 
Egypt and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

There all sorts of problems with their thesis.

1. First, the age of the Kofels landslide is well established by
numerous concordant radiocarbon and cosmogenic dates.
as having occurred about 9800±100 years BP. This is some
4,600 – 4,700 older than claimed by Bond and Hemphill in
their book. The radiocarbon dates came from AMS 14C 
dating of wood buried by the landslide. The age of the Kofels
landslide is discussed in:

Hermanns, R., L. Blikra, M. Naumann, B. Nilsen, K. Panthi, D.
Stromeyer, O. Longva, 2006, Examples of multiple rock-slope
collapses from Köfels (Ötz valley, Austria) and western 
Norway. Engineering Geology. vol. 83, no. 1-3, pp. 94-108.

and

Ivy-Ochs, S., H. Heuberger, P. W. Kubik, H. Kerschner, G. Bonani,
M. Frank, and C. Schluchter, 1998, The age of the Köfels event.
Relative, 14C and cosmogenic isotope dating of an early Holocene
landslide in the central Alps (Tyrol, Austria). Zeitschrift fur
Gletscherkunde und Glazialgeologie. vol. 34, pp. 57-70.

All Bond and Hemphill can do is make unsupported claims
that the radiocarbon are “contaminated” by some unknown
process. Also, a person cannot even claim that seemingly 
imaginary impact-related “nuclear processes” can create 
apparent dates that are older than the actual age of the 
material.

2. Another problem is that the impact origin of the Kofels
 landslide has been previously discredited in discussions of 
its origin as the result of a terminal Pleistocene impact as 
advocated by Austrian  geologist  Alexander Tollmann as 
discussed in:

Kristan-Tollmann, E. and A. Tollmann, 1994, The youngest 
big impact on Earth deduced from geological and historical 

evidence. Terra Nova. v. 6, no. 2, pp. 209-217.

and 

Deutsch, A., C. Koeberl, J.D. Blum, B. M. French, B. P. Glass, R.
Grieve, P. Horn, E. K. Jessberger, G. Kurat, W. U. Reimold, J. Smit, 
D. Stoffler, and S. R. Taylor, 1994, The impact-flood connection: 
Does it exist? Terra Nova. vol. 6, pp. 644-650.

Also, look at “Tollmann's hypothetical bolide” at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollmann%27s_hypothetical_bolide

It appears that the starting point for the hypothesis that the 
Kofels Landslide was caused by a extraterrestrial impact was the 
discovery of natural glass within the deposits of the Kofels 
Landslide. After the discovery of natural glass, the extraterrestrial 
impact hypothesis was proposed because, at that time, natural 
glass was only known to be created by either volcanic or 
extraterrestrial impact processes. Given the absence of associated
volcanic deposits, it was argued the natural glass must have been
created by an extraterrestrial impact. However, is it now known
that similar natural glasses called "frictionite", are associated 
with other mega landslides and laboratory experiments and 
computer simulations show that frictional heating during 
landslides are quite capable of producing the natural glass
found associated with the Kofels Landslide. This is discussed
in detail in:

Erismann, T. H., and G. Abele, 2001, Dynamics of Rockslides 
and Rockfalls, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York, 316 p.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~jsedr/BookReviews/March2002/Dynamics.pdf

Hermanns, R.., L. Blikra, M. Naumann, B. Nilsen, K. Panthi,
D. Stromeyer, O. Longva, 2006, Examples of multiple rock-slope 
collapses from Köfels (Ötz valley, Austria) and western Norway. Engineering Geology. vol. 83, no. 1-3, pp. 94-108.

and
Sorensen, S.-A., and B. Bauer, 2003, On the dynamics of the Köfels 
sturzstrom. Geomorphology, vol. 54, no. 1-2, pp. 11-19.

Cause effect models of large mass movements
http://info.tuwien.ac.at/geophysik/research/landslides/1997_pr01/structure/koefels.htm

In addition, it is now known that Kofels Landslide is one of 
several catastrophic landslides that resulted from the collapse
of valley walls oversteepened by glacial erosion at the end of 
the Pleistocene. The valley walls collapsed when the retreat of
glaciers removed ice that was supporting the steep valley
walls created by glacial erosion.

The lack of any identifiable impact debris, shocked quartz,
and crater from the impact of an asteroid over a kilometer
in diameter presents major problems in arguing that the 
Kofels Landslide is impact related. Shocked quartz was once
reported from the Kofels Landslide. However, when 
reexamined, the shocked quartz proved to be tectonically
deformed quartz that grossly misidentified as “shocked
quartz” as discussed by:

Leroux, H., and J.-C. Doukhan, 1993, Dynamic deformation 
of quartz in the landslide of Koefels, Austria. European
Journal of Mineralogy. vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 893-902.

3. yet another problem is the lack of any credible explanation
about why the fireball from the impacting asteroid would 
bend over / be hurled back along its entry path by some 1,600
miles to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Simply plugging some
the numbers that Bond and Hemphill provide for their alleged
extraterrestrial impact into the “Earth Impact Effects Program”
by Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, and Gareth Collins readily
shows that their impact would have no significant effect in
the area where Sodom and Gomorrah allegedly existed.

“Earth Impact Effects Program”
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

For example, using Bond’s and Hemphill’s estimates for the
size and mass of their hypothetical asteroid, I found:

1. a hypothetical "Köfels impact event" was too small
to either create a fireball, for a stony asteroid (3000kg/m3),
or the Middle East lay below the Earth's horizon for the
fireball created by an iron asteroid (8000 kg/m3).

2. a hypothetical asteroid was too small to either dump any 
ejecta, for a stony asteroid (3000kg/m3) in the Middle East, 
or, in case of an iron asteroid (8000 kg/m3) the ejecta blanket
was far too thin to have done any damage.

3. the "plume" / fireball created by such an impact would 
have radiated thermal radiation for only a few seconds to 
few minutes. Therefore, the "plume" could not have ignited 
anything as it drifted over the Middle East.

4. the total kinetic energy that would have been released
by the impact of the alleged asteroid would have obliterated
Mt. Gamskogel if any significant piece of the, by then broken
up, asteroid clipped into this mountain.

There are all sorts of other problems with this thesis, including
their translation of Sumerian, whether Sodom and Gomorrah 
really existed, and if they existed, where they were actually 
located. Thus, my opinion of the Sodom and Gomorrah episode
of “Biblical Mysteries Explained” is that it is just one of a number 
of dull to mildly entertaining fantasy and science fiction 
programs that can appear on the Science Channel.

Yours,

Paul H.