Researchers present evidence that a cosmic impact destroyed a biblical city in the Jordan Valley
In the Middle Bronze Age (about 3,600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant. Located on high ground in the southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea, the settlement in its time had become the largest continuously occupied Bronze Age city in the southern Levant, having hosted early civilization for a few thousand years. At that time, it was 10 times larger than Jerusalem and 5 times larger than Jericho.

"It's an incredibly culturally important area," said James Kennett (link is external), emeritus professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara. "Much of where the early cultural complexity of humans developed is in this general area."

A favorite site for archaeologists and biblical scholars, the mound hosts evidence of culture all the way from the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, all compacted into layers as the highly strategic settlement was built, destroyed and rebuilt over millennia.

But there is a 1.5-meter interval in the Middle Bronze Age II stratum that caught the interest of some researchers for its "highly unusual" materials. In addition to the debris one would expect from destruction via warfare and earthquakes, they found pottery shards with outer surfaces melted into glass, "bubbled" mudbrick and partially melted building material, all indications of an anomalously high-temperature event, much hotter than anything the technology of the time could produce.

"We saw evidence for temperatures greater than 2,000 degrees Celsius," said Kennett, whose research group at the time happened to have been building the case for an older cosmic airburst about 12,800 years ago that triggered major widespread burning, climatic changes and animal extinctions. The charred and melted materials at Tall el-Hammam looked familiar, and a group of researchers including impact scientist Allen West and Kennett joined Trinity Southwest University biblical scholar Philip J. Silvia's research effort to determine what happened at this city 3,650 years ago.

Their results (link is external) are published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

We received 4 reports about a fireball seen over Shanghai and Shanghai Shi on Saturday, September 18th 2021 around 20:41 UT.

For this event, we received 4 videos and 4 photos.

On 15 September 2021, at 22:25 local time (equivalent to 20:25universal time), a rock (a meteoroid) from an asteroid impacted the atmosphere at about 76,000 km / h over the south of Spain.

The high temperature reached during its atmospheric entry gave rise to a fireball that began at a height of around 91 km over the province of Badajoz. The fireball moved northwest and ended at a height of about 22 km above the same province.

The bolide was seen by a wide number of casual eyewitnesses along the country. The preliminary analysis of this event shows that the rock was not fully destroyed: a small part of the object could survive and reach the ground as a meteorite. The event was recorded in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN), from the meteor-observing stations located at the astronomical observatories of Calar Alto (Almería), Sierra Nevada (Granada), La Sagra, La Hita, and Sevilla.

The event has been analyzed by the principal investigator of the SMART project: Dr. Jose M. Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).

We received 15 reports about a fireball seen over Bayern, Brandenburg, Niedersachsen, Pardubický kraj, Sachsen, Salzburg, Saxony, Thüringen and Wien on Monday, September 13th 2021 around 18:06 UT.

For this event, we received 2 videos and 9 photos.

This fireball was recorded from Spain on the night of 11 September 2021, at 5:25 local time ( 3:25UT).

The bright meteor was produced by the entry in the atmosphere of a rock (a meteoroid) from a comet at about 245,000 km / h. The high temperature reached during the atmospheric entry gave rise to a fireball that began at a height of around 128 km over the region of La Oriental (northeast of Morocco).

The fireball moved northwest and ended at a height of about 77 km above the same region. The event was recorded in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN), from the meteor-observing stations located at the astronomical observatories of Calar Alto (Almería), Sierra Nevada (Granada), La Sagra, La Hita, and Sevilla. The event has been analyzed by the principal investigator of the SMART project: Dr. Jose M. Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).5:25Peninsular local time.

On 9 September 2021, at about 0:47h local time, a bright fireball was spotted over the center of Spain. This bolide was generated by a rock from an asteroid that hit the atmosphere at about 72,000 km / h.

The fireball overflew the province of Ciudad Real (region of Castilla-La Mancha).

It began over that province at an altitude of about 98 km, and ended at a height of around 35 km.

This bright meteor was recorded in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN), from the meteor-observing stations located at Sevilla, La Hita (Toledo), La Sagra (Granada), Calar Alto (Almería) ), Sierra Nevada (Granada), and Madrid (Jaime Izquierdo, Complutense University of Madrid).

We received 61 reports about a fireball seen over Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Niedersachsen, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thüringen on Thursday, September 9th 2021 around 19:36 UT.

For this event, we received 4 videos and 5 photos.

We received 70 reports about a fireball seen over Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Baden-Württemberg, Basel-Landschaft, Berne, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Canton of Bern, Fribourg, Grand Est, Graubünden, Lombardia, Neuchâtel, Piemont, Piemonte, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Rheinland-Pfalz, Schwyz, Solothurn, Ticino and Trentino-Alto on Monday, September 6th 2021 around 18:33 UT.

For this event, we received 3 videos and 3 photos.

We received 379 reports about a fireball seen over Île-de-France, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Bretagne, Brittany, Centre-Val de Loire, Cymru, England, Hauts-de-France, Normandie, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Occitanie, Pays de la Loire, St Helier, St Martin, Vale and Wales on Sunday, September 5th 2021 around 21:47 UT.

For this event, we received 5 videos and one photo.

We received 37 reports about a fireball seen over AL, GA, IL, IN, KY, OH, SC and TN on Thursday, September 2nd 2021 around 10:12 UT.

For this event, we received one video.