This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Bible records in the Old Testament about the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah that "GOD rained brimstone and fire down," an event described as a river of lava out of the sky.
The result was the destruction of "these cities and the entire plain and everyone who lived in the cities and everything that grew from the ground."
Now that Genesis account has been confirmed, more or less, by scientists, according to a report from CBN.
The modern understanding would be an explosion something like an asteroid impact or explosion, the report said.
It cites reporting from the Smithsonian Magazine that documented pottery pieces melted on the outside, but untouched on the inside, pottery pieces covered in Trinitite, the glassy residue left on the desert floor after the plutonium-based Trinity nuclear bomb test on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, and more.
The research project producing the results is at Tall el-Hammam in the southern Jordan Valley, considered the locations of the two biblical cities.
It is the size of the explosion that is featured in the new report on what happened at the locations.
Dr. John Bergsma, a professor of theology at Steubenville, Ohio's Franciscan University, is described by Relevant magazine as suggesting the evidence shows the damage was from "a very large exploding space rock."
"Tall el-Hammam's sudden disappearance about 3,600 years ago has been a mystery to archaeologists for years. In the city's ruins, there are no signs of an extended military siege or conflict. However, other signs point to a different catastrophic cause, the outlet reported," CBN explained.
The evidence of extreme heat drew Bergsma's attention.
Besides the scorching, the Trinitite, and such, Bergsma also explained the odd human remains discovered.
"Human skeletons are complete up until about halfway up the backbone, and then there's just a scorch mark, and there's nothing on the top of the body," he said. "They found massive evidence that a huge heat blast from the sky at about 25C above the horizon incinerated these twin cities on the Jordanian side of the river."
The report noted the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, equal to about 15,000 tons of TNT. It left burned shadows on the grounds.
Then there was the Tunguska event in Russia in 1908, which was so remote it was analyzed only years later, but estimated at 5 megatons, or 5 million tons of TNT.
The report said scientists have estimated the Tall el-Hammam event at at least 15 megatons.
CBN explained Steven Collins, dean of the College of Archaeology at Trinity Southwest University, is the lead archaeologist at Tall el-Hammam, and theorized the cities were vaporized in a "thermal event."
"The violent conflagration that ended occupation at Tall el-Hammam produced melted pottery, scorched foundation stones, and several feet of ash and destruction debris churned into a dark gray matrix as if in a Cuisinart," he said.
