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Massive Cosmic Airburst Behind the Destruction of An Ancient Jordanian City

Researchers at the Tall el-Hammam site. Credit: University of California - Santa Barbara
Researchers at the Tall el-Hammam site. Credit: University of California - Santa Barbara
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Massive Cosmic Airburst Behind the Destruction of An Ancient Jordanian City

Researchers at the Tall el-Hammam site. Credit: University of California - Santa Barbara
Researchers at the Tall el-Hammam site. Credit: University of California - Santa Barbara

Around 113 years ago, on January 30, 1908, a meteorite pierced the earth’s atmosphere over the eastern segment of the Siberian taiga, close to the Tunguska river in Russia around 60 meters above ground, creating a blast 1000 times stronger than the nuclear bomb that hit Hiroshima.

The first scientists to investigate the impact site expected to find a meteorite, but they found nothing.

While it created a 12 megaton blast, which had been thought to be the largest ever seen on earth, researchers at the University of California, in a paper published two days ago in the “Scientific Reporter,” claim a bigger one had occurred in modern day Tall el-Hammam around 3,600 years ago. The city devastated by the blast goes back to the Middle Bronze Age and lies south of the Jordan Valley, to the northeast of the Dead Sea. The researchers came to this conclusion after they found extremely unusual materials in the Bronze Age stratum of the city.

Alongside the debris one would expect to find from destruction via warfare and earthquakes, the researchers found pottery shards with outer surfaces melted into glass, “bubbled” mudbrick, and partially melted building material, all of which are signs of a highly unusual rise in temperature, far higher than any the technology of the time could produce.

James Kennett, Professor Emeritus of Earth Science at the University of California, who led the recent study, had previously uncovered the details of another cosmic airburst that exploded over 12 thousand years ago, triggering massive fires and climate changes, and leaving some species extinct, which helped him imagine what happened in Tall el-Hammam.

“We saw evidence for temperatures greater than 2,000 degrees Celsius,” adding that the charred and melted materials in Tall el-Hammam seemed familiar and that a group of researchers joined them to write a more detailed account of what had happened.

Kennet and his colleagues found additional evidence of an airburst by conducting many different kinds of analyses on soil and sediments from the critical layer. Tiny iron and silica rich spherules turned up in their analysis, as did melted metals. Kennet refers to the fact that: “I think one of the main discoveries is shocked quartz. These are sand grains containing cracks that form only under very high pressure.. that means there were incredible pressures involved to shock the quartz crystals—quartz is one of the hardest minerals; it’s very hard to shock.

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As It Attacks Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel Maintains Ambiguity about Its Own

FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
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As It Attacks Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel Maintains Ambiguity about Its Own

FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)

Israel says it is determined to destroy Iran’s nuclear program because its archenemy's furtive efforts to build an atomic weapon are a threat to its existence.

What’s not-so-secret is that for decades Israel has been believed to be the Middle East’s only nation with nuclear weapons, even though its leaders have refused to confirm or deny their existence, The Associated Press said.

Israel's ambiguity has enabled it to bolster its deterrence against Iran and other enemies, experts say, without triggering a regional nuclear arms race or inviting preemptive attacks.

Israel is one of just five countries that aren’t party to a global nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That relieves it of international pressure to disarm, or even to allow inspectors to scrutinize its facilities.

Critics in Iran and elsewhere have accused Western countries of hypocrisy for keeping strict tabs on Iran's nuclear program — which its leaders insist is only for peaceful purposes — while effectively giving Israel's suspected arsenal a free pass.

On Sunday, the US military struck three nuclear sites in Iran, inserting itself into Israel’s effort to destroy Iran’s program.

Here's a closer look at Israel's nuclear program:

A history of nuclear ambiguity Israel opened its Negev Nuclear Research Center in the remote desert city of Dimona in 1958, under the country's first leader, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. He believed the tiny fledgling country surrounded by hostile neighbors needed nuclear deterrence as an extra measure of security. Some historians say they were meant to be used only in case of emergency, as a last resort.

After it opened, Israel kept the work at Dimona hidden for a decade, telling United States’ officials it was a textile factory, according to a 2022 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an academic journal.

Relying on plutonium produced at Dimona, Israel has had the ability to fire nuclear warheads since the early 1970s, according to that article, co-authored by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, and Matt Korda, a researcher at the same organization.

Israel's policy of ambiguity suffered a major setback in 1986, when Dimona’s activities were exposed by a former technician at the site, Mordechai Vanunu. He provided photographs and descriptions of the reactor to The Sunday Times of London.

Vanunu served 18 years in prison for treason, and is not allowed to meet with foreigners or leave the country.

ISRAEL POSSESSES DOZENS OF NUCLEAR WARHEADS, EXPERTS SAY

Experts estimate Israel has between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads, although they say the lower end of that range is more likely.

Israel also has stockpiled as much as 1,110 kilograms (2,425 pounds) of plutonium, potentially enough to make 277 nuclear weapons, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a global security organization. It has six submarines believed to be capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles believed to be capable of launching a nuclear warhead up to 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles), the organization says.

Germany has supplied all of the submarines to Israel, which are docked in the northern city of Haifa, according to the article by Kristensen and Korda.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST POSE RISKS

In the Middle East, where conflicts abound, governments are often unstable, and regional alliances are often shifting, nuclear proliferation is particularly dangerous, said Or Rabinowitz, a scholar at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and a visiting associate professor at Stanford University.

“When nuclear armed states are at war, the world always takes notice because we don’t like it when nuclear arsenals ... are available for decision makers,” she said.

Rabinowitz says Israel's military leaders could consider deploying a nuclear weapon if they found themselves facing an extreme threat, such as a weapon of mass destruction being used against them.

Three countries other than Israel have refused to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: India, Pakistan and South Sudan. North Korea has withdrawn. Iran has signed the treaty, but it was censured last week, shortly before Israel launched its operation, by the UN's nuclear watchdog — a day before Israel attacked — for violating its obligations.

Israel's policy of ambiguity has helped it evade greater scrutiny, said Susie Snyder at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a group that works to promote adherence to the UN treaty.

Its policy has also shined a light on the failure of Western countries to rein in nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, she said.

They “prefer not to be reminded of their own complicity,” she said.