Space can be unforgiving. Even though things have calmed down over the last few billion years, Earth continues to be bombarded by all kinds of space objects, large, small, and somewhere in between.

As space dust continually falls into Earth’s atmosphere, a strange, kilometer-long asteroid hurtling through space will find its way to Earth approximately every few hundred million years. Other rock fragments, much smaller than what we think of as objects worth destroying, may also find their way into our rocky aquatic world. But instead of hitting the planet’s surface, these objects sometimes explode when they enter our atmosphere, sending shockwaves through whatever lies beneath. We call these events air bursts.

However, their work proved to be a difficult task as the explosions occurred in the atmosphere. So the research team looked for “landing” cases, in which an impactor explodes in the atmosphere powerful enough to cause shock waves and heat to reach the ground. These events, in which impactors explode relatively close to the surface, are actually more common than large crater impacts, the researchers say.

The researchers wanted to simulate “low altitude” landing surges to better understand the effects of such an impact. In this case, low altitude was defined as being approximately 766 yards (700 meters) or less above the Earth’s surface. The scientists compared their data with documented above-ground explosions, such as the one over Tunguska in 1908, the aerial explosions that occurred just a few kilometers away over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, and also looked at the Trinity nuclear test that occurred in New Mexico in 1945. approximately 100 feet (31 meters) above the ground. The researchers performed numerous simulations of asteroids and comets of various sizes.

“We have produced computer models of Type II hydrocodes, or landfalls, where high temperatures, high pressures, and high velocities produce molten glass, microspheres, and impact metamorphism by passing through the Earth’s surface,” Kenneth explained.

Kennett went on to explain that these above-ground explosions are capable of producing temperatures that can melt minerals and metals without the need to create a crater. The models also showed researchers how the pressure created by explosions can cause impact metamorphism, or “cracks,” in quartz.

Researchers are quick to point out that a number of factors can influence the behavior of airstrikes, such as the size of the comet or asteroid, its height above where the explosion occurred, the angle of entry of the object into the atmosphere, and so on. and number of objects. Therefore modeling can be difficult.

The study complements a new paper in which the researchers applied their model to the archaeological site of Tall el-Hamman, a Bronze Age city near the Dead Sea. The site had previously attracted the attention of researchers because the 1.5-meter gap of molten glass and churned quartz on the pottery shards showed evidence of temperatures and pressures far beyond what humans could produce at the time.

Modeling, along with physical evidence at the site, strongly suggested that an airburst could have caused the destruction of the entire city. Tall el-Hamam is believed to be the site of the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities destroyed by God in the book of Genesis for their immorality.