Retracted Study Claims Biblical Sodom Destroyed by Asteroid Airburst in 1650 BC

What was said

"They pulled out pottery that melted instead of breaking, glazed on one side and untouched on the other, like somebody took a blowtorch to one side of a piece of clay. They found mud brick with the outer face turned into glass while the inside was still clay, and grain cooked to black dust right where it sat. Glass forms at about 3,600°F. Lava out of a volcano tops out at around 2,200. Nothing on Earth's surface gets pottery that hot."

Archaeologist Stephen Collins led excavations at Tall el-Hammam in Jordan, claiming the Bronze Age city was destroyed by an asteroid airburst equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshimas around 1650 BC. Evidence included melted pottery, shocked quartz, diamond dust, and iridium deposits. A 2021 paper was retracted in April 2025 after physicist Mark Boslough challenged the methodology, though the team republished an expanded version elsewhere one month later, moving the scientific debate from mainstream journals to alternative publications.