A recently published paper is making the bold claim that there's evidence that an ancient, bronze age city was destroyed by an asteroid air burst. It's got a lot of attention because this is being linked to a story in the Hebrew Bible which is a core text in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. However, many scientists with expertise in the field are unconvinced. This is the paper in question, published in 'Scientific Reports' the open access side of Nature with lower bar for entry than the flagship publication. A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3 There's a related paper from some of the authors talking about another city in a similar location also destroyed by an airburst. Evidence of Cosmic Impact at Abu Hureyra, Syria at the Younger Dryas Onset (~12.8 ka): High-temperature melting at 2200 °C https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60867-w Many of the criticisms I've cited are shared via twitter, since it's the fastest way to respond to the popularity of this article. https://twitter.com/MarkBoslough https://twitter.com/ChrisStantis https://twitter.com/petrabonegirl https://twitter.com/MTB_Archaeology The airburst map animation is from the B612 Foundation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldNbkWKbvs0 And the full Phoenix Wright animation is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_OT42VaIbo Follow me on Twitter for more updates: https://twitter.com/DJSnM I have a discord server where I regularly turn up: https://discord.gg/zStmKbM If you really like what I do you can support me directly through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/scottmanley ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0h4QNt4FLE

Much of astronomy is based around measuring the distances to celestial bodies, and the distances are all rooted in a technique called stellar parallax. This has been used since the 19th century to measure the distances to stars, and all measurements of interstellar and intergalactic distances are based on the measurement of the tiny wobble in a star's apparent position. The problem is, despite it being a fundamental technique at the core of astronomy, nobody has ever been able to make a simple, obvious demonstration of it, until now. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofCooIkIwvQ

Since I'm getting bombarded with questions I made this quick recording on the way to work, truth is we don't know much and I'm waiting for more info. Consider this your regular reminder that rocket science is hard. Edit: Footage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e_NXPf3eFw

At the time Soyuz 4 & 5 was a great win for the Soviet space program, demonstrating for the first time the ability to rendezvous with another spacecraft and transfer crew between them. However years later it would be revealed that one of the spacecraft came close to being destroyed during reentry as the Service module failed to separate. A lot of the archive footage in this episode comes from RetroSpaceHD who's been transferring, cleaning up and uploading historic space footage. These are a couple of the video sequences I used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlLS1RIsm04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5_niJ2Irj8 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od1i0V57iGs