How Were Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed?

Encounters with Famous Scientists

It is not often that I have had the opportunity to meet renowned scientists. On one occasion, I met James Van Allen in Florida. He is known for discovering the Van Allen belts—regions of charged particles such as protons and electrons that encircle the earth. Van Allen designed a Geiger Counter and placed it on one of the first U.S. satellites. Initially, he believed the detector had failed, but it turned out that it was simply overwhelmed or saturated by the intensity of particles and had to stop counting them.

Following a conference in Florida where he listened to my presentation, Van Allen approached me outside a seafood restaurant to congratulate me on my talk. I was honored by this encounter. As we parted ways, he commented that the snow crabs at the restaurant were delicious.

Meeting Dr. Steven Collins: Discoverer of Sodom

A recent memorable meeting occurred in October 2025. A friend introduced me to Dr. Steven Collins, who is credited with discovering the biblical city of Sodom. Dr. Collins resides in Albuquerque. We met at his office, where he asked if I had eaten yet. We walked a few blocks to a diner-style restaurant and both ordered taco salads, which were excellent. During our meal, I was struck by Dr. Collins’s humility and kindness; he graciously prayed over our food and even paid for my lunch. It was truly one of the most stimulating lunches I have ever had.

Uncovering the Ancient City of Sodom

Dr. Collins recounted how he found the city of Sodom. Around the year 2000, he noticed clues within the Genesis story that pointed to Sodom’s location. For instance, Abraham could see the explosion that destroyed Sodom from where he lived. By gathering all the clues, Dr. Collins determined that Sodom could not have been on the east or south side of the Dead Sea—it had to be northeast of the Sea.

After more research and a lot of exploration on the ground in Jordan, he met with the director of the Jordan Department of Antiquities, who initially denied his request to excavate the ruin he’d identified as the “most likely” candidate for Sodom. This rejection continued for four consecutive years (although Dr. Collins was offered other sites to excavate). Eventually, the director relented, and in 2005, Dr. Collins and a group of students began excavating.

Excavations at Tall el-Hammam

There were 14 sizeable archaeological sites in the general area, but the largest—Tall el-Hammam—was oddly unexcavated. A British expedition had previously attempted a dig there, but a team member was severely injured by an exploding war mine at the site. Even after the area was swept clear of mines, other expeditions stayed away, leaving the site accessible for Dr. Collins. He was granted permission to dig there every winter for 16 seasons (from 2005 through 2023).

Pottery and Evidence of Catastrophic Destruction

The pottery sherds collected by Dr. Collins are now housed at the TeHEP Archaeological Research Center in Albuquerque. One photo shows Dr. Collins beside a table full of pottery pieces, and another features a reconstructed vase from the palace of Sodom, where its rulers would have lived. The date of the city’s destruction was approximately 1700 BC, making it 3,700 years old.

Many pottery pieces are scorched or blackened and strewn in a SW-to-NE scatter-pattern. This suggests an explosion that lasted less than a second and reached temperatures of about 3,000 degrees Celsius, similar to a shock wave from a comet or other space object that exploded before hitting the ground—known as an airburst.

The immense power and heat demolished everything, including mud-brick walls, wooden objects, skeletons, bones, and pottery. Nothing remained standing; everything was pulverized and compressed into a three-foot layer across the entire city. Mostly bone fragments were found, and attempts to analyze their DNA failed due to excessive heat damage.

The heat was so intense that it melted some of the pottery surfaces into glass that often ‘boiled’. Dr. Collins observed that this phenomenon resembled the aftermath of the first atomic bomb test south of Albuquerque in 1945, where desert sand was melted into a glass called Trinitite. This supported Dr. Collins’s theory that Sodom was destroyed by the tremendous energy of a cosmic airburst.

Scientific Analysis and Controversy

When Dr. Collins showed a piece of Trinitite from Sodom to a scientist from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the scientist became enthusiastic. He assembled a team of scientists who analyzed all available data and published a paper in the prestigious journal Nature in 2021. Their findings confirmed that a cosmic explosion had occurred in the area about that time, and perhaps also wiped out Jericho. The paper was co-authored by 21 scientists.

However, a nuclear scientist from Albuquerque later challenged the paper’s claims that Tall el-Hammam’s destruction was caused by an airburst, and succeeded in having the Nature article retracted in 2025, which is highly unusual. Dr. Collins noted that the Nature paper was later republished in another journal.

He also mentioned that one criticism of the original Nature article was that it did not conclusively prove the airburst was caused by a moving source, such as a comet fragment. Nevertheless, Dr. Collins claims there is substantial evidence, including debris piled against SW-facing walls, indicating the direction from which the event came. He plans to present this proof in a forthcoming book about Sodom. But it looks to me, as a physicist, that there is no doubt that a cometary airburst destroyed Sodom and its surroundings.

Sodom’s Place in History

Tall el-Hammam/Sodom is at least 8,000 years old, dating back millennia before Egypt’s first pyramids, though it is probably not as old as Jericho which is at least 10,000 years old. Sodom was the largest, continuously-occupied Bronze Age city in the southern Levant—a region encompassing Israel and Jordan. The complete story can be found in Dr. Collins’s book, Discovering the City of Sodom (Simon & Schuster, 2013), which provides significant support for the Genesis account, a biblical story that dates back 3,700 years.

Reflection

This stimulating lunch offered a fascinating, fresh perspective on an ancient biblical narrative, now confirmed 3,700 years later. Thank you, Dr. Collins, for confirming one of the oldest biblical stories, and adding layers of modern scientific truth to the ancient story.
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Best wishes from the Gray Nomad.

Then the Lord rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of the heavens. He overthrew, destroyed and ended those cities, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. (Genesis chapter 19).