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The Seismologic Division of the Ministry of National Infrastructure's Geophysical Institute will attempt to simulate an earthquake in the southern Negev on Thursday. The experiment, financed by the U.S. Defense Department, is a joint project with the University of Hawaii and is part of a scientific project intended to improve seismological and acoustic readings in Israel and its environs, up to a 1,000 km/621 mile radius.
Originally posted by Imagir
Israel have not an significant treath from earthquakes on its territory, neither in the narrow area. Then why?
As far back as the first-century A.D. historian Josephus, visitors to the Dead Sea have hypothesized about the nature of the catastrophe that "overthrew" the cities of the plain under a shower of brimstone and fire. For some, the explanation was a powerful flood that inundated the much shallower and then-dry southern basin of the Dead Sea. For others, the destruction was wrought by an ancient volcano that has become hidden and dormant in the centuries since. Some have even postulated that God's fury was unleashed by a fiery ancient asteroid over a half-mile in diameter that destroyed everything in its path.
But the explanation that provides the most likely historical and geological context for the legendary destruction is a massive earthquake. The Dead Sea, part of the enormous geological fault line known as the Great Rift Valley, has been the epicenter of powerful earthquakes for countless millennia. Indeed, geologist Amos Frumkin believes that an earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter Scale gave rise to both the Sodom and Gomorrah tradition as well as the story surrounding the Mt. Sedom salt pillar (known as Lot's Wife) some 4,000 years ago. Other scholars have proposed that the earthquake caused the narrow isthmus between the northern and southern Dead Sea basins to give way, which in turn flooded the southern "Valley of Siddim" and inundated the wicked cities and all their inhabitants.
Matching the earthquake theory to the Biblical conflagration, however, has required additional explanation. Most have proposed that the earthquake caused the natural sulfur and bitumen deposits of the Dead Sea area to erupt to the surface, thereby releasing large quantities of natural gas into the air. When exposed to fire-perhaps created by a lightning strike from above-the gas could have ignited and turned the entire plain into a huge furnace, consuming everything and everyone that could not escape.