Discovery

Latest Investigations

Helping towns manage water An ancient airborne fireball

ECU will work with communities in eastern North Carolina to help them become more resilient as they face sea level rise, extreme weather and other risks.

ECU receives $5 million to strengthen coastal communities

A $5 million federal grant will support ECU researchers and students as they work to strengthen resilience in communities along the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary system of coastal North Carolina .

ECU will serve as the central coordinating hub for more than 20 faculty members from seven universities who will work to create connections within the community, coordinate service opportunities and communicate with stakeholders . Partner institutions are the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina Central University, Clemson University, the University of Virginia, Manhattan College and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science .

“Our communities in eastern North Carolina face major challenges from water-related issues,” said Stephen Moysey, professor of geological sciences, director of the Water Resources Center at ECU and principal investigator on the study . “These problems are a shared responsibility and burden that impact both coastal and inland communities . The project will support those communities as they assess the sources of these hazards, their vulnerability to risk and approaches to collaborative decision-making to adapt to a changing coastal environment . ”

ECU geoscientists, social scientists, biologists, engineers and others will work together on these complex problems . Co-principal investigators at ECU are Michael O’Driscoll, associate professor of coastal studies; Natasha Bell, assistant professor of engineering; and Jacob Petersen-Perlman, assistant professor of geography, planning and environment . Poonam Arora, chair of management and marketing at Manhattan College in New York, also serves as a coprincipal investigator .

Coastlines are vital to the U .S . economy, security and well-being, according to the National Science Foundation . Nearly 40% of the country’s population lives near a coast . Every year, that number increases .

“We are particularly focused on working with communities facing challenges associated with environmental justice problems caused by social, environmental and economic inequities,” Moysey said . “In addition, the project will partner with a variety of external partners to undertake an unprecedented effort to monitor water quality and flows in the Tar-Pamlico watershed . ”

Those community leaders include representatives from the state, numerous eastern North Carolina cities and towns, as well as the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina . Other partners include non-governmental organizations such as Sound Rivers and the N .C . Conservation Network .

“Coastal systems are changing across the globe, and North Carolina is no different,” said Reide Corbett, dean of Integrated Coastal Programs at ECU . “It is critical that we work directly with those communities being impacted and continue to develop a better understanding of the drivers and the socioeconomic implications of these changes .”

– Doug Boyd

Could Sodom have been destroyed by a meteor?

An ancient Middle Eastern city likely was destroyed by a cosmic airburst and could have been the origin of the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. That’s according to an article published in September in the journal Nature.

ECU’s Sid Mitra, professor of geological sciences, was part of the team that wrote the paper, “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea.” In it, researchers hypothesize a meteorite impact or bolide – a meteor that explodes in the atmosphere – likely caused the destruction. They compared the airburst to the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a 50-meter-wide bolide detonated, generating 1,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

Site excavation began in 2005, Mitra said, and researchers have been interested in a citywide 1.5-meter-thick destruction layer of carbon and ash. The layer dates to about 1650 B.C.E. (about 3,600 years ago) and contains shocked quartz, melted pottery and mudbricks, diamond-like carbon, soot, remnants of melted plaster and melted minerals including platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite and quartz.

“They found all this evidence of hightemperature burning throughout the entire site,” Mitra said. “And the technology didn’t exist at that time, in the Middle Bronze Age, for people to be able to generate fires of that kind of temperature.” That supported the idea of an external source of energy, such as a meteor, he said.

The site includes a massive palace complex with thick walls and a monumental gateway, much of which was destroyed.

Sid Mitra’s analysis of soot samples from Tall el-Hammam supports the research team’s hypothesis that the city was destroyed by a high-temperature fire the civilization at the time could not generate. Above right, this rendering shows what the site and the blast would have looked like. Above left, this map illustrates the reach of a blast similar to the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, overlaid on the Jordan site.

A high concentration of salt is also in the destruction layer, which could have ruined agriculture in the area. That could explain the abandonment of more than a dozen towns and cities in the lower Jordan Valley in the following centuries.

The team ruled out other potential processes, including volcanic or earthquake activity, wildfire, warfare and lightning. None provided an explanation as well as a cosmic impact or airburst, the paper said.

Genesis 19:24 describes sulfur raining down out of the heavens and the destruction of the cities and all those living in them, as well as the vegetation in the land.

“So some of the oral traditions talk about the walls of Jericho (about 13-1/2 miles away) falling down, as well as the fires if they’re associated with Sodom,” Mitra said. “Again it’s science; you look at your observations, and in this case it’s the historical record, and you see what you hypothesize and if it fits the data, and the data seem to fit.” – Jules Norwood