Biblical artifacts provide reassurance about Earth's magnetic field

[Zorro]

More than 2,700 years ago, the Assyrian king Sennacherib invaded the biblical kingdom of Judah, spreading destruction nearly to Jerusalem before withdrawing. The Assyrians boasted they had shut in Judah’s King Hezekiah “like a bird in a cage”. The Bible says an angel slew Sennacherib’s troops. Modern historians say Hezekiah’s crafty diversion of Jerusalem’s water supply also played a role.

Neither king — nor anyone else alive then — could have known the Earth’s protective magnetic field was rapidly weakening. The field diminished by 27 percent in three decades.

The event, unprecedented in 100,000 years, may shed light on the current state of the Earth’s diminishing field, which protects us (and satellites) from dangerous cosmic radiation. It may even provide clues to geophysicists about how the magnetic field is generated in the first place.

This marriage of Biblical history and the field known as paleomagnetism forms the core of a study published Monday by a team of San Diego and Israeli researchers, spanning six centuries of records. And Sennacherib’s ravages helped make it possible. Destruction layers and contemporary accounts provided an unusually tight temporal window to date pottery artifacts found at the site.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/biotech/sd-me-judean-geomagnetic-20170213-story.html

[Tanuki]

1. Interesting....thank you! This biblical story is the subject of Lord Byron's

"Destruction of the Sennacherib":

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43827


The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!