Back to the Future in Jerusalem

 

                                                                    

                                                                      from Christianity Today

As we rambled around the old city of Jerusalem in April of 2023 I was aware of how little and how much had changed since I was last there 30 years before. The Western Wall and various gates were enduring landmarks along with other key sites. The watery Siloam Tunnel can still be traversed by the brave and not-so-tall. 

Yet there has been constant excavation and discovery at different levels. A parking lot where our coach sat alongside others years ago is now an extensive archeological site. The first time I visited the area to the south of the Al Aksa Mosque was a hillside with some buildings. A few years later steps were being unearthed leading to the Temple Mount. Now this area can be explored by visitors and there is a thrill to be able walk up the broad steps that Jesus and his disciples used to gain access to the magnificent temple plaza created by Herod. 

                                                                 South Steps to the Temple Mount

So much is deep underground though, in many layers of civilization and destruction. Much of it is next to impossible to access because of the buildings above. Sectarian and religious tensions preclude serious archeological efforts. 

I just read an interesting article in Christianity Today about the use of muon detectors (you know, muon detectors!) to boldly go where archeology nerds have never gone before. Here are a few paragraphs:

Now, however, physicists have come up with a new way to dig without digging: muography.Muons are tiny subatomic particles that are everywhere on earth, according to physicists. They are created when cosmic rays smash into the Earth’s atmosphere, showering the surface of the planet with about 10,000 of the particles per square meter. 

In recent years, scientists have figured out how to use muon detectors to map inaccessible subterranean cavities, creating images of rooms inside Egyptian pyramids and magma chambers deep in volcanoes. Now they’re using them to map the streets Jesus once walked in ancient Jerusalem. 

Last year, a team of Tel Aviv University archaeologists and physicists shoehorned an unwieldy homemade muon detector—you can’t buy one from a store—into a rocky cavern close to the Gihon Spring in the Kidron Valley. They placed another detector behind a rocky bulwark called the Stepped Stone Structure. Then they pointed them both toward the Temple Mount and turned them on.

Here’s how they work: Muons have about 10,000 times the energy of a typical x-ray. They can easily pass through rock and earth—and anything less dense, like plants and people—but the denser the material they pass through, the quicker they lose their energy. 

When muons hit the detectors with different energy levels, an image can be created of the density of the matter through which they passed. Empty spaces are easily distinguished. And archaeologists can “see” underground.

The use of this technology is in its infancy, it is expensive to build a muon detector, and they have significant limitations in that the spaces they find have to be interpreted. Still, it will add to the ever expanding toolbox used by researchers. It all sounds rather "Back to the Future", doesn't it? 

 Will it help people from the three monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam live in peace? That's probably too much to ask. Yahweh/God/Allah will need to effect a metaphysical miracle that goes beyond any technological innnovation from the realm of physics.