Interesting. You are right that Google Earth is of little use and flashearth is 
worse but I found some uploaded pictures to Google Earth and this one shows 
what appears to either be a sink hole or a crater. But it doesn't look like the 
same one as in your link: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/37270146

Abe Guenther

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robert Verish
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2010 12:13 PM
To: Meteorite-list Meteoritecentral
Subject: [Possible Spam][meteorite-list] Unrecorded Meteorite Crater Found On 
Mount Ararat?

No mention of whether any meteorites were found or even if there was an attempt 
to search for any.  -- Bob V.

----------------------------------------------------------
<http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26039/?ref=rss>

Unrecorded Meteorite Crater Found On Mount Ararat?

The discovery of an unrecorded crater raises the possibility that the biblical 
mountain was struck by a meteorite, say physicists

kfc 11/18/2010

    * 2 Comments

Mount Ararat is an ancient, isolated volcano in eastern Turkey near the borders 
with Iran and Armenia. According to the Bible, the mountain is the final 
resting place of Noah's Ark. Many an expedition has tried and failed to find 
the Ark's remains.

The northern and western slopes of the mountain are closed to public so how two 
physicists gained access is anybody's guess. However, today Vahe Gurzadyan from 
the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia and Sverre Aarseth from the University 
of Cambridge in the UK, publish an account of a remarkable discovery they made 
while walking in the region.

At an altitude of 2100 metre, at coordinates 39 47' 30''N, 44 14' 40''E, they 
found a well-preserved and previously unrecorded crater some 70 metres across. 
(Google Earth is of little use. The resolution of the imagery at this location 
is poor.) That's a decent size for a crater that has gone unnoticed for so long 
(although new craters of this kind of size do turn up from time to time.)

The question of course is how this crater was formed. One possibility is that 
the crater is volcanic. But Gurzadyan and Aarseth raise another: that it is the 
result of a meteorite impact. They rule out a glacial origin on the grounds 
that 2100 metres is well below the glacier line.

Gurzadyan and Aarseth publish their account with the intention of attracting 
interest so that the crater can be properly classified.

New craters are important because they help determine how heavily the Earth has 
been bombarded in the past. And while small craters are far more numerous than 
big ones on other bodies in the Solar System, the opposite is true on Earth 
because small ones tend to be eroded away more quickly.

Interestingly, the crater wasn't their only discovery during their trip. 
Because the region is closed, it is virtually unexplored. Gurzadyan and Aarseth 
say they also stumbled across the remains of a 5th or 6th century Armenian 
basilica that is unknown to experts.

Sounds like an adventure in the making for anybody with the time and 
inclination to go. (And with the necessary permits, of course.)

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1011.3715: A Meteorite Crater On Mt. Ararat?
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