The Ararat anomaly is an alleged structure appearing on photographs of the snowfields near the summit of Mount Ararat, Turkey, and advanced by some Christian believers as the remains of Noah's Ark. [1] [2]
The Ararat anomaly is an alleged structure appearing on photographs of the snowfields near the summit of Mount Ararat, Turkey, and advanced by some Christian believers as the remains of Noah's Ark. [1] [2]
The anomaly is located on the northwest corner of the Western Plateau of Mount Ararat (approximately 39°42′10″N44°16′30″E / 39.70278°N 44.27500°E ) at about 15,500 ft (4,724 m), some 2.2 km (1.4 mi) west of the 16,854 ft (5,137 m) summit, on the edge of what appears from the photographs to be a steep downward slope.
It was first filmed during a U.S. Air Force aerial reconnaissance mission in 1949 - the Ararat massif sits on the former Turkish/Soviet border, and was thus an area of military interest - and was accordingly given a classification of "secret" as were subsequent photographs taken in 1956, 1973, 1976, 1990, and 1992, by aircraft and satellites.
Six frames from the 1949 footage were released under the Freedom of Information Act to Porcher Taylor, a professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and a scholar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies specializing in satellite intelligence and diplomacy, in 1995.
A joint research project was later established between Insight Magazine and Space Imaging (now GeoEye), using the IKONOS satellite. IKONOS captured the anomaly on August 5 and September 13, 2000. GeoEye has constructed a computerized video of the imagery it captured of the anomaly. The structure appears at approximately halfway through the video. A controversial "bird's eye view" satellite image, taken by IKONOS later in 2003 for the same research project, was released to the public in 2006.
The Mount Ararat area also has been imaged by France's SPOT satellite in September 1989, Landsat in the 1970s and NASA's Space Shuttle in 1994, as well as military satellite images captured by the CIA's KH-9 (Keyhole 9) in 1973 and KH-11 (Keyhole 11) in 1976 and 1990–1992.
The Defense Intelligence Agency believes the anomaly shows "linear facades in the glacial ice underlying more recently accumulated ice and snow". [3]
A reconnaissance satellite or intelligence satellite is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications.
An out-of-place artifact is an artifact of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest to someone that is claimed to have been found in an unusual context, which someone claims to challenge conventional historical chronology by its presence in that context. Some people might think that those artifacts are too advanced for the technology known to have existed at the time, or that human presence existed at a time before humans are known to have existed. Other people might hypothesize about a contact between different cultures that is hard to account for with conventional historical understanding.
Noah's Ark is the boat in the Genesis flood narrative through which God spares Noah, his family, and examples of all the world's animals from a global deluge. The story in Genesis is based on earlier flood myths originating in Mesopotamia, and is repeated, with variations, in the Quran, where the Ark appears as Safinat Nūḥ and al-fulk. The myth of the global flood that destroys all life begins to appear in the Old Babylonian Empire period. The version closest to the biblical story of Noah, as well as its most likely source, is that of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Imagery intelligence (IMINT), pronounced as either as Im-Int or I-Mint, is an intelligence gathering discipline wherein imagery is analyzed to identify information of intelligence value. Imagery used for defense intelligence purposes is generally collected via satellite imagery or aerial photography.
The Corona program was a series of American strategic reconnaissance satellites produced and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Directorate of Science & Technology with substantial assistance from the U.S. Air Force. The CORONA satellites were used for photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union (USSR), China, and other areas beginning in June 1959 and ending in May 1972.
Mount Ararat or Masis and Mount Ağrı, is a snow-capped and dormant compound volcano in Eastern Turkey. It consists of two major volcanic cones: Greater Ararat and Little Ararat. Greater Ararat is the highest peak in Turkey; Little Ararat's elevation is 3,896 m (12,782 ft). The Ararat massif is about 35 km (22 mi) wide at ground base. The first recorded efforts to reach Ararat's summit were made in the Middle Ages, and Friedrich Parrot, Khachatur Abovian, and four others made the first recorded ascent in 1829.
Noah, also known as Nuh, is recognized in Islam as a prophet and messenger of God. He is one of the Ulul 'azm prophets. Noah's mission was to warn his people, who were plunged in idol worshipping. God charged Noah with the duty of preaching to his people, advising them to abandon idolatry and to worship only God, and to live good and pure lives. Although he preached the Message of God with zeal, his people refused to mend their ways, leading to building the Ark and the Deluge, the Great Flood. In Islamic tradition, it is disputed whether the Great Flood was a global or a local one. Noah's preaching and prophethood spanned 950 years according to the Quran, ahadith and tafsir.
Anomaly may refer to:
Aerial archaeology is the study of archaeological remains by examining them from a higher altitude. In present day, this is usually achieved by satellite images or through the use of drones.
Satellite images are images of Earth collected by imaging satellites operated by governments and businesses around the world. Satellite imaging companies sell images by licensing them to governments and businesses such as Apple Maps and Google Maps.
IKONOS was a commercial Earth observation satellite, and was the first to collect publicly available high-resolution imagery at 1- and 4-meter resolution. It collected multispectral (MS) and panchromatic (PAN) imagery. The capability to observe Earth via space-based telescope has been called "one of the most significant developments in the history of the space age", and IKONOS brought imagery rivaling that of military spy satellites to the commercial market. IKONOS imagery began being sold on 1 January 2000, and the spacecraft was retired in 2015.
Searches for Noah's Ark have been reported since antiquity, as ancient scholars sought to affirm the historicity of the Genesis flood narrative by citing accounts of relics recovered from the Ark. With the emergence of biblical archaeology in the 19th century, the potential of a formal search attracted interest in alleged discoveries and hoaxes. By the 1940s, expeditions were being organized to follow up on these apparent leads. This modern search movement has been informally called "arkeology".
The Durupınar site is geological formation of 164 metres made of limonite on Mount Tendürek, adjacent to the village of Üzengili in eastern Anatolia or Turkey. The site is 3 km (1.9 mi) north of the Iranian border, 16 km (9.9 mi) southeast of Doğubayazıt in the Ağrı Province, and 29 kilometres south of the Greater Mount Ararat summit, at an elevation of 1,966 to 2,004 m above sea level.
David Franklin Fasold was a United States Merchant Marine officer and salvage expert who is best known for his 1988 book The Ark of Noah, chronicling his early expeditions to the Durupınar Noah's Ark site in eastern Turkey. Repudiating and then changing his views about the site, Fasold was a participant in a suit with Australian geologist and skeptic Ian Plimer against an Australian creationist group. The suit, dubbed the "Monkey Trial II," was a notable case in the debate between science and religion and its role in society.
Mount Judi is a mountain in Turkey. It was considered in antiquity to be Noah's apobaterion or "Place of Descent", the location where the Ark came to rest after the Great Flood, according to very early Christian and Islamic traditions. The Quranic tradition is part of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic legend. The identification of biblical Ararat with Mount Judi as the landing site of the ark persisted in Syriac and Armenian tradition throughout Late Antiquity. Only during the Middle Ages was this identification abandoned in favour of another mountain, which had not until then been referred to by any of the native peoples as Mount Ararat.
The emblem of the Armenian SSR was devised from an initial prototype sketch by Martiros Saryan, a famous Armenian painter, and was adopted in 1937 by the government of the Armenian SSR.
Mount Tendürek is a shield volcano on the border of Ağrı and Van provinces in eastern Turkey, near the border with Iran. The volcano, which is mostly known for being near the supposed wreck site of Noah's Ark, is very large; its lava flows cover roughly 650 km2 (251 sq mi) across a swath of flat land. The mountain's two main features are the main summit crater Greater Tendürek, and a smaller crater known as Lesser Tendürek which lies to the east of the main crater. The slopes are very gentle and resemble a shield, after which the type is named. Mount Tendürek is known to have erupted viscous lava like that of volcanoes on the island of Hawaii.
GeoEye Inc. was an American commercial satellite imagery company based in Herndon, Virginia. GeoEye was merged into the DigitalGlobe corporation on January 29, 2013.
In Search of Noah's Ark is a 1976 American documentary film based on David W. Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier Jr.'s book of the same name. Released by Sunn Classic Pictures, it explores the alleged final resting place of Noah's Ark.
Gerald Alexander Larue was an American scholar of religion and professor emeritus of gerontology, a former ordained minister who became an agnostic, archaeologist, debunker of biblical stories and accounts of miracles, and humanist.