Epress.am News from Armenia
Technology Review, an MIT publication, published a story on Nov. 18 titled “Unrecorded Meteorite Crater Found on Mount Ararat?”
The article reveals that two physicists, Vahe Gurzadyan from the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia and Sverre Aarseth from the University of Cambridge in the UK, somehow gained access to the northern and western slopes of Mount Ararat — areas that are off-limits to visitors —and there discovered a “well-preserved” crater “at an altitude of 2,100 meters, at coordinates 39˚ 47’ 30”N, 44˚ 14’ 40”E, and…some 70 meters across.”
The physicists published their account on the online journal arXiv.org, titled “A Meteorite Crater on Mt. Ararat?”
They propose that the crater was formed due to either volcanic activity or as a result of a meteorite crash.
“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 and 6th-century Armenian basilica that is unknown to experts,” notes the Review, reports The Armenian Weekly.