Radar Scans Map 'Right-Angle Compartments' Inside the Ararat Formation

Researchers studying the boat-shaped formation on Mount Ararat say deep-penetrating radar has mapped a series of internal divisions beneath the surface, including several that meet at unusually sharp right angles.

The team produced a physical 3D-printed model from the scan data so that the geometry could be handled and examined directly rather than only studied on a screen. When images of the model were published, they travelled quickly, with supporters pointing to the orderly internal layout as evidence of a built structure.

The anomalies that interest the researchers most are the regular compartments: parallel walls, repeating spacing and a consistent depth. In nature, radar reflections tend to be irregular, following the way sediment settled or rock fractured. Right angles, the team argues, usually mean something else.

Other specialists are unconvinced. Radar can return misleading patterns when the ground contains alternating layers of hard and soft material, when water is present, or when survey lines cross at particular angles. A sharp-looking edge on a scan is not the same thing as a sharp edge in the ground, and resolution falls off quickly with depth.

The project is now planning more survey lines across the same area to see whether the compartments hold up when viewed from a second direction. Repeatable geometry would be far harder to dismiss than a single reading.

Until those surveys are finished and checked, the model remains a promising artefact of the search rather than proof of a hull. It is, however, the clearest picture yet of what may be lying under the mountain.