Anomaly or Noah's Ark?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 20, 2000 | by Timothy W. Maier

Taylor and Insight provided the spectacular IKONOS imagery and the declassified 1949 Air Force photos to a team of independent scientists and imagery analysts assembled for this project. Each of the experts was asked a simple question: What is it? In turn, the experts provided oral and written reports detailing their observations. None were paid or provided with information about the analyses of other experts.

The team consisted of Clifford Paiva, a retired senior physicist and satellite imagery analyst of the U.S. Navy's Naval Surface Warfare Center, Countermeasures Technologies Applications Branch; Farouk El-Baz, who heads the prestigious Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University; Peter K. Hsu, a forensic Naval engineer who worked on the Titanic and Bismarck forensic teams for National Geographic; Brad Miller, an experienced mechanical and manufacturing engineer skilled in evaluating spatial representation of 3-D objects; David Barak, a digital-imaging expert who worked as a military-photo and submarine target-recognition interpreter for the U.S. Navy; and Roman Gomez, a digital-imagery expert formerly with Dicomed, a leading U.S. supplier of electronic hardware.

The final team member was a senior Pentagon intelligence contractor in the reconnaissance field who asked for anonymity to avoid being caught up in the expected controversy over the anomaly.

Indeed, controversy already has erupted as news about the Insight project has seeped out in advance of publication. E-mail messages and telephone calls have come in from around the world concerning what may or may not have been found. And it seems likely the views of the independent experts assembled by Insight will only begin the debate about the images and stunning assessments.

For now, specifically: The object appears to be about 534 feet in length and 80 to 98 feet wide. Its height could not be measured because it is unclear how deep it is seated into the snow and ice. Still, the measurements are comparable to the Ark described in Genesis -- 300 cubits in length, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. Biblical scholars say a cubit is about 20 inches, which would make the Ark about 500 feet long, 83 feet wide and 50 feet high.

There still is no certainty about what the anomaly is, but four of the experts say it could be man-made; two believe it's a rock; and one calls the evidence inconclusive. Gomez says the 1-meter resolution is not high enough to make a final determination, although his review of just the 1949 photographs suggests it may be man-made because, he says, nothing like it appears to exist elsewhere on the mountain.

While Paiva says it could be "geological" he tells Insight it is more likely a man-made structure because of the 90-degree angles. He also notes that there is "nearly 300 feet depth of ice ... in the anomaly area, easily burying an object" the size of the Ark.

Likewise, Hsu says "it is too linear to be a rock. It could be a man-made object. The resting place has moved because half of it is on one edge. But, whatever it is, it does resemble a structure." One of Hsu's theories is that a glacier may have rolled the "structure" to its current resting place, while others say either the volcanic eruption of 1840 or the earthquake of 1883 could have split the structure into two or three pieces.