[meteorite-list] Meteorite Crater or Collapsed Lava Tube on Mt. Ararat ??

[Paul H.]

On Nov. 20, 2010 and in "meteorite crater on Mt. Ararat?" at
http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/2010-November/070933.html
Don Giovanni posted;

" http://snipurl.com/1hm8yo "

Other web pages for this story are:
1. http://technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26039/
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/files/48956/Ararat.png

2. Meteorite Crater on Mount Ararat?
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2010/11/19/meteorite-crater-on-mount-ararat/

and wrote

""Technology Review," a publication of MIT, published a story 
on Thurs., 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 2100 
meters, at coordinates 39˚ 47’ 30”N, 44˚ 14’ 40”E, and…some 
70 meters across.”"

It must have been a very slow newsday for "Technology 
Review" to have published what is essentially a nonstory.
The two page article can be found in "A meteorite crater 
on Mt. Ararat?" by V. G. Gurzadyan and S. Aarseth (Submitted 
on 16 Nov 2010) in the arXiv.org archive. 

Summary at http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/abs/1011.3715
PDF file at http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/pdf/1011.3715v1

Looking at the picture, it does not even look like a 
convincing volcanic crater and certainly does not look 
anything like a convincing impact crater. One possibility
which they do not address is that this depression is a 
collapsed lave tube. The roof collapse of lava tubes also 
creates circular depressions, which the picture in their
article definitely looks like one. 

Some examples of collapsed lava tubes are:

1. The Desert Caves Project
http://www.saudicaves.com/science/index.html
http://www.saudicaves.com/science/hib.jpg

2. "Lava tube listed only in Becka's rough guide of America" (Utah)
http://www.goatchurch.org.uk/atrips/usa/utah/utah.html
http://www.goatchurch.org.uk/atrips/usa/utah/lavatube.jpg

3. Pisgah Lava Tubes
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=ce5aa161-17aa-48a3-b1a1-89b72a9dff1f
http://img.geocaching.com/cache/log/2ef85cee-6cc7-4674-b8c7-10d867e3beb0.jpg
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/gallery.aspx?guid=ce5aa161-17aa-48a3-b1a1-89b72a9dff1f

4. Collapsed Lava Tube, Craters of the Moon
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/11599385

5. Volcanic ventures
http://volcanicventures.wordpress.com/
http://volcanicventures.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/shellyp.jpg?w=497&h=372

6. Martian caves
http://dwarmstr.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html
http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/~dean/blog/mars-cave.jpg
http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/~dean/blog/mars-cave-floor.jpg

Yours,

Paul H.