DOĞUBAYAZIT, Türkiye and IRVINE, Calif. , Oct. 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dr. Khosrow Bakhtar, veteran of 25+ U.S. Department of Defense projects and author of 200+ technical papers, deployed his BakhtarRadar at the 515-foot Durupınar Formation. A scientist, who designed the subsurface radar now scanning the Durupınar Formation says the object beneath the surface is 100% NOT a geological formation. Dr. Khosrow Bakhtar, ARSM, PE, Ph.D.,inventor of BakhtarRadar and a veteran of more than 25 U.S. Department of Defense detection programs, told Noah’s Ark Scans that the processed imagery shows a man-made structure: organized patterns, corridors, chambers, and hallways lying inside the 515-foot boat-shaped Formation in the Mountains of Ararat.
Dr. Khosrow Bakhtar, after four decades building detection systems for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and NORAD, says BakhtarRadar imaged organized internal architecture beneath the boat-shaped formation, and discovered that the “object” was not geological.
BakhtarRadar scans reveal an extraordinary, non-geological “structure” beneath the surface , with “hallways” or tunnels and ”organized void” throughout the structure.
“Whatever the object is beneath the surface is extraordinary,” Dr. Bakhtar said. “In forty years of this work, I have never seen anything like it. It could be a ship. It could be a spaceship. What I can say from the radar is that it is organized, it is structural, and a solid geological mass would not have returned such a strong signature.”
“If it was from geologic origin, we would have not seen it at all since we masked the subsurface geologic features” Dr. Bakthar continued.
What BakhtarRadar recorded:
BakhtarRadar is a near-field, multi-station volumetric imaging system developed through U.S. Air Force Innovation Research Phases I, II and III, originally as EarthRadar. In prior government-directed demonstrations it reconstructed clandestine tunnels beneath the U.S.–Mexico border. At Durupınar it was deployed to test the long-standing claim that the formation is a homogeneous mass of natural rock or shallow bedrock.
BakhtarRadar scans conducted at the Durupınar boat-shaped formation reveal exclusively non-geological features, including organized hallways and tunnels throughout the structure.
According to Dr. Bakhtar’s assessment of the dataset, the returns do not match that model. Instead of a continuous natural rock signature, the imagery resolves repeating linear and angular patterns, open passageways, and enclosed spaces arranged as corridors, chambers and hallways. The features align with the long axis of the boat-shaped outline rather than with the random jointing and flow structures expected in a mudflow or eroded bedrock ridge.
“Natural ground does not organize itself into corridors, chambers and hallways. The system was built to separate buried structure from host geology, tunnels, voids, worked materials, discontinuities. That is what it is seeing here. A solid geological mass would not have returned this signature.” Dr. Bakhtar said. 
BaktharRadar Scans Reveal All Non-Geological Features, with “hallways” or tunnels throughout the structure., revealing organized patterns, voids andr “hallways”
Dr. Bakhtar holds a Ph.D. in engineering and rock mechanics, with training at Imperial College London, Penn State, Princeton, UC Berkeley and the University of Utah. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 technical papers and reports, and has spent four decades finding what cannot be seen from the surface: buried objects, cavities, shielded materials and complex underground structures, for clients including the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Army, Defense Threat Reduction Agency and NORAD-USNORTHCOM.
He described the Durupınar returns as unlike any dataset he’s ever recorded. The combination of scale, internal order and contrast against the surrounding valley, where the same instrument does not resolve equivalent architecture is what led him to call the buried object “extraordinary”.
“I am a detection engineer. I report what the instrument resolves,” he said. “People will argue about the name. It could be a ship, vessel, spaceship, or something else. I will only say the patterns are organized. The spaces read as corridors, chambers and hallways. That is not a geological explanation.”
Why the team says geology is ruled out
For decades the principal objection to Durupınar has been that the boat shape is a natural landform, a doubly plunging syncline, a mudflow lobe, or erosion around a rock core. Noah’s Ark Scans and Bakhtar Research and Engineering, LLC brought BakhtarRadar to the site specifically to test that objection, alongside the 2019 ground-penetrating radar survey that first mapped linear pathways and angular features inside the mound.
Dr. Bakhtar’s point is instrumental, not theological. BakhtarRadar and its companion Forced-Resonance Imaging method were built to discriminate man-worked structure, voids and material contrasts from undisturbed geology, at very low power and in three dimensions. In his reading, a purely geological body would not have produced the corridor-and-chamber pattern now in the volumetric imagery. The absence of a clear shallow bedrock boundary beneath the formation, reported in the team’s August preliminary release, is consistent with that reading: the radar is looking through organized internal structure, not through a solid stone core.
Andrew Jones, Vice President of the Noah’s Ark Research Project and founder of Noah’s Ark Scans, said the assessment matches what the project has argued since the scans began, and what core drilling now underway is meant to test in the laboratory.
“Dr. Bakhtar did not come to Doğubayazıt to confirm a belief. He came to image the ground with a system built for the U.S. defense community,” Jones said. “His conclusion, after a career spent separating buried structure from natural ground, is that what lies under the Durupınar Formation is man-made, organized, and unlike anything he has recorded in forty years. We have already begun core drilling on the coordinates his radar supplied. The next evidence will not be another image. It will be material in a lab.”
Core drilling at the formation began in late September under the 2026 field program led by Prof. Dr. Cenker Atila of Sivas Cumhuriyet University, with support from Prof. Dr. Ahmet Şengönül, Rector of Sivas Cumhuriyet University. Drill locations were prioritized from the BakhtarRadar targets. Early holes have already encountered an unusually hard layer four to five meters below the surface, which the team has flagged for third-party laboratory testing, including the possibility of petrified or highly mineralized wood.
A fuller technical report on the BakhtarRadar dataset is in preparation and expected to be completed by November. 
Dr. Bakthar scans BaktharRadar at the Durupinar Formation
What Happens Next: The Search for Ancient Animal DNA
The BakhtarRadar survey has given the project a 515-foot boat-shaped structure with organized corridors, chambers and hallways in the Mountains of Ararat, the region Genesis associates with the landing of the Ark.
The next question is no longer only geometric. It is biological.
“We now know we are looking at a massive, 515-foot, boat-shaped man-made structure with organized patterns and corridors in the Mountains of Ararat, where Genesis places the Ark,” said Andrew Jones, Vice President of the Noah’s Ark Research Project and founder of Noah’s Ark Scans. “The challenge is how we prove this is the vessel that preserved living creation through a catastrophic flood. That proof will not come from another scan. It will come from identifying and confirming ancient animal DNA inside the voids Dr. Bakhtar mapped inside the structure.”
Ancient Animal DNA, and “Two of Every Kind”
Genesis records the cargo the structure was built to carry:
“And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to keep them alive.”
��� Genesis 6:19–20
To test that claim in the laboratory, Noah’s Ark Scans is in talks with scientists that specialize in recovering, reconstructing and reading ancient and extinct animal genomes from fragmentary, degraded material.
Noah’s Ark Scans has launched a crowd-funding fundraising campaign to keep “the messaging and information free and without strings” releasing all evidence as it is confirmed by experts. All donations to the expedition are tax deductible: NoahsArkScans.com/Donate
For larger donations, please email: LWitzke@noahsarkscans.com for giving instructions.
The 2026 program is being conducted under Turkish authorization. Methods in sequence include BakhtarRadar, high-resolution surface mapping, soil and rock sampling, and targeted core drilling. Soil and core samples are being sent to third party labs to be tested, with a timeline of results expected to be announced by late spring 2027.
The Noah’s Ark Scan’s team standing on the Durupinar Formation with Turkish Archeological Professor Dr. Cenker Atila of Sivas Cumhuriyet University
About The Noah’s Ark Study and Noah’s Ark Scans:
Noah’s Ark Scans (NoahsArkScans.com) is the support arm of the Noah’s Ark Research Project, investigating the Durupınar Formation in Ağrı Province, Türkiye, as a candidate for the remains of Noah’s Ark. The project is led by Prof. Dr. Cenker Atila, Professor of Archaeology at Sivas Cumhuriyet University, Prof. Dr. Ahmet Şengönül, Rector of Sivas Cumhuriyet University with Andrew Jones serving as Vice President of the Noah’s Ark Research Project." Geophysical work is conducted with Bakhtar Research and Engineering, LLC.
Media contact
Noah’s Ark Scans
NoahsArkScans.com
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