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The corridor is 30 feet long and likely slopes upward. Where it leads is still a mystery.
In 2016, scientists using muon imaging picked up signals indicating a hidden corridor behind the famous chevron blocks on the north face of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The following year, the same team detected a mysterious void in another area of the pyramid, believing it could be a hidden chamber. Two independent teams of researchers, using two different muon imaging methods, have now successfully mapped out the corridor for the first time, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications. Zahi Hawass, Egypt's former antiquities minister, called it "the most important discovery of the 21st century." [So far - Ed]
As we've reported previously, there is a long history of using muons to image archaeological structures, a process made easier because cosmic rays provide a steady supply of these particles. An engineer named E.P. George used them to make measurements of an Australian tunnel in the 1950s. But Nobel-prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez really put muon imaging on the map when he teamed up with Egyptian archaeologists to use the technique to search for hidden chambers in the Pyramid of Khafre at Giza. Although it worked in principle, they didn't find any hidden chambers.
There are many variations of muon imaging, but they all typically involve gas-filled chambers. As muons zip through the gas, they collide with the gas particles and emit a telltale flash of light, which is recorded by the detector, allowing scientists to calculate the particle's energy and trajectory. It's similar to X-ray imaging or ground-penetrating radar, except with naturally occurring high-energy muons rather than X-rays or radio waves. That higher energy makes it possible to image thick, dense substances like the stones used to build pyramids. The denser the imaged object, the more muons are blocked, casting a telltale shadow. Hidden chambers in a pyramid would show up in the final image because they blocked fewer particles.
[...] For this latest work, one team used muon radiography to map the shape and location of the secret corridor, placing detectors at various points around the pyramid. Specifically, they used nuclear emulsion films (supplied by colleagues at Nagoya University in Japan), which can detect particles without an electric power supply. Those multi-point observations enabled them to determine the location, inclination, and vertical layout of the corridor.
A second team deployed three gaseous detectors, or muon telescopes, outside the pyramid, supplied by the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy (CEA) at Durham University in the UK. These are less compact than the emulsion films and require a power source, but the detectors produce results much faster. The telescopes gathered about 140 days' worth of solid data, collecting over 116 million muons.
The results of the two independent analyses confirmed the presence of a corridor-like void. The corridor is about 9 meters long (29.5 feet), with a transverse section of 2×2 meters (6.5×6.5 feet), and most likely slopes upward, although where it leads remains a mystery.
DOI: Nature Communications, 2023. 10.1038/s41467-023-36351-0.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07, @08:45PM (16 children)
Just wondering who the hell funds this type of research? It reminds me of Richard Branson's "scientific" experiements to fly around the world in a ballon, or Jeff Bezos' space rockets. These are Indiana Jones-style hobbies for billionaires. Guys - hookers and cocaine are more fun.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday March 07, @08:52PM (3 children)
Without this kind of research, we wouldn't be where we are today. Whether for better or worse.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 07, @11:50PM (2 children)
I'm just surprised, with ground penetrating radar mapping the underground passages of all kinds of river deltas 30+ years ago... why did it take so long to find this hollow space in a giant landmark just begging to be inspected?
Muon tomography has been kicking around since the 1950s...
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Wednesday March 08, @04:14AM (1 child)
PBS "Secrets of the Dead" did a special a few years ago chronicling where they (someone) used infrared thermography and cosmic ray something, but somehow missed this chamber I guess. My hunch is muon tomography is expensive, and not normally in the realm of archaeologists, but somehow they got connected and used it this time. I gotta admit I'd have loved to have been part of that project.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Wednesday March 08, @12:05PM
Tomography is not that expensive. The first example of muography in the Great Pyramid was done by Alvarez in the 1960s. You can do tomography yourself, all you need is a few sheets of scintillator and some readout (PMTs and TDCs). Probably you can put something together with a few 100 $. You need to arrange your scintillator so that you have a directional measurement of where the muons came from and then look for hot spots or cold spots, caused by muons scattering or not.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday March 07, @09:49PM (10 children)
I've always had some interest in archaeology, even thought about doing some research. Well, there's pretty much no money in it. Most researchers are passionate, maybe self-funded, get some govt. grants, usually through universities and/or museums, endowments, possibly some sponsors. Some money might be available from various governments. Egypt supports some of the research. Magazines like "Archaeology", "National Geographic", and others get some advertising moneys which partly go to fund some of the research.
(Score: 2, Funny) by anubi on Tuesday March 07, @11:41PM (8 children)
I guess I'm kinda afraid I will do all sorts of expensive investigation only to reveal where they hid the workman's loo.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday March 08, @12:04AM (6 children)
When I was 14 my first semi-real job was getting parts off of cars in a salvage yard. It was in a generally bad area. The guys were very cool with me, but physically they were monsters. Anyway, first day orientation I'll never forget- guy says "oh, if you see a hubcap lying flat on the ground, don't pick it up". You can guess why...
(Score: 2, Funny) by anubi on Wednesday March 08, @02:30AM (1 child)
Mine was when I moved into an old house.
I was moving dirt around, doing some landscaping. I discovered a rather large rusty metal cylinder buried a few inches down. Knowing my ancestors frequently buried valuables, I carefully extracted the cylinder and disassembled it to examine its contents.
I was thinking maybe gold coin. Who knows? I found nothing of interest at all in it, except some lettering I found embossed on the lid .
"Doggie Dooley".
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday March 08, @03:50AM
I wonder if it was necessarily the dog's...
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 08, @03:55PM (3 children)
I'm assuming drugs, but maybe I'm assuming the wrong bad thing?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday March 08, @04:10PM (2 children)
No, human poop. It was a big enough place and some of the guys were really monsters and couldn't be bothered to go to the main garage / office.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 08, @04:46PM (1 child)
See, I think monster and I don't think, poops in a hole/on the ground.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday March 08, @05:19PM
Not my area of expertise on any level, but when I think drugs, I think emaciated, weak, not doing hard work. Could be very false stereotype- again, very little experience with such things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @09:34AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Wednesday March 08, @09:28AM
And the pyramids of Giza attract a neverending stream of pyramidiots (their name among serious archaeologists) who'll pay good money to test out their crackpot theories and make documentaries about them. However in terms of real archaeology the site's been picked over so many times for so long that it's difficult to get any interest in funding any large-scale new work there as opposed to just ongoing low-level stuff. Bit of a catch-22, the serious work doesn't attract much funding and the stuff that does is generally crackpottery - they're ancient grain silos built by the biblical Joseph! No, they're where Noah moored his ark! Aliens! Aztecs! Goa'uld!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07, @11:10PM
Egypt the country gets a lot of tourism and money from the study of ancient Egypt.