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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: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 07, @09:46PM (13 children)
Can they send robot dogs inside the pyramid to map it out?
They would need to be able to find their way home, of course.
And not get frightened of anything they might encounter.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday March 07, @10:19PM (2 children)
I'm sure they could attach a GPS and some "AI" to the robodog and it would work. That said I do find it interesting that they can still find old and hidden passages in something like the Great Pyramid of Giza. One would have thought it would have been scanned and probed and dug at to completion by now. But apparently not.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 07, @11:53PM (1 child)
I'm not so sure you could receive useful GPS signals in the middle of a giant pile of rocks.
Dead reckoning with inertial measurement systems could probably do it, or you might setup a local Loran type system on a frequency (and at a power) that CAN penetrate the rocks.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 08, @02:56PM
You beat me to it. I wouldn't expect GPS to work. Dead reckoning with IMS. I hadn't thought of Loran or a similar type system. But that sounds like a lot of custom work. Dead reckoning and IMS on a robot dog has many other applications.
Of course a camera, microphone and spotlight would be good too.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday March 07, @10:24PM (1 child)
Be very careful about sending robot dogs into ancient artifacts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Dogs,_Turquoise_Days#Diamond_Dogs [wikipedia.org]
An excellent novella BTW - don't read past the first one or two paragraphs if you want to avoid spoilers
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 07, @11:56PM
Published some 30ish years earlier:
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/davidbowie/diamonddogs.html [azlyrics.com]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Informative) by Opportunist on Tuesday March 07, @11:36PM (6 children)
The thing is that these "voids" are behind some massive stone slabs that were fit with amazing precision. You can't just send anything there until we learn how to transmit matter through matter.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Wednesday March 08, @12:06AM (5 children)
Easy- convert your matter to muons and neutrinos, pass through, convert back.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Wednesday March 08, @01:01AM (1 child)
(Score: 4, Funny) by RS3 on Wednesday March 08, @03:09AM
I know, right? Collaboration / brainshare. It's the best elixir. Difficulties evaporate, maybe they go into the æther...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday March 08, @03:12AM (2 children)
That "Informative" mod is a riot, thanks whoever! My post was supposed to be funny, but "informative" is even funnier. I needed a chuckle today!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @04:24AM (1 child)
Well, you're not wrong. You just need to fill in the "???" details a little bit more to complete your plan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @09:40AM
(Score: 3, Touché) by richtopia on Wednesday March 08, @03:27PM
It has already been mapped into a video game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyLS_gCsy9c [youtube.com]