by
Damien F. Mackey
“According to Nature, the large, previously unknown
“big void” inside the Great Pyramid is the first major interior structure found
there in well over a century”.
Last night (December 10,
2017), when watching on SBS TV the use of cutting edge science, involving ‘muons’,
to determine the interior of the Great Pyramid, I was less than enthusiastic about
the presumed origin of these muons from exploding stars. But, as it turned out,
this was one of the rare documentaries on the subject that actually concludes
with some new knowledge.
With the likelihood of more
to come.
The whole thing is
summarised in the following article by
Molly Rubin, “What we know about the mysterious chamber discovered
inside the Great Pyramid”: https://qz.com/1118563/the-great-pyramid-of-giza-has-a-secret-chamber-hidden-inside/
We are one step closer to understanding more about the only remaining
Wonder of the Ancient World.
Scientists have discovered a void inside the Great Pyramid of Giza,
according to new research published in the scientific journal Nature. The discovery is the result
of work from ScanPyramids, an organization led by the HIP Institute and the
Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University that is dedicated to studying the
Pyramids of Egypt using non-invasive techniques.
A symbol of the awesome power of ancient Egypt, the Great Pyramid is 479
feet tall, the tallest structure built by man until the Eiffel Tower in 1889.
Built as a royal tomb around 2560 BC, it’s made of an estimated 2.3 million
blocks of stone.
There were three known chambers inside the Great
Pyramid—an unfinished low chamber near the bedrock, as well as the king and
queen’s chambers, believed to be for Pharaoh Khufu and his wives—until today.
What is the secret chamber?
According to Nature, the large, previously
unknown “big void” inside the Great Pyramid is the first major interior
structure found there in well over a century.
Though they don’t know the precise dimensions,
researchers say the hidden chamber is at least 100 feet long and located above
a hallway about 155 feet long, known as the Grand Gallery, part of a maze of
passages inside the pyramid.
“What we are sure about is that this big void is there, that it is
impressive, that it was not expected by, as far as I know, any kind of theory,”
Mehdi Tayoubi, president and co-founder of the HIP Institute told Reuters.
How was the chamber found?
Researches made the discovery using cosmic ray-based imaging, a process
that uses modern particle physics to understand new information about ancient
structures.
Known as muon tomography, the technique generates 3-D images using
information from particles that hit the Earth close to the speed of light and
then penetrate deeply into solid objects. Muons (elementary particles similar
to electrons) originate from collisions between cosmic rays and atoms in the
upper atmosphere. They penetrate material more deeply than X-rays, so the
technique can be used to image more dense structures than, say, CT scanning.
Muons can penetrate stone, but as they
travel through a dense object they lose energy and decay, so scientists can
understand the density of an object based on the number of muons flowing from a
particular direction. If there’s a big void, lots of muons will flow through.
Muon detection has improved significantly since it
was developed in the 1960s, so Tayoubi and his colleagues were able to use
three advanced muon-detection techniques–nuclear-emulsion films, hodoscopes,
and ardon gas-based detection. Every method showed the same result: a large
void in the area above the Grand Gallery.
The mysteries that remain
Experts are unsure about the purpose of the void—it could have been a burial chamber, another gallery, an architectural anomaly, or simply a sealed-off construction passage. However, some historians are more excited than others about the discovery.
“It’s very clear what they found as a void doesn’t mean anything at all.
There are many voids in the pyramid because of construction reasons,” said Zahi
Hawass, an Egyptologist and former Egyptian minister of antiquities and
director of excavations at Giza, Saqqara, Bahariya Oasis and the Valley of the
Kings, told
LiveScience.
Tayoubi argues that the void is not a construction irregularity because
blocks of varying sizes and shapes would have absorbed more muons that were
detected.
Given the world’s fascination with the pyramids and secrets of the
ancient world, it’s clear the discovery will lead to much archaeological speculation
and debate.
Hany Helal of Cairo University, coordinator of the ScanPyramids project,
put the open question to the academic community: “We open the question to
Egyptologists and archaeologists: what could it be?”
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