These particles shower Earth all the time, flung off when cosmic rays-high-energy particles racing through our galaxy-collide with Earth’s upper atmosphere. The technique, which has been used to peer through cathedral walls, Mayan pyramids, and even volcanoes, relies on the natural drizzle of subatomic particles called muons. These guys have discovered a remarkable thing.” “This makes another muon radiographer jealous, I’m jealous. “It’s a striking discovery,” says Chris Morris, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and expert on muon imaging techniques. Spence says that the pyramids’ interiors are far more pockmarked and rubbly than people usually imagine.īut the new void definitely came as a surprise-and arguably marks the biggest-ever discovery yielded by muon radiography, an imaging technique first demonstrated in Giza’s pyramids. Previously, ScanPyramids had announced the detection of some intriguing voids and anomalies, which didn’t come necessarily as a surprise. Launched in October 2015, the project aims to non-invasively peer into Egypt’s largest pyramids using a battery of technologies. The new discovery comes out of the ScanPyramids project, an international mission under the authority of Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities. The National Geographic Society has helped conduct two explorations of the pyramid, including a 2002 exploration of the “air shafts” extending out one of the pyramid’s three chambers.Īrcheologist Yukinori Kawae is leading an interdisciplinary approach to studying the Egyptian pyramids by combining computer science, 3-D data, and the latest technology to help decode how and why the pyramids were built. “An awful lot of Egyptian society is probably geared toward building pyramids at this particular time.”Įver since, the Great Pyramid has drawn in the curious today, tourists enter the pyramid through a tunnel created in the ninth century A.D.

“These sorts of pyramids are the major product, so to speak, of the kings who built them,” says Kate Spence, a University of Cambridge archaeologist who studies ancient Egypt. ( Read more about the extraordinary Pyramids of Giza.) The monument consists of about 2.3 million limestone blocks, which had to be quarried, transported, cut to size, and moved into place. The pharaoh Khufu, who reigned from 2509 to 2483 B.C., built for himself a pyramid whose base spreads across more than 13 acres and originally towered 479 feet tall. The Great Pyramid is arguably the ultimate expression of that power.

At that time, Egypt was a powerful, highly centralized monarchy, wealthy from trade and Nile-nourished agriculture. The pyramid was built some 4,500 years ago during the Fourth Dynasty of ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom. The findings mark the latest in a millennia-long quest to understand the Great Pyramid of Giza, long an object of mystery and intrigue.

Discovery of a big void in Khufu’s Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons.

Person finds ancient space ship