There are two mysterious voids inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The largest of the two voids is located just above the grand gallery and has a passageway that leads to the chamber of the pharaoh. Archaeologists don't know what they will find in the void, which could be one large area or several small rooms. They hope to find out the function of the void, and the most likely one is that it is a burial chamber. There is a chance that the cavity played a role in the building of the pyramid.
There was a second void just beyond the north face of the pyramid. Its purpose is not clear.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest pyramid ever constructed in ancient Egypt and is the only surviving wonder of the ancient world.
There are photos of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest pyramid ever constructed in ancient Egypt and is the only surviving wonder of the ancient world.
The Scan Pyramids project ran a series of scans that analyzed muons to detect voids. Both of the voids were revealed by those scans.
The Great Pyramid will be scanned again with a more powerful system that will analyze muons in greater detail. Muons are negatively-charged particles that form when atoms collide in the atmosphere. Researchers can use super-sensitive detectors to locate the particles and map areas they can't physically explore, because they behave differently when interacting with stone and air.
A team of scientists wrote in a preprint paper published on arXiv that they plan to field a telescope system that has upwards of 100 times the sensitivity of the equipment used at the Great Pyramid. Papers published on preprint server have yet to be reviewed by other scientists.
Since the detectors that are proposed are very large, we want to put them outside and move them along the base. The team wrote in the paper that they can collect muons from all angles in order to build up the required data set.
The use of very large muon telescopes placed outside the Great Pyramid can produce much higher resolution images due to the large number of detected muons.
The researchers pointed out that the detectors are so sensitive that they could reveal the presence of artifacts inside of the voids. If a few m3 is filled with material such as pottery, metals, stone or wood, we should be able to distinguish it from air.
The team has received approval from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities to conduct the scans, but they still need funds to build the equipment and place it beside the Great Pyramid.
Bross said it will take about two years to build the detectors once they have full funding. Bross said that the group only has enough funding to conduct simulations and design some prototypes.
We will need between two and three years of viewing to collect enough muon data after the telescopes are deployed.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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