‘Big void’ identified in Khufu’s Great Pyramid at Giza
published on The BBC, on November 2, 2017
BZ: This is one of those BIG, Dots to connect! :- )
The mysteries of the pyramids have deepened with the discovery of what appears to be a giant void within the Khufu, or Cheops, monument in Egypt.
It is not known why the cavity exists or indeed if it holds anything of value because it is not obviously accessible.
Japanese and French scientists made the announcement after two years of study at the famous pyramid complex.
They have been using a technique called muography, which can sense density changes inside large rock structures.
The Great Pyramid, or Khufu’s Pyramid, was constructed during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu between 2509 and 2483 BC.
At 140m (460 feet) in height, it is the largest of the Egyptian pyramids located at Giza on the outskirts of Cairo.
Khufu famously contains three large interior chambers and a series of passageways, the most striking of which is the 47m-long, 8m-high Grand Gallery.
The newly identified feature is said to sit directly above this and have similar dimensions.
“We don’t know whether this big void is horizontal or inclined; we don’t know if this void is made by one structure or several successive structures,” explained Mehdi Tayoubi from the HIP Institute, Paris.
“What we are sure about is that this big void is there; that it is impressive; and that it was not expected as far as I know by any sort of theory.”
The ScanPyramids team is being very careful not to describe the cavity as a “chamber”.
Khufu contains compartments that experts believe may have been incorporated by the builders to avoid collapse by relieving some of the stress of the overlying weight of stone.
The higher King’s Chamber, for example, has five such spaces above it.
The renowned American archaeologist Mark Lehner sits on a panel reviewing ScanPyramids’ work.
He says the muon science is sound but he is not yet convinced the discovery has significance.
“It could be a kind of space that the builders left to protect the very narrow roof of the grand gallery from the weight of the pyramid,” he told the BBC’s Science In Action programme.
“Right now it’s just a big difference; it’s an anomaly. But we need more of a focus on it especially in a day and age when we can no longer go blasting our way through the pyramid with gunpowder as [British] Egyptologist Howard Vyse did in the early 1800s.”
One of the team leaders, Hany Helal from Cairo University, believes the void is too big to have a pressure-relieving purpose, but concedes the experts will debate this.
“What we are doing is trying to understand the internal structure of the pyramids and how this pyramid has been built,” he told reporters.
“Famous Egyptologists, archaeologists and architects – they have some hypotheses. And what we are doing is giving them data. It is they who have to tell us whether this is expected or not.”
Much of the uncertainty comes down to the rather imprecise data gained from muography.
This non-invasive technique has been developed over the past 50 years to probe the interiors of phenomena as diverse as volcanoes and glaciers. It has even been used to investigate the failed nuclear reactors at Fukushima.
Muography makes use of the shower of high-energy particles that rain down on the Earth’s surface from space.
When super-fast cosmic rays collide with air molecules, they produce a range of “daughter” particles, including muons.
These also move close to the speed of light and only weakly interact with matter. So when they reach the surface, they penetrate deeply into rock.
But some of the particles will be absorbed and deflected by the atoms in the rock’s minerals, and if the muon detectors are placed under a region of interest then a picture of density anomalies can be obtained.
The ScanPyramids team used three different muography technologies and all three agreed on the position and scale of the void.
Sébastien Procureur, from CEA-IRFU, University of Paris-Saclay, emphasised that muography only sees large features, and that the team’s scans were not just picking up a general porosity inside the pyramid.
“With muons you measure an integrated density,” he explained. “So, if there are holes everywhere then the integrated density will be the same, more or less, in all directions, because everything will be averaged. But if you see some excess of muons, it means that you have a bigger void.
“You don’t get that in a Swiss cheese.”
The question now arises as to how the void should be investigated further.
Jean-Baptiste Mouret, from the French national institute for computer science and applied mathematics (Inria), said the team had an idea how to do it, but that the Egyptian authorities would first have to approve it.
“Our concept is to drill a very small hole to potentially explore monuments like this. We aim to have a robot that could fit in a 3cm hole. Basically, we’re working on flying robots,” he said.
The muography investigation at Khufu’s Pyramid is reported in this week’s edition of Nature magazine.
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
This must be a meeting spot: ET’s and Hu-Man Galactic Embassy/ Right? Well… at least I had the balls to say it. Right?
That’s what that stairwell looks like to me.
GIANTS walked up the same stairwell as Hu-Men
and or other species of physical beings…
They say that curiosity kills the cat, right? That’s why many of these scientists and archaeologists died because they put their noses to where it doesn’t belong. We already know Mother Earth is a living organism like you and me, except in different form, right? And these digging and shoveling and nailing hurts, and definitely we’ll pay the consequences somehow? We were told many times before that these pyramids are energy fields of our planet, and these nosy idiots continue to dig, hammer, damaging, destroying these monuments. Don’t they get it in their thick skulls all these are God’s creation? The pyramids were/are the gods and the goddess ETs’ creations to mark one of the most important energy field of our planet (God’s creation) the “Throat Chakra.” Our human body has chakras, so as Mother Earth. This is the 5th major lifeline of our planet (Chakras) located on several crossed ley lines or Mother Earth’s veins. The Atlantians had blown up the three main lifeline crystals apart and in pieces which were the main lifeline of Mother Earth during their war in their time.What was left for us now were pieces of those crystals and these chakras help to stabilize our planet. The good ETs (the Galactic Family) have been nurturing and replacing earth’s body parts from humans long ago and now so they can stabilize and balance our planet in our orbit for us to survive. But the ETs’ job are not easy if we, nosy humans continue to harm and destroying our precious Mother Earth’s energy field. Please help and transmute all these unnecessary conducts to the Light. They do not serve us no more. I transmute all these wrongful doings to our precious Mother Earth to the Light of Father and Mother God, so it is.
Of course the Egyptians might never have built the Pyramids in the first place as they could be far more ancient than them and as people like Christopher Dunn an ENGINEER has shown in his book the Giza Power Plant the Pyramids were Power Plants that were set to vibrate at the same frequency as the Earth through sound – and what do Egyptologists know about engineering and there is plenty of proof of advanced engineering including anti-gravity technology in Egypt and many more ancient sites all over the world.
I’m in agreement with Christopher Dunn’s assessment as well. Could the void be a repository for liquid Mercury, an ancient, mysterious ingredient found in many pyramids around the world?