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GrandGallery

Two years ago, a team of inquiry scientists announced they would utilize muon tomography to explore the Slap-up Pyramid of Giza, also known every bit the Pyramid of Khufu. They planned to image internal structures that are inaccessible to researchers, and hopefully shed some light on the techniques used in its structure. What they constitute was stranger than anyone expected. Nosotros now know that there'south a massive internal void inside the Great Pyramid at to the lowest degree 30m (100 anxiety) long–the first discovery of a new chamber or void in the Pyramid since the 19th century.

The research team used iii unlike muon detection technologies and confirmed the results via three independent analysis teams before coming forrard with their results. The initial muon tomography survey was carried out because we still don't know how the pyramids were built. Documents that date from Khufu's reign were discovered in 2013, but they but depict how the stones were transported to the construction site, not how the pyramid itself was constructed. The muon tomography scanning engineering that found this enormous chamber can't be used to detect small air shafts, and the density of the pyramid required an ascertainment period of several months to acquire plenty muons to accurately scan the pyramid's internal structure at all.

The cross section and length of the void establish it as a major construction within the pyramid, with the same approximate muon data patterns as the Grand Gallery, shown below. This points to the infinite beingness a deliberate void (it may not exist a chamber, equally such) within the structure. Opposite to the way pyramids are often portrayed in media, they typically don't characteristic vast labyrinths of corridors or enormous treasure chambers that make full the structure. As the image beneath shows, the majority of the Neat Pyramid is solid rock:

GrandGallery

Even with this void, well-nigh of the Pyramid of Khufu is solid stone. Image by ScanPyramids

Note that the solid stone construction of the Swell Pyramid and the other surviving pyramids at Giza is really uncommon. In later dynasties, the Egyptians used different structure techniques, including cores fabricated from a rubble pile, low-quality limestone, and mud bricks. The Egyptians built pyramids for thousands of years, simply the all-time preserved sites are typically the oldest, when the pyramids were set directly on bedrock and built from rock-block cores. Contrast the preservation of the Great Pyramid with the remaining structure of the Pyramid of Amenemhat I (Amenemhat I ruled from 1991-1962 BC, while the Neat Pyramid of Khufu was constructed from 2580-2560 BC). Despite being roughly 600 years older, the Neat Pyramid is in vastly better condition.

AmenemhetIPyramid

This is part of the reason information technology'south been and then difficult to make up one's mind how the Egyptian pyramids were constructed. We have articulate bear witness that they were built differently in different eras, from vastly dissimilar materials.

It is not clear when or if researchers will exist immune to endeavor to open the new void within the pyramid. Subsequently the widescale looting of its cultural artifacts in the 19th and 20th centuries, Arab republic of egypt is now very careful virtually the types of explorations information technology allows. Researchers will accept to devise a plan to explore the spaces with a minimum of damage to the structure–a task that would be fabricated much easier if whatever small bordering passages can be plant linking the void to whatsoever other attainable part of the pyramid. Considering the muon tomography scanning techniques only piece of work for finding large spaces, there's notwithstanding a chance that some of these exist.

Feature epitome is of the Grand Gallery within the Great Pyramid, located below the void this project discovered.