Cosmic Ray Scans Could Reveal Two Mysterious Voids Inside Great Pyramid of Giza

Cosmic ray scans were found to reveal the two hidden, mysterious voids inside one of the ancient world's wonders - Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza.

Using cosmic rays, archaeologists were able to locate the two hidden voids - the largest one just above the grand gallery, a passageway that leads to what may be the chamber of the pharaoh Khufu, ScienceAlert reported. The space is about 98 feet (30 meters) long and 20 feet (6 m) in height, according to previous pyramid scans.

Some 4,500 years ago, the pyramid was built during the Fourth Dynasty of ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom and was believed to have been "built to last", according to National Geographic.

Scientists have long been piecing together how these towering monuments were constructed and somehow made significant advances in painting clearer picture of the monument's feat.

What's inside the void had long been an object of mystery and intrigue, but scientists believe in a mundane possibility that it somehow played a role in the building of the pyramid.

Wonder of the world by ancient writers

During pharaoh Khufu's reign, Egypt was a powerful, highly centralized monarchy, and the Great Pyramid was argued to be the ultimate expression of that power. Constructed for the pharaoh Khufu (reign circa 2551 BCE to 2528 BCE), it was deemed the largest pyramid ever constructed and only surviving wonder of the ancient world.

In 2017, the "Scan Pyramids" project detected both of the voids through cosmic particles. Since this fact has been established, the pyramid's mystery has been magnified, urging researchers to analyze muons in greater detail, using more powerful system this time.

In a preprint paper published on the preprint server on arXiv, the team plans "to field a telescope system that has upwards of 100 times the sensitivity of the equipment recently been used at the Great Pyramid," the authors wrote.

Their approach is to put detectors outside than inside the pyramid since it is rather large, and move them along the base, producing much higher resolution images due to large number of detected muons. "In this way, we can collect muons from all angles in order to build up the required data set," the team added.

Need for funds to build the equipment

Although the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities approved the scans, the team still needs funds to build the equipment and conduct the study.

"We are looking for sponsors for the full project," said Alan Bross, a scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who is co-author of the paper. "Once we have full funding, we believe it will take [about] two years to build the detectors."

As of the moment, the researchers only have enough funding to conduct simulations and design some prototypes, according to Bross. Once they deploy the telescopes after about one year of viewing time, they will need some time to gather data and examine preliminary results. According to the scientist, viewing will take between two and three years so they can collect enough muon data to reach full sensitivity for the study.