🔦 Cosmic rays revealed a void of at least 30 metres inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu, without drilling a single hole.

Muons from cosmic-ray showers pass through stone and get absorbed unevenly. Fewer muons arriving from one direction means more rock in the path. The ScanPyramids team counted them from inside the Queen's chamber and from detectors set up outside the north face.

The result: a corridor-like void above the Grand Gallery, detected by three different muon detector types. Nobody knows what it was for.

Nature paper (Nov 2017):
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24647

arXiv preprint:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01576

#science #physics #archaeology