Scientists have revealed a hidden chamber inside the Great Pyramid using cosmic rays!

Scientists have discovered a mysterious chamber within the Great Pyramid of Giza. They used imaging technique to generate cosmic rays which detected the subatomic particles and chamber was revealed deep inside the Pyramid.

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The scientists used sensors to detect muons particles, which are created when powerful cosmic rays pass into molecules in the upper atmosphere. When they joined together data from different locations, they were able to get three dimensional image of the internal structure of the pyramid.

“Our discovery is the first demonstration of the potential of cosmic ray imaging to gather new information in archaeology,” said Nagoya University’s Kunihiro Morishima from Japan.

This chamber is approximately 30 meters long and 3 meters high and there is gallery below this cavity. There is also a large corridor which connects three main chambers. This cavity or chamber is named the ScanPyramids Big Void.

The Great Pyramid was built from 2509 to 2483 BC during the rule of Pharaoh Khufu. Lot of research has been done to know how this monument was constructed but still there is no consensus.

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The actual structure and the function of this newly-discovered cavity is unknown, but it may help the scientists to do more research to understand the construction of the pyramid.

“This is an exciting new discovery, and potentially a major contribution to our knowledge about the Great Pyramid,” Peter Manuelian, a Harvard Egyptologist not involved in the research, says in an email.

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The ScanPyramid project is association between Cairo University and Egyptian government and both are working on this project for 02 years. The team has been using advanced imaging techniques from particle physics to know more about these pyramids.

“No important internal structures have been found in the Pyramid since 820AD, when the Calife Al Mamun dug a tunnel and penetrated inside, revealing most of the structure we know today,” said Prof Mehdi Tayoubi from Cairo University. “Finding something as important, in terms of size, as the Grand Gallery is an important breakthrough.”

The archaeologists have plan to further scan the Big Void to get more details to determine its structure and shape.

However, the scientists have currently no plan to go inside this cavity without getting more details about it:

“For the time being we cannot allow ourselves [to start drilling bore holes into the void],” says Hany Helal, vice president of the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute, which runs the ScanPyramid project. “We need to continue the research with nondestructive techniques, which will allow us to have a complete picture of what is inside.”

Once the exact dimensions and structure of the void is established, the scientists will drill the hole and send robot drone to further explore it.

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