Inside Giza’s Great Pyramid, Scientists Discover a Void

"Christopher Morris, a physicist who conducts research using muon tomography called the findings “pretty amazing,” adding that all the team needed to do was set up their muon detectors and reap the rewards. . . All the other physicists who could have done it, and didn’t, are jealous,” he said." Which is pretty evident by the snarky comments made by various scientists listed in the article. . . "they found nothing" . . . “This paper offers nothing to Egyptology. Zero.” . . . "the voids the team found are nothing special, or new." Meow meow gentlemen. From a layman who finds the Giza Great Pyramid spectacular, unexplainable and fascinating, all I can say to these scientists is sour grapes. Green with envy is still the color which best describes their attitude and behavior.

Amazing discovery. If there is this one is it likely there will be more than this one. Especially if the reason this is there is because of structural reasons. Now that we know it is there what do they do next. There most likely is a huge amount of rocks between this void and the nearest point that be accessed from the outside or inside. Can they dig into that rock and create a tunnel to give them access to this void. i imagine this will not be practicable but I believe they can drill a hole larger enough to get a wire into with a camera at the end. They can then take pictures. Even if this void is there is for structural for reasons I can not imagine that the builders would not take advantage of this space and put something into it. If the Pyramids were built by extraterrestrials then maybe they hid thir space ship there. Just kidding. We know we are the only intelligent life in the Universe. Or do we.

"Mark Lehner, an Egyptologist from Ancient Egypt Research Associates, said that previous work had shown that the ancient Egyptians most likely constructed gaps in their pyramids and that the voids the team found are nothing special, or new." There is a difference between this "likely" "hearsay" from ancient texts, and a proof. It seems several interviewee must have failed scientific method 101 when they went to college.

The Pyramid made of stone, was designed with many voids that counterbalanced the gravity force against the internal constructions, such as the King's Chamber and the Grand Gallery. Which are inside of the Pyramid. So the full equilibrium between the voids and the solid internal construction, was found by the ancient engineers. It was the solution to a gravity problem. The only way to fully protect the chambers from the force of gravity, was to create empty voids that perfectly combined with the internal construction. A brilliant solution to reinforce the architecture; to create voids that perfectly combined with the internal construction, to protect the weight of the Pyramid.

I disagree strongly with the sentiment that scientists should dig into this void somehow. I dispute the idea that we learn something valuable with every shard of crockery left behind. There is also a concept called "leave it alone already," that I'd like applied to the pyramids and many other antiquities. There's a hubris in endless digging, an almost literal "no stone left unturned" mentality. It takes imagination, ingenuity, and work to discover ancient artifacts; but it takes restraint, modesty and self-discipline to say: "we know enough. Let's move on to another question."

If the void is above the Gallery, and thus the King's Chamber, then its purpose most have been to relieve the gravitational force exerted by the weight of the Pyramid exactly on the main chambers. Also the amount of labor required to remove the contents of the Pyramid and create a large spatial void to relieve the pressure. Most have been titanic work, closely fallowing the engineering of the Pyramid, with spatial voids stabilizing the weight of the 6 million tons on top of the Kings" Chamber, strongly fortified, plus the the Grand Gallery.

Lol. Gotta love it when scientists discover...nothing. And then theorize what the nothing...is. Just like string theorists!

The hypothesis has been proposed that all the stone waste from shaping the pyramid's stones had to go somewhere and that there are rubble filled spaces in the monument. Settlement of this could possibly form voids, but much more evidence is needed for a clear understanding.

Sadly the archaeology community still lives in 19th century and for most of them discovery still means dig, dig and dig. Their toolkit still consists of hammer, chisel and water carabiner. Any new discovery that is made without using the venerable toolkit is "zero". Ground penetration radar is zero, thermal imaging is zero and now muons are zero. Hail Hawass and pals! Winter is the best season! Climb up on top of that big one and start digging now!

Scientists seem terrified to speculate publicly, as competing scientists will ridicule them. Yet such speculation leads to valuable hypotheses that can then be tested. What if this void they have discovered is another gallery above the Grand Gallery? Because it seems to be a very similar diagonally configured, tall space. What if the new gallery is associated with another, as yet undiscovered burial chamber? Because the Grand Gallery is thought to have been used as a storage area for the giant stone plugs that were then slid downward to block the lower end of the Ascending Passage, this new possible gallery could have had the same function... meaning another burial chamber was being protected? Could it be possible that the body of Khufu still lies within the pyramid, accompanied by artifacts that have been unplundered for 4577 years? However improbable this possibility, it is the responsibility of scientists and archaeologists to investigate this newly discovered void as soon as possible. It therefore strikes me as bizarre and counterproductive for Zahi Hawass to assume that the discovery "offers nothing to Egyptology. Zero." And I also wonder, if muon tomography has been used since the 1960s, why they are only now getting around to using it on the Great Pyramind? Why the decades-long delay?

The Ancient Egyptian civilization continues to spark our imagination and perpetuate old stereotypes in the press. This reporter missed an opportunity to provide new understandings on the question of the racial heritage of the ancient Egyptians. Revisionist scholars have long argued with merit that Ancient Egypt was a black and brown civilization. Moreover, the Pharaoh Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid, was one of the early black kings. Why the reporter would ignore such information is evidence of the enduring power of old narratives of white supremacy. A common image believed to bear the likeness of Pharaoh Cheops can be found online easily. Here is a link to one site: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Khufu2.jpg/190...

It's surprising to me that about 20% of the comments here so far -- on the NYT, of all places -- consist of conspiracy theories about the origin of the pyramids. I expect that none of the conspiracy theory-pushing commenters know how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs or Akkadian cuneiform, or how to classify ostraca, or how to interpret the stratigraphy of a midden. Just as we see in the case of climate denial or creationism, deep ignorance of a technically complex body of knowledge is the swamp that breeds mistrust in the "official story." Egyptian chronology is one of the most thoroughly studied topics in the entire academic field of history. The written and archaeological records of Egypt are voluminous and valuable, and our absolute dating of other, less well-recorded ancient cultures (like ancient Greece) often hangs on the pegs of Egyptian chronology. If it were even somewhat plausible that our understanding of Egyptian history is skewed by thousands of years, or that some Egyptian artifacts predate Egyptian culture, or whatever it is that you people are asserting -- if any of this were even somewhat plausible, many historians would long since have jumped all over it. You see, anyone who established a plausible, drastically different, rival explanation of Egypt and its artifacts would become an instant superstar, remembered as a giant for centuries to come. If it were remotely plausible, I would sit down and write that paper tomorrow. But it's not.

Some of the criticism sounds like jealousy and some of the reports from the team imply great importance to the finding. Scientists have emotions after all.

Think all stories on the Pyramids should include the qualifier "believed to have been built by" or "whose construction is associated with" since there seems to be little or no proof as to who actually built them. The water damage on the Sphinx alone indicates a history much older than supported by modern mainstream Egyptologists and there seems to be nothing in the way of historical record to indicate the same cannot be said for the pyramids, not just those at Giza and along the Nile but for the many hundreds of them found around the world.

Or..., what if it is just a cave in? Collapsing filler materials that denote a sad future for the ancient structure.

Probably for grain storage like Dr. Carson thinks.

Could this be a prequel to another Indiana Jones movie?

So the Pyramids may have been for grain storage afterall! Lol

The next cool physics measuring technique to investigate the pyramids would be to use the EPR paradox. You set up a lab at a precise distance from the pyramid so that when you observe a particle its paired, unobserved particle is inside the void. By measuring the strength of the signal from inside the void you can get a better picture of the void.

Discoveries bring out careerists trying to defend THEIR "territory" but this has little to do with real science, which seeks only to find more truth, or at least lead us away from past assumptions and mistakes.

I tire quickly when established archaeologists state opinions of the pyramids as fact. Khufu? Maybe, but why do we have only one tiny statue of him? There is evidence to suggest the pyramids are much older than what established archaeologists believe. Egypt's near moratorium on actual physical research is disturbing, as if they're hiding something.

Whether or not the void contains 'nothing' or not, it's still amazing to see how technology has advanced! We're actually able to see an excess of muons. To think that this was a construction site at some point in time, and the builders could have purposely did that for some reason or not—we'll just never know, which is the mysterious part.

It's always amusing to read science stories and hear other scientists pooh-poohing the study that's the subject of the story. No doubt many of their reservations are correct, but so often there's a little-kids-style resentment in them. It's especially notable here, where they say, "It's nothing new, we already know they did this kind of thing, and it's not cool like they say it is!" How totally beside the point. The muon-mappers are clearly being careful about what they describe, and finding something predicted is quite different than just assuming it's there. Scientists are people too, but... Sigh.

Let's hope it provides some actual evidence proving when the Pyramids were built and by who. As to how they were built . . .

Egypt pyramids are much older than what the MSE (main stream egyptologists) say. The Egyptians were just using what was already there. There is evidence of water erosion on the Sphinx. If one looks, there are good ancient egypt documentaries to be found on you tube and netflix. One in particular is on you tube - its called something like the best ancient egyptian documentary or something. There is a woman with a french accent narrating it. Everyone who is seeking the truth about ancient egypt knows when Zahi Hawass appears in the article or documentary, to stay away because Hawasss is the ancient egypt minister of disinformation! And lol, Hawass also said there weren’t any hidden tunnels in the tomb of the birds and there were, as documented and explored on video by a team of british explorers. Hawass locks down the tomb to prohibit further exploration. And then Hawass himself is featured on some documentary apparently “discovering” the tunnels at the back of the tomb of the birds, trying to take credit for what others discovered first. Hawass routinely denies any new discovery because he himself didnt discover it.

Even if there is "nothing" inside the void from a treasure-hunting perspective, it is hard to imagine that seeing inside it would not add anything to our knowledge. 4,500 years ago that void was an open construction site, and it has been untouched ever since. Dropped tools, broken crockery, workers' graffiti: the trash of the past is still treasure to archaeologists.

Perhaps the void represents a cancelled effort to construct another similar passage to the Grand Gallery which was abandoned by the ancients? Things did not (nor do they today) always go as originally planned. Either way, and even if, as is likely, the angled chamber does not contain any actual relics, it may be able to add to our knowledge of their building techniques and knowledge. Interesting in any event.

This is wonderful news. Science should examine this "void" and let the world know more about these magnificent structures. Muon technology is just another step forward.