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'Big void' discovered in Egypt's Great Pyramid

November 3, 2017, 12:29 pm

CAIRO -- An international team of scientists announced on Thursday the discovery of "a big void" in Khufu's Pyramid in Egypt's Giza Plateau by imaging the pyramid using cosmic-ray muons.

The discovery was revealed in an article published on Nature, an international weekly journal of science, showing another expected mystery in one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The international scientific team, including Japanese and French physicists, said they imaged the pyramid using muons, by-products of cosmic rays that are only partially absorbed by stones, visualizing voids in the pyramids in a non-invasive way.

"Here we report the discovery of a large void (with a cross section similar to the Grand Gallery and a length of 30 meters minimum) above the Grand Gallery, which constitutes the first major inner structure found in the Great Pyramid since the 19th century," said the team in the article.

The finding is part of the project, known as ScanPyramids, launched in 2015 in cooperation with the Egyptian government to use advanced scanning methods in an attempt to discover the internal secrets of the pyramids and reveal the mystery of how they were built.

The researchers believed the newly discovered 30-meter-long void space, which they named "ScanPyramids Big Void," could be a secret chamber and could help reveal how the great ancient monument was built.

"These results constitute a breakthrough for the understanding of Khufu's Pyramid and its internal structure," said the team, adding "there is currently no information about the role of this void."

Egypt's Great Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of three nearby ones in Giza, belongs to the Fourth Dynasty when King Khufu ruled ancient Egypt some 4,500 years ago. (Xinhua)

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