
'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza - Jaruzel
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41845445
======
f_allwein
Interesting how the pyramids have been around for 4500 years and we still
don't know all about their structure...

Fun fact: there's a Neolithic site in Ireland, Newgrange, that's actually
older than the pyramids. Fascinating and worth a visit:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange)

~~~
vowelless
Nothing blows my mind more than Göbekli Tepe, especially its age.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe)

~~~
nkoren
Fun fact: Cleopatra and Mark Antony etc. lived closer in time to the invention
of mobile phones than to the construction of the Great Pyramids. Egyptian
history is _deep_.

Funner fact: the Great Pyramids were built closer in time to the invention of
mobile phones than to the construction of Göbekli Tepe. Human history is _way_
deep.

Funnest fact: if we don't fuck it up, we're still only at the dawn of history,
not at the end of it.

~~~
graphitezepp
Yeah but I am pretty worried about us fucking it up these days.

~~~
nkoren
Me too. If this is a worry of yours, though, may I suggest, in no way
rhetorically, going into the "not fucking it up" business? The pay is
generally terrible, but nothing beats making your own hope.

~~~
graphitezepp
I could really go for some hope and would very much like to do something of
that nature, but it's hard to figure out where my skills are best allocated.

As for the pay I am very difficult to motivate with money beyond what makes
for housing and food security.

~~~
nkoren
> it's hard to figure out where my skills are best allocated

Better is the enemy of good enough -- just do something, and if that doesn't
work, do something else.

There are so many issues facing the world: climate change, population growth
(/collapse, depending on where you are), food security, energy security,
biodiversity, civil society, socioeconomics in the face of automation,
supervolcanos, etc. etc. etc.

There are diverse solutions to all these problems. If energy security is your
thing, then everything from better residential insulation, to business process
optimisation for solar panel installation, to R&D for fusion reactors is
potentially part of the solution. Pick whichever one interests you the most.
You don't need to be the Elon Musk of whatever it is that you've chosen: if
someone else is already doing it, they'll need everything from web developers
to janitors. Work for them, and you'll be part of the solution. And if in a
few years you see something that'll make you even more hopeful, do that
instead.

Personally, I chose "better urban design" as my personal route to saving the
world. If we could make much better cities, this would seriously mitigate
issues with energy consumption, climate change, land use, and civil society.
But how best to do this?

First I tried being an architect. But the impact I could make was limited by
the property developers I worked for, who were limited by the urban planners
they worked around, who were limited by the urban infrastructure technologies
they worked with. So I changed careers, taking aim at transport technology
innovation. Went back to school, got an MBA, and joined a company developing a
new class of transport technology (the Heathrow Pod, if you're curious). After
a few years I realised that my influence was constrained by working for the
technology vendor; I actually needed to work for governments instead. So I
switched careers again and became a transport-planning consultant doing
advisory work in 14 countries. After a few years I realised that my advisory
services were producing cool feasibility studies but no actual results,
because the actual implementations were too constrained by antiquated,
innovation-inhibiting communications processes and planning/design tools. This
was a software problem. So I switched careers again and started a company
developing collaborative urban planning software
([https://www.podaris.com](https://www.podaris.com)), and now spend most of
every week fighting with Javascript. This can be a tough slog, but it's
Javascript that will hopefully change the way that cities are designed,
thereby doing my bit to save the world. I feel good about it.

The above story isn't meant to be illustrative of what you or anyone else
should do. WHAT you do will be different for everyone, and is very nearly
irrelevant, provided you've put some thought into it. THAT you do is the
important part -- and you are absolutely capable of doing it.

~~~
pegasus
Thank you for sharing your inspiring story!

------
avar
This diagram shows a shaft going into this void from two sides. I was
wondering why they don't send a robot down into those.

Seems the answer is that they have, but there's something blocking the shaft
and they're not willing to destroy it any further for some reason:

[http://guardians.net/hawass/articles/news_on_the_robot_Dec_2...](http://guardians.net/hawass/articles/news_on_the_robot_Dec_2005.htm)

[http://www.crystalinks.com/gantenbrink.html](http://www.crystalinks.com/gantenbrink.html)

[http://www.gizapower.com/Articles/door2.html](http://www.gizapower.com/Articles/door2.html)

~~~
bertomartin
"...for some reason:" \- they shouldn't be allowed to destroy such an
important monument to satisfy their curiosity.

~~~
noncoml
I was at the Vatican museum recently and was surprised to see most sculptures
appeared to be permanently damaged for embedding a number label. (example:
[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hvqlG6iPcP8/UGzso1C3AcI/AAAAAAAAJF...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hvqlG6iPcP8/UGzso1C3AcI/AAAAAAAAJFI/WPaDY27CdKc/s1600/IMG_9621.JPG))

I agree with you, let’s not be arrogant, like in the past, and destroy what we
should save for future generations.

~~~
dsego
I was also there in april, and I am surprised the tourists and kids are left
unattended, taking selfies, touching everything. It's an accident waiting to
happen. Most tourists (ashamed to admit, but this includes me) don't actually
appreciate or care about ancient art, it's more like been there, done that.

~~~
Gustomaximus
I'd encourage people to chide tourists that touch historic objects in museums.
People should know better and while I suspect they dont care (from when I've
done this many a time), it's worth trying!

------
sdfjkl
Amazing this stuff still yields secrets after thousands of years. Meanwhile
the 3.5" floppy disks in my parents attic on which I've kept all my teenage
Turbo Pascal source code have long lost all their data.

~~~
dsnuh
This is something I think about a lot. How do we build a "data pyramid" that
can be interpreted by future generations. I feel like much of our culture will
be lost to bit rot.

~~~
pcrh
Wikipedia could be encoded into DNA and them spliced into species that are
very long lived, geologically speaking, such as horseshoe crabs. Absent any
negative selection against "wiki DNA", they could remain readable in millions
of years time.

~~~
gus_massa
You will need a very strong error correction scheme. It is not necessary to
have a negative selection against "wiki DNA", if there is not positive
selection the error will accumulate quickly.

With a quick googling,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate#Variation_in_mut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate#Variation_in_mutation_rates)
I think that a mutation rate of 10^-5 per base per generation is a good
estimation for humans. Let's assume 10^-6 per base per year. So after a
million year, with no selection pressure, probably more than a half of the
bases will be overwritten with garbage.

~~~
Houshalter
Losing only 50% of the data after a million years doesn't sound that bad. The
bigger problem is keeping knowledge that the data is there and how to get it
to survive even a tenth of that length.

------
willvarfar
Fun coincidence:

Noticed the newest book on Project Gutenburg is:

A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE IN ALL COUNTRIES, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE
PRESENT DAY.

By JAMES FERGUSSON, D.C.L., F.R.S., M.R.A.S., FELLOW ROYAL INST. BRIT.
ARCHITECTS,

So I click on it, and the very first building is the Great Pyramid, complete
with diagram:
[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55870/55870-h/55870-h.htm#Pa...](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55870/55870-h/55870-h.htm#Page_I_97)

1893.

~~~
conorcleary
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55870/55870-h/images/](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55870/55870-h/images/)

So what ones should I look at? :-)

~~~
sampo
This one:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55870/55870-h/images/i_129.jp...](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55870/55870-h/images/i_129.jpg)

~~~
conorcleary
It's not allowing direct linking :/

~~~
sampo
Right. So the one with filename i_129.jpg.

------
tomkinstinch
Curious that Luis Alvarez (yes, that Luis Albarez) and his team did not find
it in their 1970 exploration using a similar approach[1].

1\.
[http://lappweb.in2p3.fr/~chefdevi/Work_LAPP/Arche/alvarez_70...](http://lappweb.in2p3.fr/~chefdevi/Work_LAPP/Arche/alvarez_70.pdf)

Edit: Thanks to jbmouret for pointing out Alvarez studied a different pyramid
in the same complex!

~~~
yodon
Yes, this work is clearly based on the cosmic ray muon detector approach that
Nobel prize winner Luis Alvarez developed in the 1970’s, and looks to be a
significant effort that would need considerable international support to
accomplish, so somebody obviously thinks there is reason to believe Luie’s
team missed something.

In addition to the results, I’m very interested to understand what led them to
think there might have been something missed in the analysis of the great
pyramid of Khufu/Cheops.

~~~
radiorental
It's worth watching this video overview of the work.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB-
MOGw0RMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB-MOGw0RMo)

Key takeaways that might answer why the original team missed the clues... note
the Simulation results from the Japanese team. Throughout the video it's clear
they're chasing the scent of information through data analaysis and
visualisation.

I think the Hololens stuff at the end is a little fluffy but it speaks to the
tools scientists and engineers have available today versus the 70's

------
singularity2001
does that disprove Jean-Pierre Houdin's beautiful theory, that there is an
inner construction passage?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lasCXujNPfs&list=PLf_5zbxiQ4...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lasCXujNPfs&list=PLf_5zbxiQ4cL42b9vyvGRugPP3eLYmbsq)

~~~
qubex
On the contrary, it is no coincidence that it this has been found by a team
comprised of (also) French academics. This is very much compatible and
inspired by his work.

His theory involves the Grand Gallery being a purely functional structure
required to accodate a trolley that helped serve as a counterweight to heave
the massive stones that relieve the weight acting upon the roof of the King’s
Chamber. Implicit in this theory is the idea that there are other ”ceremonial
routes” from the outside to the King’s Chamber. It is very possible that this
is actually the unopened anteroom that contains the provisions for the Pharos’
afterlife (or other artefacts that could be carbon-dated).

~~~
rurban
The anteroom, or rather the container room for the ship and horses for his
last travel?

Or maybe another gallery leading to a third chamber. These are my theories.

~~~
qubex
That’s the idea: an anteroom containing the accoutrements to accompany the
Pharaoh on his voyage into the afterlife. According to Houdain’s theory of how
they were constructed, the ”Grand Gallery” was basically a machine spade that
served no ceremonial purpose whatsoever and was sealed off from the main
ceremonial passageways as a bit of an embarrassment. That, in turn, is why we
have been oblivious about these other spaces for so long: quite by
coincidence, when breaking into the pyramid, the service tunnels were the ones
the profaners quite accidentally blundered into. According to Houdain we’ve
been crawling around inside the ductwork of the Waldorf Astoria for centuries.

------
dbatten
Does HN have any domain experts that can comment on how reliable this research
is?

I got super excited about the Queen Nefertiti / King Tut secret chamber theory
a year or two back (which used similar methods, it seemed), and was really
disappointed when it turned out to be all wrong...

~~~
jbmouret
Co-author here.

This is not the same method at all and this is much more reliable. For King
Tut, they used ground penetration radar, which is very hard to interpret.
Here: (1) this is confirmed by 3 independent teams using 3 different detection
technologies, (2) we used the same statistical criteria as for discoveries in
particle physics (deviation 5 sigma from the model).

In addition, we clearly see the new void on Nagoya's data (Fig.2).

Unfortunately, cosmic-ray muons cannot be used in King Tut tomb because we can
only see "above us" (the muons come from the sky).

~~~
TwoFactor
I'm definitely looking forward to where this research takes us. I'm curious if
there have been any efforts to create a muon-like transmitter that would add
more flexibility to the sensor system. Is there something about muons that
prohibits this?

~~~
jbmouret
This would basically require a LHC-like particle accelerator.

However, we can acquire data for more time (depending on the detector
technology), which will give us more statistics.

------
vixen99
ScanPyramids [https://youtu.be/ZB-MOGw0RMo](https://youtu.be/ZB-MOGw0RMo)

------
noetic_techy
Now watch as it never gets excavated. I've yet to see them break open the
hidden door they found during some thermal scans recently. Isn't there also
known void under the sphinx that was mapped with ground penetrating radar?
They just seem to sit on these finds and do nothing.

------
fenwick67
Forgive my ignorance, but couldn't this be explored with 20th-century
technology like a very long drill bit and a fiber optic camera rig?

Every article about this mentions sending up tiny flying robots for some
reason.

~~~
RandomBK
It's the "very long drill bit" part that's problematic. They're trying to
explore with minimal to no damage to the original structure.

~~~
goldenkey
Doesnt seem like a tiny hole is enough to cause loss of structural integrity
or for even anyone to notice. Preservation is important but thinking that it
extends to ever centimeter of every weathered brick is quite silly.

~~~
RandomBK
From what I understand, the problem is more political than archaeological. I'm
sure the researchers are going all they can as fast as they can within the
political, legal, and resource constraints there.

------
dmix
Interestingly the original search for these empty secret chambers in the
pyramid helped an architect come up with one of the best theories on how it
was built:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d83mn1yxCHc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d83mn1yxCHc)

Using a combination of an external ramp, up until the point of the King's
chamber, then from there it used an internal ramp system that snaked around
the edges.

------
mrfusion
So have people been inside the known chambers? Can you tour them?

~~~
kevindqc
Egypt's main pyramid sites in Giza are accessible to the general public every
day, all year long. Although you can go inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu when
you visit, one of the smaller two pyramids usually is closed for restoration
work. To further complicate your tourist plans, at the time of publication,
only 300 tickets are sold per pyramid, per day. You must arrive early to
secure your visit inside

~~~
radiorental
I've also read that given the economic instability in Cairo, it's just a royal
PITA to visit. Tourists get aggressively hassled to buy stuff, camel rides,
tours, etc.

I've been to New Grange and Stonehenge. While it's pretty neat to go there,
it's just a structure. The real value and interest for me is reading up on
what the researchers have found out. Let the plinths for Stonehendge were
quarried 150 miles away in what is now Wales.

Just think about that, mind blowing.

~~~
auxbuss
Hire a driver/guide. He'll navigate around any hassle -- you'll be left in
peace -- and he'll sort all the tickets for you. It's probably a one in a
lifetime visit, after all.

We lucked out. Our driver turned out to be a Coptic Christian, and he had much
to say about (what was then) the recent Arab Spring from a different angle.

~~~
dotancohen
One hundred times this. Most taxi drivers will be happy to "adopt" you for a
few days, and arrange for you tickets, hostel, restaurants, and anything else
that you need. He'll pay the local price and get a kickback, and you'll still
come out far ahead. Plus you will get to see real Cairo, not tourist Cairo, if
you ask him.

------
onion-soup
Isn't it more interesting that they placed 9 blocks (2.5 tons each) every hour
for 30 years to build the pyramid?

------
yoodenvranx
Slightly off-topic but perhaps someone has an answer:

After finishing "Dark Forest" / "Death’s End" I somehow ended up with the
questions if our way of doing archaeology is actually a good idea.

Currently we i) remove a lot of things from the ground / graves / ruins, ii)
analyze them, iii) put them in a museum and iv) write books about them.

This means that all the knowledge about those artifacts and our history is
stored in volatile documents and fragile minds. During the next WW3 or WW4
those museums might burn down and all archaeologist might be killed in an
anti-intellectual purge.

This means that a future generation will neither have the real artifacts in
the ground nor our current documentation and all that knowledge about
humanities history will be lost forever.

Is there any project which strives to preserve our current knowledge about
humanity in some sort of long-term storage so that also people in 500 or 2000
years will be able to reconstruct even without having access to 'real'
artifacts? Is this actually a problem which current archaeologist think about?

~~~
krapp
Human minds and physical artifacts are still the least fragile and volatile
storage medium known. Software requires infrastructure, hardware, regular
maintenance and domain knowledge, a brittle chain.

Consider that we still have cuneiform tablets from ancient Babylon, and we can
decipher them due to physical and cultural artifacts persisting over
generations. But... we have already lost the masters of the Apollo moon
landings, and much of the knowledge of how the software written back then will
die out when the engineers who worked on them do, because software knowledge
isn't passed on generationally the way culture and language are.

It's likely that archaeologists from the year 4017 will be picking through our
garbage, rather than our software, and that their ability to accomplish the
latter will depend entirely on whether they find a "Rosetta Stone" in the
former that lets them reconstruct everything from first principles.

~~~
dkersten
> _Consider that we still have cuneiform tablets from ancient Babylon, and we
> can decipher them due to physical and cultural artifacts persisting over
> generations._

I've been on a bit of a wikipedia binge recently: Its actually even older than
that. Babylonia was the Akkadian country that used cuneiform, but Sumerian
cuneiform clay tablets exist that are much older still!

------
odammit
I’ve got $20 that says when they open it up it’s Giorgio Tsoukalos dressed up
like Nefertiti and a bunch of Martians getting hammered to a Bangles cover
band.

------
foxhop
I found that this theory was pretty interesting:

The Giza Power Plants:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUjYsOXm3IA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUjYsOXm3IA)

~~~
dmix
You really thought this would be okay to post on HN?

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Giza_pyramids#Power_station_.2...](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Giza_pyramids#Power_station_.22theory.22)

> The Giza pyramids have been the cause of more extreme wingnuttery,
> pseudoscience, bullshit, and woo than any other ancient monument on the
> planet.

------
pgtruesdell
The more we learn about the Giza Pyramids, the more they look like some
technological device. I highly doubt the common "understanding" that their
designed use was a fancy mausoleum for dignitaries. I have no doubt they have
been used for this purpose, but unlikely to be the original intent.

~~~
f_allwein
Why? There is no evidence for that, is there? Also, look at the great
cathedrals of the middle ages - people built them during several lifetimes and
at huge expense, and the only "practical" purpose was to have a space for
religious services. That and maybe the hope for eternal life after death
etc...

~~~
petecox
There's a cathedral in Catalonia that began construction in 1882. Its
practical purpose is to attract tourists to Barcelona; maybe some day it'll be
fully completed as a place of worship.

