Sven Sundgaard was in Egypt just this past June and connected with his friend and Egyptologist, Walid El-Batouty (also a Deputy Minister of Tourism for Egypt now) who shared news of some exciting research into the great pyramid complex of Giza.
“The pyramid of Cheops is the oldest standing monument in the world and it still has lots of secrets," El-Batouty shared. "I mean, we’re still finding there’s more study being done. We have a new project that started in October 2015: it’s called SCAN pyramid… everyone should really watch out.”
The project uses cosmic ray technology to find and track muons, which are a relative of electrons. 600 cosmic ray muons rain down and through our bodies from space every minute (don’t worry they’re not harmful!) The scanning technology ‘sees’ through the large granite blocks of the pyramids by looking for muons to determine where there are changes or voids in materials. El Batouty explains what they found:
“In the pyramids of Giza what they’re doing is they scan every block around the pyramid and they found four blocks with 5.8 degrees less- so there’s more extensive study between Canadian, Japanese, French and Egyptian, and they’re all working on it, modern technology is coming in," Batouty explained. "Everybody’s putting their ideas in, and we’re trying to figure out what’s behind this: there might be a great discovery very soon!”
Currently visitors can enter the largest pyramid through a narrow passage connecting the queen’s chamber to King Khufu’s chamber-- something Sven has done twice. Scientists used a series of 3 rays that can pass through the thick granite blocks of the pyramid, and their data found a previously unknown chamber or ‘empty area’ above the chamber of King Khufu.
No one knows what is in this chamber, but it does tell us there is a lot more to know about these ancient mysteries, including, how they were built…
Check out the ScanPyramids website for more on this amazing project.