An Idea of Exploring The Hidden Chambers in Egyptian Pyramids Through Elementary Particles
By: Areeba Merriam
Tags: History, Muon, Science, Math, Physics

An Idea of Exploring The Hidden Chambers in Egyptian Pyramids Through Elementary Particles

Making use of the byproduct of cosmic rays from distant galaxies

The Egyptian pyramids

The elementary particles — Muons

Muons were first discovered by Carl D. Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer in 1936 at Caltech while studying the cosmic rays. Muons are produced in the Earth’s upper atmosphere by cosmic rays from distant galaxies colliding with atomic nuclei of different molecules in the air.

They observed the particles which showed a slight distinct behavior from electrons and other elementary particles e.g they curved differently while passing through a magnetic field. Their properties were quite similar to electrons but they are slightly more massive. Their existence was confirmed one year later in the cloud chamber experiment by J. C. Street and E. C. Stevenson.

Muons can also be generated in particle accelerators. The collision is made between high energy protons with carbon or beryllium. This high-energy interaction produces some other particles e.g pions. But these particles are very unstable and almost immediately decay into muons with neutrinos as a byproduct. Unlike electrons, muons are quite unstable, they decay into an electron and two neutrinos having a lifetime of two microseconds.

Muons are just like electrons apparently, a bit heavier though. So it can be an obvious question why nature repeats itself? What is the necessity of electron’s elder brother? Even when they were discovered the Nobel laureate I. I. Rabi jokingly said: “Who ordered that?”. We are still unknown to this question. Like neutrinos, they are also all around us, always, penetrates through our bodies a thousand times every minute.

Why muons were considered for this hunch?

Some peculiar properties of muons include that they lose a very little amount of energy while interacting or passing through matter. Moreover, they tend to deflect much less as compared to electrons by electromagnetic fields. These characteristics distinguish them as the most penetrating of all the subatomic particles. As per Scientific American:

About 10,000 muons reach every square meter of the earth’s surface a minute; these charged particles form as by-products of cosmic rays colliding with molecules in the upper atmosphere. Traveling at relativistic speeds, muons can penetrate tens of meters into rocks and other matter before attenuating as a result of absorption or deflection by other atoms.

Practical applications of muons

Muons are not useless anymore. They execute similar to the x-rays that penetrate through the body and serves in the image formation of the internal bone structure. These heavy electrons can penetrate through hundred of feet before being absorbed or wasted.

Muon transmission imaging is a technique developed by Japanese physicists to see through active volcanoes. The muons coming from outer space all the time can penetrate into the volcano. The detectors are positioned around the source of volcanoes to measure the flux of muons. The greater transmission happens through cavities, so the image of the interior can be generated. You can locate where magma (filled with molten lava) is, with this technique. When you observe the magma rising, you can predict that an eruption can happen soon. Imaging volcano using muons is a powerful technique to speculate about the upcoming eruptions .

is a technique developed by Japanese physicists to see through active volcanoes. The muons coming from outer space all the time can penetrate into the volcano. The detectors are positioned around the source of volcanoes to measure the flux of muons. The greater transmission happens through cavities, so the image of the interior can be generated. You can locate where magma (filled with molten lava) is, with this technique. When you observe the magma rising, you can predict that an eruption can happen soon. . Muons are now found to be useful in investigating the enigma of the early world. Luis Walter Alvarez a physics Nobel laureate from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was once involved in an experiment to look for the hidden treasures in one of the Egyptian pyramids by using muons. As there was a myth about one of the pyramids in Giza that it actually had a hidden chamber beneath it.

But if it’s a truth, then the portion with chamber/void will have less rock compared to the other part. And when the muons pass through the portion with less rock, fewer of them will lose track. Similarly, when they pass from the portion of more rocks, you lose more of them. Consequently, you will observe a difference in the number of muons coming one way and the other way. The researchers placed the detector in the middle and measured the flux of particles coming from both directions and compared them. That was a brilliant idea indeed. But, unfortunately, the result of that measurement couldn’t show that there was a hidden chamber or treasure in the pyramid.

Anyway, that technique was published in Science back in 1970, and this result inspired much more recent usefulness of muons for practical purposes.

Pyramid of Khufu

That impressive pyramid was built during the IV dynasty by Pharaoh Khufu. It is made from limestone and granite blocks with 458 feet (139 m) in height and 755 feet (230 m) in width. It’s about 4,500-year-old. The great pyramid is among the ancient seven standing wonders of the world. There were three previously discovered chambers at different altitudes. The subterranean chamber, the queen’s chamber, and the king’s chamber all connected with several corridors.

Recently a large void or structure was discovered by a team of researchers hidden within Khufu’s Pyramid at Giza, which is known to be the largest pyramid in Egypt. The first-ever image of the mysterious structure inside the Pyramid was formed using the elementary particles.

ScanPyramids Collaboration

The collaboration of ScanPyramids involved researchers from Egypt, France, and Japan who were responsible for the detailed measurements. It is an Egyptian international project guided by Cairo University and the French heritage innovation preservation (HIP) Institute. The purpose of this project involves the screening of Egyptian pyramids (Khufu, Bent, Red, and The Khafre) to discover the mysterious structures. That project was initiated back in 2015. The group is currently utilizing muon tomography, infrared thermography, 3D simulation, and reconstruction techniques to carry out the research.

It is one of the multidisciplinary projects with a mixture of science, archeology, and technology. They confirmed their very first finding of an unknown cavity in the great pyramid in 2016. The second cavity was discovered in the area behind Khufu’s north face. Muon emulsion plates were positioned in the descending corridor for investigation purposes. The next year, the number of plates was increased to reconfirm the void through different perspectives.

A recent discovery of a big chamber

In Nov 2017, a paper reporting the third discovery of ScanPyramid’s big void/chamber in the oldest monuments on Earth was published in a peer-reviewed journal nature. That hidden void was located above the grand gallery having a minimum length of 30m. That discovery was confirmed by three independent research groups from different points of view. The technique involving nuclear emulsion plates was incorporated by the team of Nagoya University, Japan. The High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Japan’s team used the Scintillator detectors. While the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) team placed the Muon telescopes with gas detectors.

“This is an exciting new discovery, and potentially a major contribution to our knowledge about the Great Pyramid,” says Peter der Manuelian, from Harvard University. Furthermore, Lee Thompson, a particle physics expert at the University of Sheffield (UK) asserted: “The scientists have “seen” the void using three different muon detectors in three independent experiments, which makes their finding very robust.”

Egyptologists have discarded the idea of finding any lost old treasure in the 30-meter-long void. “There’s zero chance of hidden burial chambers,” says Aidan Dodson, an Egyptologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who studies ancient Egyptian tombs. But some professionals anticipate that the ongoing research will lead to significant insights about how these spectacular pyramids were built.

Making use of muons for the imaging of huge hollow cavities was not an easy task. Collecting a substantial amount of data to figure out any inside structure took months of observation. Altogether, this discovery was important because it connects particle physics with collaborative research about one of the most important heritage buildings.