Discovery of a big void in Khufu’s Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons - Archive ouverte HAL Access content directly
Journal Articles Nature Year : 2017

## Discovery of a big void in Khufu’s Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons

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Kunihiro Morishima
• Function : Author
Mitsuaki Kuno
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Akira Nishio
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Nobuko Kitagawa
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Yuta Manabe
• Function : Author
Masaki Moto
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Fumihiko Takasaki
• Function : Author
Hirofumi Fujii
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Kotaro Satoh
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Hideyo Kodama
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Kohei Hayashi
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Shigeru Odaka
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David Attié
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• PersonId : 839122
Benoit Marini
• Function : Author
Pierre Gable
• Function : Author
Yoshikatsu Date
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Makiko Sugiura
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Yasser Elshayeb
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Mustapha Ezzy
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Emmanuel Guerriero
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Vincent Steiger
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Nicolas Serikoff
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Jean-Baptiste Mouret
Bernard Charlès
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Hany Helal
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Mehdi Tayoubi
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#### Abstract

The Great Pyramid or Khufu’s Pyramid was built on the Giza Plateau (Egypt) during the IVth dynasty by the pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), who reigned from 2509 to 2483 BC$^1$ . Despite being one of the oldest and largest monuments on Earth, there is no consensus about how it was built. To better understand its internal structure, we imaged the pyramid using muons, which are by-products of cosmic rays that are only partially absorbed by stone. The resulting cosmic-ray muon radiography allows us to visualize the known and potentially unknown voids in the pyramid 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 30m minimum) above the Grand Gallery, which constitutes the first major inner structure found in the Great Pyramid since the 19$^{th}$ century. This void, named ScanPyramids Big Void, was first observed with nuclear emulsion films installed in the Queen’s chamber (Nagoya University), then confirmed with scintillator hodoscopes set up in the same chamber (KEK) and re-confirmed with gas detectors12 outside of the pyramid (CEA)This large void has therefore been detected with a high confidence by three different muon detection technologies and three independent analyses. These results constitute a breakthrough for the understanding of Khufu’s Pyramid and its internal structure. While there is currently no information about the role of this void, these findings show how modern particle physics can shed new light on the world’s archaeological heritage

### Dates and versions

hal-01630260 , version 1 (07-11-2017)
hal-01630260 , version 2 (22-11-2017)

### Identifiers

• HAL Id : hal-01630260 , version 2
• DOI :

### Cite

Kunihiro Morishima, Mitsuaki Kuno, Akira Nishio, Nobuko Kitagawa, Yuta Manabe, et al.. Discovery of a big void in Khufu’s Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons. Nature, 2017, 542, pp.386-390. ⟨10.1038/nature24647⟩. ⟨hal-01630260v2⟩

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