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'Discovery of the Century': Mysterious Void Discovered In Egypt's Great Pyramid (nationalgeographic.com)
New submitter klgds writes: The cavity is the first major inner structure discovered in the pyramid since the 1800s. Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza -- one of the wonders of the ancient world, and a dazzling feat of architectural genius -- contains a hidden void at least a hundred feet long, scientists said. The space's dimensions resemble those of the pyramid's Grand Gallery, the 153-foot-long, 26-foot-tall corridor that leads to the burial chamber of Khufu, the pharaoh for whom the pyramid was built. However, it remains unclear what lies within the space, what purpose it served, or if it's one or multiple spaces. The void is the first large inner structure discovered within the 4,500-year-old pyramid since the 1800s -- a find made possible by recent advances in high-energy particle physics. The results were published in the journal Nature. "This is definitely the discovery of the century," says archaeologist and Egyptologist Yukinori Kawae, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. "There have been many hypotheses about the pyramid, but no one even imagined that such a big void is located above the Grand Gallery."
It's the teleportation chamber to link with the alien starships when they're in orbit!
Using the phrase "of the Century" is a very strong indication it's time to stop reading and move on because it's probably something irrelevant and uninteresting.
Actually, I believe current thought is that pyramids weren't built by slave labour, and Egypt had the wealth to afford it when they didn't need their farmers in the fields.
I mean, yeah, I'm sure a lot of people died because workplace safety standards weren't really a thing then, but I don't think it was due to throwing away the lives of whip-driven slaves.
Nonsense. It is easily the hyperbole of the century.
I always thought that the Pyramids had all the architectural genius of a pile of dirt.
And that is where you would be wrong. To a lot of laymen looking at the pyramid as nothing more than a stack for block stacked on top of each other. Then they give it no more thought.
There was a lot of thought that went into the shape of the pyramids before they build the 3 big ones. It took a lot of trial and error before they could get the 45 degee slope in the those. All around Egypt there are actually dozens of pyramids where the Egyptians where trying to figure that out. Lots of the attempts failed.
The first step would be getting the blocks there, most of them weighing several tons, from far away locations by barge. Then there is the moving of those stones across land, up ramps and positioning them in place. Did you know that each stone was shaped for the position that it was being placed in. Think about that for a moment. The stones themselves had complex coding systems that said where they went. The even have markings on them that say "this end up."
Then there is the grand gallery itself. The load bearing stones around that that keep the gallery open are holding up thousands of tons of stone. The shape and fitting of the support stones has to be nothing short of perfect or the whole thing would come down.
We should talk about the moving parts of the pyramids. Yes, the pyramids have or had moving parts. Once the pyramids where closed up they did this by sliding 100+ ton blocks into place. Blocks, as in more than one. You know those scenes in the Indiana Jones movies where they would break the rock, sand pours out, and the big door comes down? That is probably how they did it.
I could go on and on but I think you see what I mean. There was the aligning of the pyramids with he stars. Did you know the pyramids had a outer limestone coating? When they where built the pyramids where coated in limestone and the sides where smooth and bright white. The case stones where fitted with such perfection that you couldn't get a playing card between the seems.
The building of the pyramids for the Egyptians was a task that was on par with the moonshot of the '60's.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Dictionary: void = a space containing no matter
So they found literally nothing? Must be certainly the discovery of the century.
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
One of the remarkable facts of Egyptology is how nearly impossible it was to prevent tombs from being robbed over the course of thousands of years. There's never been a tomb found that hasn't been robbed at some point, even Tutankhamen's tomb. Most are picked clean of anything that might be of interest to anyone other than an archaeologist.
But it always seemed to me, given the scale of the pyramids, that there was an obvious option for deterring robbers: make the scale of the engineering project necessary to find and reach the burial chamber more costly than the value of the goods in the chamber. It's not unreasonable; the cost of even a small pyramid must have outweighed the cost of the funerary goods in it by thousands of times. I'm not talking about sealing the burial chamber with a ten ton slab of rock; I'm thinking in terms of hundreds of thousands of tons.
It has to have occurred to anyone who's pondered the pyramids that there might be things still left hidden inside all that volume. The thing is there is no way to investigate such speculation without some means of being able to see through solid stone. For that reason the matter of undiscovered chambers in the pyramids has become to Egyptology a bit like questions about perpetual motions machines are to physicists. I even saw one Egyptologist say in response to this news that there was "zero chance" of anything remaining undiscovered in the Great Pyramid.
But maybe speculation isn't so pointless, now that we in the 21st century actually *can* in a fashion see through solid stone.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
While I'm pretty sure you are being funny, so the following rant isn't directed at you.
This is really one of the things that pushes all the wrong buttons I have. Attributing something like the pyramids or Stonehenge to aliens because they think early man was to stupid to figure out how to do it, or some such bullshit. The Egyptians where primitive, not stupid. They where just as intelligent as anyone alive today.
Actually, now that I stew on it, calling them primitive is bullshit too. They Egyptians at the time had and extremely complex society. They had a complex social order, economic system, and production capacity. What they didn't have was technological advancement.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
From TFA:
> “There have been many hypotheses about the pyramid, but no one even
> imagined that such a big void is located above the Grand Gallery.”
Shouldn't that be long void?
long void is to void as long int is to int.
C'mon guys. Let's have consistency on this.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.