Scanning with Cosmic Rays

The ScanPyramids project, launched in 2015, paired physicists with Egyptologists from France, Japan, and Egypt. Their idea was simple but bold.

They placed muon detectors inside the pyramid's known rooms and waited. Over months, the steady rain of particles from space slowly traced out the stone above, the way a long exposure builds up a photograph. The thirty-meter void appeared in the data without anyone laying a finger on the pyramid.

This was not the first time the pyramid surprised researchers. In 1872, engineer Waynman Dixon found two narrow shafts in the Queen's Chamber, sealed at both ends and barely wide enough to reach into.

In 1993, a small robot crawled up the southern shaft and stopped at something no one expected: a tiny stone door fitted with two copper handles. Behind it sat yet another blocking stone. Why these miniature doors exist, and what lies past them, is still a mystery.