Secrets of the Dead - Scanning the Pyramids

great pyramid at giza no royal mummy or funerary artifacts have ever been found inside this tomb built for pharaoh khufu a papyrus text dating from 1700 bc tells of his fascination with magic and his desire to build secret chambers inside the pyramid but these hidden chambers have never been found over the centuries explorers have used the technology of their day to search for what might be inside 19th century treasure seekers used dynamite that left brutal scars modern egyptologists have used custom-made robots and miniaturized cameras [Music] now a new team will attempt to create a detailed scan of the 45-story pyramid after centuries of searching can new rooms be found and can this be done without disturbing a single stone hanny hello and mehdi tayubi have taken up the challenge directing the scan pyramids project there are lots of theories about the ancient pyramids aren't there any techniques that don't specifically come from egyptology that might let us see through the pyramids without touching them to see if there are any unknown structures inside these great pyramids they planned the most technologically advanced survey of the great pyramid using muography a cutting-edge imaging technique our first challenge was assembling the team that all need to work together but with their different cultures working methods and approaches to do this the pair assembles a multi-disciplinary team that includes thermal infrared engineers experts in modeling and 3d simulations and particle physicists can physics unlock the secrets within this ancient pyramid 45 centuries ago egyptian workers who knew neither the wheel nor iron built the great pyramid of giza a mountain of 2.3 million stone blocks [Music] this pyramid would be the eternal resting place for pharaoh khufu ruler of the fourth dynasty for several decades given its size one would expect to find awe-inspiring gold and funeral goods on a scale to match those inside tooting commons king tut only reigned for a few years and left no monument to posterity he is famous today simply because his tomb is the only one ever discovered in its original state with its fabulous treasure still intact [Music] no treasure or statue of khufu has ever been found this tiny ivory figurine is all we know of the ruler who left the most monumental pyramid of all while looters raided the pyramid throughout history the tomb was only officially opened in the 9th century by a muslim caliph interested in science and mystery salima ekram an egyptologist based in egypt for 30 years has studied the accounts left by arab historians from the era this is the entrance to the great pyramid but it wasn't always the case in the 9th century a.d the khalifa mamoon decided he wanted to enter the pyramids and in those days they looked completely different they were in fact covered with shiny white limestone he had heard rumors that inside there were astonishing things there were maps of the world there were all kinds of treasures not really gold and silver so much but actually magical things alma moon's men used an ancient technique heating the stones with a fire and then throwing vinegar on so they would crack [Music] after several months of hard labor mahmoon's team found a corridor descending under the pyramid that led to a room but there was no treasure [Music] they continued their exploration and found another corridor leading to another room it too was empty they named the second room the queen's chamber apparently assuming that king khufu had reserved this room for his wife by the light of their torches they then explored the grand gallery 25 feet high and nearly 165 feet long when marmon and his team came in they were holding their torches aloft and their pictures with bats flying every which way trying to hit them and avoid the torches and being burnt it must have been an extraordinary experience coming into this amazing structure for the first time this is truly one of the most extraordinary and amazing pieces of architecture in the ancient world at the end of this mysterious gallery lay more astonishing proof of the egyptian builder's genius [Music] the so-called king's chamber with its flat ceiling made entirely of precisely fit granite blocks alma moon however had hoped to find much more and at the end of the room they found the sarcophagus of the king neither the room nor the sarcophagus had anything in it all were empty some people had expected malmo to find all kinds of tools and gold but nothing like that seemed to have been here so i suppose that both my mom and his people were rather disappointed [Music] no other comparable rooms have been found in the centuries since despite the lack of success countless explorers have continued the search what has fueled this desire to know the inner secrets of the great pyramid perhaps the answer lies in the museum of egyptology in berlin where a papyrus text from 1700 bc is carefully preserved the westcar papyrus is filled with legends and tales from the era of king khufu according to the papyrus khufu was inspired by the sacred architecture of the god of knowledge and wisdom tote and had secret chambers built into his pyramid to house magic books containing all the knowledge of the day now a new generation is trying to understand the great pyramid mehdi tayubi is a specialist in innovation strategy he has led numerous projects combining art science and technology at dessoci stem in 2013 he met hani halau former minister of higher education and research and now a professor at the faculty of engineering at cairo university together they spent two years preparing the scan pyramids project and gathering the best scientists and engineers once the team is assembled they set out to scan the pyramids this new project is under the aegis of the egyptian ministry of antiquities the faculty of engineers of cairo and hip the heritage innovation and preservation institute founded by tayubi and halal we are a team of neutral scientists there are several theories about how the pyramids were built we are not taking sides our mission is to find proof real evidence all our results will be submitted to and analyzed by a group of egyptologists from the ministry of antiquities [Applause] they will use physics and subatomic particles to see inside this giant structure these particles are created when radiation in the form of cosmic rays from distant supernova hits the earth's atmosphere the cosmic rays then produce several different subatomic particles including muons [Music] about 10 000 muons per square yard hit the earth every minute and move through matter in straight lines muons are less likely to be absorbed when passing through low density matter to create an image with muography nuclear emulsion films record muons as they cross more muon trajectories recorded in a particular direction means there is likely more open space above the film the process is akin to taking an x-ray but on a much larger scale nuclear film is placed inside the pyramid to record how many muons arrive from different locations but before the team attempts to scan the great pyramid the egyptian government has asked them to test the technique on the well-documented bent pyramid at dashur 20 miles from cairo i'm really excited about using this method to take on such a mysterious monument dr kunihiro morishima and his team from the university of nagoya have been chosen to start the muography tests inside the bent pyramid they set up their muon detecting films in the lower room and hope these plates will record the muons passing through the stones creating an image of the room above after 40 days of collecting muon particles dr morishima and his team recovered the films he immediately takes them to the grand egyptian museum where a new laboratory has been placed at his disposal the films will continue to record muons until processed so it is imperative they get to the lab quickly [Music] five four three two one they are developed like photographic film with chemicals fixers rinsing and drying to guarantee the quality of the results the procedure must be carried out very precisely and now they can measure the number of muons recorded it's better than i was expecting as we change depths we can see it going up it moves like this millions of muon trajectories were recorded it's perfect and the data must now be analyzed in detail this work can only be performed one place in the world in japan nagoya's team scans each film individually with a machine that is both a scanner and a microscope and only exists in their lab what is the total resolution of response so this is kind of mega pixel picture you get [Music] yes with the data the machine can reconstruct the trajectories of the muons using algorithms and immense computing power any evidence of particles that are not muons is filtered out so that's why you have 36 computers each computer sensor okay [Music] even with all of this computing power it takes more than four weeks to scan the films from the bent pyramid four weeks during which dr murashima and his students work around the clock and watch as the first myographic image of the pyramid emerges will the image show the upper chamber the fate of the entire scan pyramids project depends on it there's the pyramid you can see the edges the four faces of the pyramid are recognizable and the peak is distinguished in yellow because fewer muons cross the monument where it is thickest what really interests dr murashima's team is invisible to the untrained eye here's a spot where a lot of muons penetrated so that must be it we see the same thing over here even if we have less data could these red pixels represent the upper chamber that the scan was meant to find and could the scan have detected previously unknown cavities to answer these questions dr murashima must compare his results with what is already known for this purpose meditaiubi's french team has created a detailed 3d reconstruction of the bent pyramid and developed specially tailored simulation software the simulation confirms the nagoya team has indeed detected the upper chamber using muography i didn't think it would work this well if an unknown chamber exists it would have been visible in the muographic image but nothing showed up on morishima's films and the team concludes they haven't found any new cavities the entire scan pyramids team travels to cairo to present the first results to the egyptian authorities over the 40 days the emulsion films were exposed to muons in the bent pyramid they recorded 10 million muons i tell you this to give you an idea of the volume of data that needs to be processed penny halal must convince the members of the committee that muography in no way harms the pyramid's integrity and also produces credible results the team explains how muography successfully detected the upper chamber in the bent pyramid the committee gives the green light for the project to continue but it makes one additional decision scan pyramids must present its next findings to a team led by the well-known egyptologist dr zahi hawas after the successful test at the bent pyramid the team prepares to tackle the pyramid of pharaoh khufu but before the muography work begins infrared thermography specialists look for differences in temperature on the surface that could indicate a potential void inside specialists in infrared thermography spend several days surveying the pyramid at two different spots in each pyramid there's an almost identical temperature difference as if there were a difference in density in both spots there's a density difference here between there there and there if the monument shows abnormal thermal activity in certain areas if some zones are warmer or cooler than the surrounding blocks it could signal a void inside the pyramid the system records an image every 60 seconds as the sun changes position over the pyramid blue and green colors indicate cooler temperatures reds and yellows warmer ones in just a few days barrett finds several irregularities but the most significant one is located here around the chevron-shaped stones on the pyramid's north face differences in temperature suggest the existence of a previously unknown cavity it's all quite extraordinary horizontal to the chevrons and on the right there's cold air coming out i don't know why but the temperature varies by 6 8 or 10 degrees celsius whereas the overall temperature is currently stable at 24 degrees so something's there [Music] castaneda takes another set of readings on the north face of the pyramid to confirm the first measurements to ensure accuracy additional instruments record the slightest variations in wind speed and surrounding temperatures the work is carried out in 24-hour cycles despite blustery overnight winds and extreme daytime temperatures that wreak havoc on the sensitive cameras castaneda manages to complete three full observation cycles the results of this extended analysis confirm a thermal anomaly around the chevrons you have to imagine that when the pyramid was finished 4 500 years ago it was perfectly smooth the chevrons were hidden so they quite probably had some internal structural purpose inside the pyramids ancient egyptians used stone rafters to keep ceilings from collapsing under the weight of thousands of tons of stone above them in theory these rafters indicate the likely presence of a room beneath [Music] inevitably we asked ourselves a lot of architectural questions why are there so many chevrons to protect a descending corridor that slopes down it seems like a lot of work for such a small passageway it's an area that raises lots of questions so then when jean-claude barrett found thermal anomalies and laval confirmed them we knew we needed to explore further and there's the descending corridor which isn't open to tourists so we can set up our plates and no one can touch them so let's do it let's observe dr murashima's team places 151 muon detector plates inside the pyramid with the results of the infrared thermography tests serving as a guide the films are positioned in the area behind the rafters where the large temperature variations suggest a cavity [Music] if a new cavity is located here it will be found as planned from the outset of the project the scan pyramids team also installs films in an area closed to the public in the heart of the pyramid the queen's chamber [Music] dr morishima has improved the sensitivity of his films so that they are now more resistant to heat and moisture and can record muons for more than 70 days [Music] positioning the plates in the center of the pyramid maximizes the field of detection and encompasses a large part of khufu's tomb including areas where voids like the king's chamber and the grand gallery are known to be but the setup in the queen's chamber isn't finished the scan pyramids team has asked dr morishima to place additional films in another small tunnel dug by looters [Music] the scientists hope that by combining the muography from the queen's chamber with results from this tunnel they can determine both the location and the size of any unknown chambers if we position the films in just one spot our vision is limited it makes it harder to calculate the depth of the detected void and also its height if we install the plates in two different spots we can see from two different angles and we can estimate the height of what we find meanwhile in france the team is preparing the next phase of operations with dr sebastian procurer a specialist in subatomic particles like muons there are two types of thin traces the ones that zigzag a little are electrons the traces that are practically straight are the muons procurer and his colleagues are just completing the construction of three muon telescopes specifically designed for the project these ultra sensitive detectors must be assembled in a dust free room each telescope is equipped with four sensors an argon-based gas mixture flows inside the sensors and allows them to detect muons in the interest of safety the team decides to install the telescopes outside the pyramid on the chance the dangerous argon gas leaks out the telescopes are shipped to cairo and then delivered to the pyramid for now the telescope is pointed at the center of the pyramid but in terms of height we want to point it at the notch which is about two-thirds of the northeast edge so we need to tilt it above the horizon about 45 50 degrees then visually we're good the telescopes are first pointed at a mysterious notch in the pyramid's exterior that has never been fully explained while the scientists hope to find new rooms they also want to answer one of the biggest mysteries of all how exactly did the ancient egyptians build this amazing monument new theories are proposed all the time particularly related to the type of ramp used to raise the stones up so high in the 2000s the architect jean-pierre hudan developed the idea of an internal ramp that allowed stones to be brought to the summit 480 feet above ground according to him the notch would be linked to the internal ramp to get a closer look at this notch the project receives special permission to climb the pyramid the ascent can be dangerous as the limestone blocks could crumble underfoot i guess the safety equipment wasn't such a bad idea seem from this height the magnitude of the work done by the builders of the pyramids seems even more impressive [Music] the group is intrigued by a space behind the notch was this room designed during the construction of the pyramid or created centuries later what could it have been used for an endoscope allows them to peer behind these large blocks what's interesting about this room is that between the big blocks we see orifices with much smaller stones we get the impression that some passages extend rather far so it's interesting to try to see as far as possible what's hidden back there if there are more big stones or other structures using the endoscope gives them a sense of the pyramid's inner masonry but muography is needed to find out more the telescopes must first detect this small room in order to prove their effectiveness it's their calibration test if there are other cavities in this area their instruments should find them as well [Music] the telescopes are left in place for several months and must remain in a fixed position the entire time in total the team installs three telescopes on different sides of the northeast ridge the terrain and extreme heat which can reach up to 113 degrees caused several unexpected technical problems if the plastic expands it'll move a bit then the instruments the detectors won't be in exactly the same spot and they won't end up pointing in the same direction over time so we need reinforcement to make it more stable after three days the technical issues are sorted out the telescopic muography shows the first traces of muons recorded as they appear in real time each dot on the image is actually the path of a muon we've reconstructed about a hundred thousand muons in eight hours and the telescopes weren't even at full power the fact that we can see the pyramid after seven or eight hours is pretty promising obviously it's too early to look for things because we still have very little data but in a few weeks we'll have hundreds of times more than what we've got here and then it will really get interesting we're gonna see things then the minister of antiquities and dr hawas drop in for a surprise visit hawas now heads the committee of egyptologists which is in charge of evaluating the project's results and he is skeptical of the technology how can i yes trust that this type of things can be hacked you can say okay here there is a cavity because we have more violence less absorption and here we don't have any cavity because we have more absorption when you have a report of the result of the work here yeah you should present it to the minister yes and the minister will give it to the committee the scientific committee will be evaluated and after that we can think based on his decision what can we say about any result inside we don't want to make balloons from a scientific point of view we are we are 99 sure that this technique is valid the significant show us everything we hope that this technique could be accurate actually i don't believe uh on all these type of techniques personally i hope that i will be wrong and they will show me something accurate because all the science that has been done with pyramids for the last 100 years it's a result of the air because we know inside the great pyramid there is cavities there is i really believe that cube's burial chamber is still hidden inside i do hope that i am wrong and these techniques will bring something back thank you under pressure from the committee of egyptologists the team redoubles its efforts [Music] inside the queen's chamber they place a detector brought in by a third muography group from japan's high energy lab kek to make room for the kek team to set up its instrument dr murashima has retrieved the set of films placed 70 days earlier with two teams the data captured inside the pyramid doubles strengthening the accuracy of the analysis we have six people working for this device and analysis they are well trained their expertise world top class are to be honest kek has 20 years experience using a type of neographic instrument called a scintillator that emits flashes of light when a muon penetrates a special plastic for the pyramid a much more compact and mobile scintillator was built to fit inside the queen's chamber kek's machine also records muons in the upper part of the pyramid will the two japanese teams see the same thing once the scintillator is installed dr morishima also places new emulsion films in the queen's chamber the more data gathered the more reliable their findings will be there are now three types of muon detectors in place the scintillator and emulsion films inside the pyramid and the telescopes pointed at the edge of the northeast ridge outside the pyramid [Music] in photography it takes only one millisecond for billions of photons to form an image but in muography it takes several months to obtain an image especially with a structure as large and dense as the pyramid the only thing to do now is wait wait for the muons to reveal the innermost secrets of the pyramid for months egyptian students trained in muography monitored the equipment transmitting data regulating the argon gas and sorting out internet connection issues they are the guardians of these cosmic particle detectors [Music] once the data collection ends a marathon of analysis begins in france they process the information from the exterior telescopes this is the image we got with the first telescope over 3 million muons were reconstructed we now have a relatively clear view of the notch that's two-thirds up along the northeast edge the telescopes appear to have detected the cavity behind the notch so they know the technique works and they begin to see an anomaly above the cavity so maybe there's another kind of notch hidden here maybe so if there's another notch here we should see even more muons accumulating right along the edge after three months of collecting data and almost as much time analyzing it sebastian procurer confirms the telescopes have detected another cavity about 365 feet along the edge some 90 feet above the notch they visited this new cavity is similar in size to the one below this mission is really a first the first time we've detected very tiny voids at such great distances do these similarly sized cavities support the internal ramp theory are there more cavities along other edges further investigation is needed to answer these questions [Music] meanwhile at the university of nagoya the films placed in the descending corridor behind the stone rafters are scanned and analyzed before those placed in the queen's [Music] chamber [Music] i've aligned them for the first time there seems to be something on the vertical axis what could it be if that shape remains even after we compare it to the simulation it means there could very well be something there does this finding match the infrared thermography results the nagoya team is cautious what do you think there does indeed seem to be something there towards the middle dr murichima doesn't want to jump to any conclusions [Music] he travels to paris to discuss his findings with the other members of the scan pyramids project they zero in on a small surplus of muons that seems to suggest a startling discovery murashimo's results are compared with benoit marini's computer simulations and two other simulators used in particle physics they spend three full days analyzing and comparing all of the data and their simulations [Music] the team does not want to claim success until they've checked everything several times [Music] in the end they reached the same conclusion [Laughter] they have indeed detected a cavity behind the rafters the rate of certainty 99.9999 to the first discovery made by nagoya university this may be the first discovery inside the great pyramid in centuries and it was accomplished using the latest non-invasive technologies but it raises new questions what is the exact shape of the cavity is it a room a corridor if it is a corridor how far into the pyramid does it lead muography may be a boon to egyptologists allowing them to peer inside a pyramid without moving a single stone but this is only the first of several potential discoveries made dr murashima has more great news to announce [Music] the films from the queen's chamber have detected yet another enormous void higher up in the pyramid that's the anomaly and we see it almost all the way to zero any further exploration with muon films requires permission from the egyptian authorities [Music] to obtain that permission the team must present their findings to the ministry of antiquities and dr zahi hawas hilal and tayubi choose to present their first two discoveries the cavity behind the rafters [Music] and the new cavity found on the northeast ridge but they keep the huge anomaly detected to themselves for further study this time the meeting with the egyptologists is held behind closed doors no cameras allowed please can you just go outside that's enough we are going to begin the the conference now please in the end the committee authorizes scanned pyramids to continue their work on the khufu pyramid but barely the committee calls the two discoveries mere anomalies dr hawas and the committee of egyptologists remain unconvinced the questions and the other egyptologists asked us was whether the detected voids might be due to a sub-density for example stones that are smaller than others in fact they didn't actually believe that there are voids so we had what i call the big stone versus little stone episode and it took some time before we could actually convince them that muography confirms the presence of voids and the volume of those voids nevertheless armed with their new permit and a detailed plan the team heads back into the field dr morishima places new films next to the granite blocks and in the alma moon passageway to determine the exact location of the start of the corridor detected behind the chevrons he also places new films in another tunnel dug by looters located just before the king's chamber a key spot that could make it possible to learn more about the enormous anomaly detected in the upper part of the pyramid this void is gigantic if scientists confirm that it is indeed a cavity then it could be comparable in size to the grand gallery no one suspected a space of this size could be located here with dr murashima's results in mind the team redirects the three exterior telescopes toward the center of the north face where the enormous cavity was detected the hope is that by observing the north face from different angles including the exterior all three muography teams can confirm the cavity's presence as they begin this new stage in the project they don't know how much time and hard work will be needed to collect the maximum amount of data each team works independently so they don't influence each other now it's the kek team's turn to find the intriguing irregularity i don't know yet whether it's an unknown structure but i get the impression there's something unusual once the analysis is far enough along all the teams gather in paris to compare their results when we highlight the anomaly we see this elongated shape appear that means by looking upwards from these two spots we found a huge cavity stretching in the same direction as the grand gallery this is the proof that we found a large cavity above the grand gallery when we moved the scintillator to the second location we were able to find this new structure that confirms nagoya's findings so we need to take an anomaly in right cavity now even the telescopes outside the pyramid detect and confirm the existence of this immense void the findings of all three teams point to the same spot all three groups have found a gigantic void roughly 14 000 cubic feet located between 170 and 230 feet up the void is comparable to the volume of a 200 seat airplane and is at least 100 feet long we know we've got a large void here equivalent in volume to the grand gallery we know this volume may be accessible from the north face and maybe we're going to find other cavities so basically we found a new circuit within the pyramid we've made discoveries in the pyramid and we're going to stop talking about big stones and little stones we're finally going to update the map of this pyramid with major discoveries [Applause] the discovery of this great cavity is a genuine success for the entire team [Music] the young scientists from nagoya particularly relish this victory in paris for two years they worked around the clock developing more than 1 000 muon films and making some 20 trips to cairo since no one's been in these chambers for four thousand five hundred years i hope we find old proprietor scrolls or even maybe kufu's mummy in any case what would be amazing is to find something no one ever even imagined before announcing these discoveries to the entire world meditaiubi and the team shared them with egyptologist peter der manwellian of harvard university manuelian is an egyptologist passionate about new technology justice tyubi's high-tech team is passionate about ancient egypt they choose to present their results in augmented reality i'm seeing a massive area can you explain this one it's just between 55 meters from the ground to 70 meters to refine those data we don't know if this cavity is horizontal or oblique but what i can tell you is that this cavity is between and 405 cubic meter wow so you're talking grand gallery size this is a second cavity that is potentially as large as the grain gathered yes incredible so now we need to know what the shape of this thing is and hopefully that would lead to what the purpose of this is exactly so what we did with pierre what we did also with benoit is that we have simulated some architectural hypotheses at this point there are several potential hypotheses one room or many rooms horizontal or sloping like a second grand gallery the second big discovery is this corridor just here behind the nose face the scanned pyramids team has determined the corridor behind the rafters is located 55 to 75 feet above ground and that it is either horizontal or possibly slopes upward our dream would be that those two discoveries are connected one to each other so now it's a game of relationships what's the relationship between these two discoveries so what is this giant new room is it architectural is it ceremonial is it religious what kind of purpose did it serve was it a storeroom for burial equipment will the team find furniture like that found in the tomb of khufu's mother is the room still intact like king tuts to when it was discovered [Music] is there some truth to the legend described in the west car papyrus could it contain papyrus scrolls belonging to pharaoh khufu that would provide new insight into the fourth dynasty today we know that there's a corridor behind the north face of the pyramid we know it starts two meters from the facade so maybe it's time to develop some exploratory methods and in fact we have actually started to come up with some new ideas jean-baptiste moray one of the world's top researchers in robotics has joined the scan pyramids team for future exploration inside the pyramid he is developing tiny robotic cameras able to fit through holes barely one inch in diameter these cameras will photograph the area of the cavity behind the chevrons that is inaccessible to the scientists to prepare for the next phase of the mission the team has also developed a virtual reality experience to explore the seventh wonder of the world and the new discoveries what's great about this mission isn't just discovering and learning what's inside the pyramid but also the fact that it advances technology and science at the same time scan pyramids discoveries are remarkable the second cavity on the northeast ridge that may be part of an internal ramp system during construction a new corridor behind the chevron stones on the north face and perhaps most dramatically the enormous cavity first detected by morishima's films and confirmed by both the scintillator and the exterior telescopes any object or scroll found inside these rooms untouched for 45 centuries would be an exceptional discovery but the detection of these new cavities is already a major breakthrough this is the first time since the middle ages that spaces of this size have been found inside this enigmatic monument today we seem closer than ever to solving the mystery of khufu

Channel: Ancient History Nerd

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Length: 54min 32sec (3272 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020

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