Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 246 posts

Re: 'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

#101

Post by nkoren »

vowelless wrote: post #26
f_allwein wrote: post #14

Interesting how the pyramids have been around for 4500 years and we still don't know all about their structure... Fun fact: there's a Neolithic site in Ireland, Newgrange, that's actually older than the pyramids. Fascinating and worth a visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange

Nothing blows my mind more than Göbekli Tepe, especially its age. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe

Fun fact: Cleopatra and Mark Antony etc. lived closer in time to the invention of mobile phones than to the construction of the Great Pyramids. Egyptian history is deep.

Funner fact: the Great Pyramids were built closer in time to the invention of mobile phones than to the construction of Göbekli Tepe. Human history is way deep.

Funnest fact: if we don't fuck it up, we're still only at the dawn of history, not at the end of it.

Re: 'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

#102

Post by the_rosentotter »

f_allwein wrote: post #14

Interesting how the pyramids have been around for 4500 years and we still don't know all about their structure... Fun fact: there's a Neolithic site in Ireland, Newgrange, that's actually older than the pyramids. Fascinating and worth a visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange

It seems that peoples through the ages have respected the pyramids enough to leave them mostly intact and undisturbed, giving us the unique heritage that we have today. I can't help but contrast this with the British explorers who just started blowing through it with explosives and pulling stuff out wholesale.

Re: 'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

#103

Post by irrational »

qubex wrote: post #74
f_allwein wrote: post #14

Interesting how the pyramids have been around for 4500 years and we still don't know all about their structure... Fun fact: there's a Neolithic site in Ireland, Newgrange, that's actually older than the pyramids. Fascinating and worth a visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange

Imagine if they find an opened chamber, and that it contains artefacts that can be carbon-dated, and they turn out to be thousands of years older than conventional Egyptology expects. (I expect there will be artefacts, and I expect their dates will coincide with what we already expect, but I’m always holding out for ”new science” that needs to be explained.)

While we are imagining unlikely thing, I'm going to imagine there are instructions from aliens (yes, the same ones that actually built the pyramids, don't ya know) on how to build a faster than light drive.

Re: 'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

#104

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dkersten wrote: post #86
qubex wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if they find an opened chamber, and that it contains artefacts that can be carbon-dated, and they turn out to be thousands of years older than conventional Egyptology expects. (I expect there will be artefacts, and I expect their dates will coincide with what we already expect, but I’m always holding out for ”new science” that needs to be explained.)

There are thousands of sumerian cuneiform tablets left to translate, if you're bored ;-) Many of these predate the pyramids by a thousand years or so. Most translated ones contain mundane enough stuff, so its likely that the rest are similar, but if you're looking for something ancient to discover something in, I can't think of a better place to look given their age and that they're already found (ie available to rea…

Suprised they're not largely machine readable given the geometric nature of cuneiform. You might have to aggressively guess some combinations as the components of hte symbols aren't always well separated but it seems easier than reading current alphabets/characters.

I did get in to cuneiform at one point in the past but the dictionary to translate was, IIRC, over £1k.

Any good links you can suggest for corpus of works that are likely to yield interesting output, and sources to aid in that?

What software is good for aiding such translation work?

Re: 'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

#105

Post by irrational »

sdfjkl wrote: post #82

Amazing this stuff still yields secrets after thousands of years. Meanwhile the 3.5" floppy disks in my parents attic on which I've kept all my teenage Turbo Pascal source code have long lost all their data.

Real programmers store their source code on baked clay tablets.

Re: 'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

#106

Post by [deleted] »

the_rosentotter wrote: post #102
f_allwein wrote: post #14

Interesting how the pyramids have been around for 4500 years and we still don't know all about their structure... Fun fact: there's a Neolithic site in Ireland, Newgrange, that's actually older than the pyramids. Fascinating and worth a visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange

It seems that peoples through the ages have respected the pyramids enough to leave them mostly intact and undisturbed, giving us the unique heritage that we have today. I can't help but contrast this with the British explorers who just started blowing through it with explosives and pulling stuff out wholesale.

[deleted]

Re: 'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

#107

Post by radiorental »

acqq wrote: post #62
radiorental wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also read that given the economic instability in Cairo, it's just a royal PITA to visit. Tourists get aggressively hassled to buy stuff, camel rides, tours, etc. I've been to New Grange and Stonehenge. While it's pretty neat to go there, it's just a structure. The real value and interest for me is reading up on what the researchers have found out. Let the plinths for Stonehendge were quarried 150 miles away in w…

> it's just a structure You haven't been in front of it, right? Not being there once, needing to spend your time and energy, standing there and thinking how old it is, seeing how big it is, makes easier to say something like that.

I've been inside New Grange and up close to Stonehenge. By all means, if you're in the area they are must sees.

I just get more out of the research and you don't have to visit to get that.

Re: 'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

#108

Post by bmaupin »

sdfjkl wrote: post #82

Amazing this stuff still yields secrets after thousands of years. Meanwhile the 3.5" floppy disks in my parents attic on which I've kept all my teenage Turbo Pascal source code have long lost all their data.

Way off topic, but have you actually tried to read them? I was able to get data off some ~25 year old 5.25" C64 diskettes a few months ago, encouraged by success with data recovery from some 3.5" diskettes a few months before that.

Re: 'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

#109

Post by dmix »

Interestingly the original search for these empty secret chambers in the pyramid helped an architect come up with one of the best theories on how it was built: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d83mn1yxCHc

Using a combination of an external ramp, up until the point of the King's chamber, then from there it used an internal ramp system that snaked around the edges.

Re: 'Big Void' Identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

#110

Post by soneca »

soVeryTired wrote: post #96
Piskvorrr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, no. The diagram is 2D, pyramid is 3D; by losing one dimension, disjoint objects seem connected. Even in the image, shaft passes behind the void, not through it. (In other words, this is not a girl with a tree growing out of her head, either: https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/188/434949407_3271582421_z.jpg... )

Fair point, if a touch aggressive

Agree. Instead of just educate, gp decided to present him/herself as a superior person for noticing this "obvious" insight
Post reply on HN