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

bbc.co.uk

141–150 of 246 posts

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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the giant monolith/megalith structures in Russia are out of this world. Personally I think some of the footage and pictures of them are more impressive than the pyramids. The size of the blocks compared to a human is just incredible.

Like?

Gornaya Shoria megaliths [1] maybe? But they are not man-made.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gornaya_Shoria_megaliths

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orbits decay, often at a plannable rate. Eventually it crashes back to earth and becomes an archeological relic for future explorers. I bet you could even design the sattelite to burn specatularly (in many colors) on the way down so it's more likely to be seen and sought after.

Though, it would most likely end up in the ocean since the majority of the earth's surface is covered by water.

Just put enough satellites so it's statically very likely that one will land on land. (Although I don't see the point of this project)

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

#143
post #53

Does HN have any domain experts that can comment on how reliable this research is? I got super excited about the Queen Nefertiti / King Tut secret chamber theory a year or two back (which used similar methods, it seemed), and was really disappointed when it turned out to be all wrong...

Co-author here. This is not the same method at all and this is much more reliable. For King Tut, they used ground penetration radar, which is very hard to interpret. Here: (1) this is confirmed by 3 independent teams using 3 different detection technologies, (2) we used the same statistical criteria as for discoveries in particle physics (deviation 5 sigma from the model). In addition, we clearly see the new void on…

I'm definitely looking forward to where this research takes us. I'm curious if there have been any efforts to create a muon-like transmitter that would add more flexibility to the sensor system. Is there something about muons that prohibits this?

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

#144
post #121
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.

This is something I think about a lot. How do we build a "data pyramid" that can be interpreted by future generations. I feel like much of our culture will be lost to bit rot.

Wikipedia could be encoded into DNA and them spliced into species that are very long lived, geologically speaking, such as horseshoe crabs. Absent any negative selection against "wiki DNA", they could remain readable in millions of years time.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-author here. This is not the same method at all and this is much more reliable. For King Tut, they used ground penetration radar, which is very hard to interpret. Here: (1) this is confirmed by 3 independent teams using 3 different detection technologies, (2) we used the same statistical criteria as for discoveries in particle physics (deviation 5 sigma from the model). In addition, we clearly see the new void on…

I'm definitely looking forward to where this research takes us. I'm curious if there have been any efforts to create a muon-like transmitter that would add more flexibility to the sensor system. Is there something about muons that prohibits this?

This would basically require a LHC-like particle accelerator.

However, we can acquire data for more time (depending on the detector technology), which will give us more statistics.

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

#146
post #58

This diagram shows a shaft going into this void from two sides. I was wondering why they don't send a robot down into those. Seems the answer is that they have, but there's something blocking the shaft and they're not willing to destroy it any further for some reason: http://guardians.net/hawass/articles/news_on_the_robot_Dec_2... http://www.crystalinks.com/gantenbrink.html http://www.gizapower.com/Articles/door2.htm…

"...for some reason:" - they shouldn't be allowed to destroy such an important monument to satisfy their curiosity.

I was at the Vatican museum recently and was surprised to see most sculptures appeared to be permanently damaged for embedding a number label. (example: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hvqlG6iPcP8/UGzso1C3AcI/AAAAAAAAJF...)

I agree with you, let’s not be arrogant, like in the past, and destroy what we should save for future generations.

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

#147
post #144
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I think about a lot. How do we build a "data pyramid" that can be interpreted by future generations. I feel like much of our culture will be lost to bit rot.

Wikipedia could be encoded into DNA and them spliced into species that are very long lived, geologically speaking, such as horseshoe crabs. Absent any negative selection against "wiki DNA", they could remain readable in millions of years time.

You will need a very strong error correction scheme. It is not necessary to have a negative selection against "wiki DNA", if there is not positive selection the error will accumulate quickly.

With a quick googling, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate#Variation_in_mut... I think that a mutation rate of 10^-5 per base per generation is a good estimation for humans. Let's assume 10^-6 per base per year. So after a million year, with no selection pressure, probably more than a half of the bases will be overwritten with garbage.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...for some reason:" - they shouldn't be allowed to destroy such an important monument to satisfy their curiosity.

I was at the Vatican museum recently and was surprised to see most sculptures appeared to be permanently damaged for embedding a number label. (example: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hvqlG6iPcP8/UGzso1C3AcI/AAAAAAAAJF... ) I agree with you, let’s not be arrogant, like in the past, and destroy what we should save for future generations.

I was also there in april, and I am surprised the tourists and kids are left unattended, taking selfies, touching everything. It's an accident waiting to happen. Most tourists (ashamed to admit, but this includes me) don't actually appreciate or care about ancient art, it's more like been there, done that.

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

#149
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.

Yes, most of them didn't last more than a few years before the bits started falling off. This may partially have been because most of them were SD (720kb) that I'd drilled the HD (1440kb) marker hole into to save money. Worked fine at the time, but probably didn't help boost their longevity.

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

#150
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia could be encoded into DNA and them spliced into species that are very long lived, geologically speaking, such as horseshoe crabs. Absent any negative selection against "wiki DNA", they could remain readable in millions of years time.

You will need a very strong error correction scheme. It is not necessary to have a negative selection against "wiki DNA", if there is not positive selection the error will accumulate quickly. With a quick googling, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate#Variation_in_mut... I think that a mutation rate of 10^-5 per base per generation is a good estimation for humans. Let's assume 10^-6 per base per year. So after…

It'd be smarter to simply integrate it into a genome, make copies, extract it, then lyophilize and store it. Don't house it in an organism.
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