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

21–30 of 246 posts

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

#21

Post by [deleted] »

krapp wrote: post #15
yoodenvranx wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic but perhaps someone has an answer: After finishing "Dark Forest" / "Death’s End" I somehow ended up with the questions if our way of doing archaeology is actually a good idea. Currently we i) remove a lot of things from the ground / graves / ruins, ii) analyze them, iii) put them in a museum and iv) write books about them. This means that all the knowledge about those artifacts and our history is s…

Human minds and physical artifacts are still the least fragile and volatile storage medium known. Software requires infrastructure, hardware, regular maintenance and domain knowledge, a brittle chain. Consider that we still have cuneiform tablets from ancient Babylon, and we can decipher them due to physical and cultural artifacts persisting over generations. But... we have already lost the masters of the Apollo moon…

[deleted]

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

#22

Post by acjohnson55 »

dominotw wrote: post #12
yoodenvranx wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic but perhaps someone has an answer: After finishing "Dark Forest" / "Death’s End" I somehow ended up with the questions if our way of doing archaeology is actually a good idea. Currently we i) remove a lot of things from the ground / graves / ruins, ii) analyze them, iii) put them in a museum and iv) write books about them. This means that all the knowledge about those artifacts and our history is s…

save them from isis and rebels ? Better in museums than on ebay.

Unless ISS loots the museums, which is also in their playbook.

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

#23

Post by jmnicolas »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic but perhaps someone has an answer: After finishing "Dark Forest" / "Death’s End" I somehow ended up with the questions if our way of doing archaeology is actually a good idea. Currently we i) remove a lot of things from the ground / graves / ruins, ii) analyze them, iii) put them in a museum and iv) write books about them. This means that all the knowledge about those artifacts and our history is s…

Einstein said "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

I don't think archeology will be of much concern after WWIII.

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

#24

Post by EGreg »

jmnicolas wrote: post #23
yoodenvranx wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic but perhaps someone has an answer: After finishing "Dark Forest" / "Death’s End" I somehow ended up with the questions if our way of doing archaeology is actually a good idea. Currently we i) remove a lot of things from the ground / graves / ruins, ii) analyze them, iii) put them in a museum and iv) write books about them. This means that all the knowledge about those artifacts and our history is s…

Einstein said "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." I don't think archeology will be of much concern after WWIII.

This. And we don't even need WW3. Consider the amount of desertification, greenhouse gases, and reduction of biodiversity and extrapolate.

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

#25

Post by ChrisBland »

krapp wrote: post #15
yoodenvranx wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic but perhaps someone has an answer: After finishing "Dark Forest" / "Death’s End" I somehow ended up with the questions if our way of doing archaeology is actually a good idea. Currently we i) remove a lot of things from the ground / graves / ruins, ii) analyze them, iii) put them in a museum and iv) write books about them. This means that all the knowledge about those artifacts and our history is s…

Human minds and physical artifacts are still the least fragile and volatile storage medium known. Software requires infrastructure, hardware, regular maintenance and domain knowledge, a brittle chain. Consider that we still have cuneiform tablets from ancient Babylon, and we can decipher them due to physical and cultural artifacts persisting over generations. But... we have already lost the masters of the Apollo moon…

Somewhere, someone has thrown away a copy of Javascript the good parts, that will be humanity's saving grace.

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

#26

Post by vowelless »

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

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

#27

Post by ivanhoe »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #7
yoodenvranx wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic but perhaps someone has an answer: After finishing "Dark Forest" / "Death’s End" I somehow ended up with the questions if our way of doing archaeology is actually a good idea. Currently we i) remove a lot of things from the ground / graves / ruins, ii) analyze them, iii) put them in a museum and iv) write books about them. This means that all the knowledge about those artifacts and our history is s…

With launch costs coming down it'll soon be more practical to launch a satellite into orbit that can store this information for a long time.

Sounds like it's a safer option, but requires that you have the technology and energy sources to communicate with that satellite - which is not really 100% reliable if you are about to experience a planet-wide catastrophe of such magnitude that it would require storing data outside of the Earth surface in a first place.

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

#28

Post by paulsutter »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic but perhaps someone has an answer: After finishing "Dark Forest" / "Death’s End" I somehow ended up with the questions if our way of doing archaeology is actually a good idea. Currently we i) remove a lot of things from the ground / graves / ruins, ii) analyze them, iii) put them in a museum and iv) write books about them. This means that all the knowledge about those artifacts and our history is s…

The Internet Archive has that goal (archive.org), it’s paid for by Brewster Kahle personally.

> Is there any project which strives to preserve our current knowledge about humanity in some sort of long-term storage so that also people in 500 or 2000 years will be able to reconstruct

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

#29

Post by kbenson »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic but perhaps someone has an answer: After finishing "Dark Forest" / "Death’s End" I somehow ended up with the questions if our way of doing archaeology is actually a good idea. Currently we i) remove a lot of things from the ground / graves / ruins, ii) analyze them, iii) put them in a museum and iv) write books about them. This means that all the knowledge about those artifacts and our history is s…

> During the next WW3 or WW4 those museums might burn down and all archaeologist might be killed in an anti-intellectual purge.

And during no particular war at all, the local government may decide to demolish artifacts and sites for political reasons. For example, China and Tibetan statues and temples. I'm not sure the original locations are very safe either.

Edit: I was actually incorrectly remembering Chinese mining destruction in Afghanistan.[1] I'm not aware of a direct attack on Tibetan artifacts by China beyond their actions to repress the religion in general.

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/ho...

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

#30

Post by jacobush »

dredmorbius wrote: post #16
jacobush wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never to be found again

Stuff in the middle of a lot of not-stuff is fairly findable. Particularly if it has a strong signature on radar or microwave imaging.

I was thinking in the case the civilization lost access to a lot of basic data. Then finding the magic satellite without magic radar, maybe without even knowing about the magic satellite amongst all the other satellites up there.
Post reply on HN