Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.co.uk

241–246 of 246 posts

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

#241
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…

Probably there would be "signal decay", but one can still make sense of a text when many of the letters are missing. So the decay would have to be more than 50% for the message to be completely useless.

Also, a million years is quite a long time, I doubt there are many media one could use that one could expect to still be at least half readable in one million years time.

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, humans have always had to focus on their own self-preservation and only recently have we had the luxury to care for the past at the expense of the present.

What good would destroying a pyramid do in regards for self-preservation?

There's gold in there!

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

#243
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, ok, so your point was that we really don't know for sure that the pyramids (or, at least, the Kufu one) is as old as we believe, because the dating that has been done is somewhat dubious, and you are hoping it is much older? My point doesn't really go against this, just that it may be more practical to look at what we already have access to, but is largely not translated. Also, since we have dated many other Egyp…

My point is subtle. We definitely know when the ancient Egyptian civilisation existed, and that has been definitely dated by many coherent methods: carbon dating of artefacts at other sites, historical record, and archeological layers. The issue (which I am perfectly aware merely articulating makes me sound like a kook, but hear me out and know beforehand that I am very skeptical about the likelihood of what I am sta…

I agree, it would be good to prove scientifically instead of relying on fallacious circular reasoning and assumptions, and it would certainly be exciting if it proved that there was more to the story.

My main point was simply that given that the oldest written texts we have are Sumerian cuneiform, it would seem likely that if there were written texts hidden in the pyramids which predates Ancient Egyptian civilisation, it would likely be cuneiform too, although it would be incredible if even older texts were found (and decipherable)! Early-human history is very interesting.

(I am aware that there is older proto-writing than cuneiform, but not complete written texts)

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

#245
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is subtle. We definitely know when the ancient Egyptian civilisation existed, and that has been definitely dated by many coherent methods: carbon dating of artefacts at other sites, historical record, and archeological layers. The issue (which I am perfectly aware merely articulating makes me sound like a kook, but hear me out and know beforehand that I am very skeptical about the likelihood of what I am sta…

I agree, it would be good to prove scientifically instead of relying on fallacious circular reasoning and assumptions, and it would certainly be exciting if it proved that there was more to the story. My main point was simply that given that the oldest written texts we have are Sumerian cuneiform, it would seem likely that if there were written texts hidden in the pyramids which predates Ancient Egyptian civilisation…

I’d never really entertained the notion that there might be earlier forms of writing, and if they existed, what form they might be expected to take. This is a really fascinating issue. Maybe we’ll find scribbles that resemble Linear-A (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A) all over the inside of this hidden space. Wouldn’t that be exciting, even if we couldn’t read it?!

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

#246
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could put in an orbit that would have a predefined reentry in the future. Design the satellite to survive reentry and somehow safely land in a way that relies on a mechanical system that wouldn't degrade like electronics in space would.

> You could put in an orbit that would have a predefined reentry in the future. it isn't clear what you mean by this, but there's no picking where something will reenter hundreds of years in the future. if you just want to ensure that it will reenter, sooner or later, that's easily done. > Design the satellite to survive reentry and somehow safely land in a way that relies on a mechanical system that wouldn't degrade…

You can calculate an estimate of reentry from atmospheric drag. It's not going to be exact but anything you throw up into LEO is going to come down someday and as long as the atmosphere doesn't change too much, it should be fairly close.

http://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Category/Educational/Space%20Weath...

Post reply on HN