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

bbc.co.uk

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

#31

Post by wmil »

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…

> Is this actually a problem which current archaeologist think about?

That's not really an archaeologist problem. But there are a few projects to do things like print off wikipedia on low acid paper and store it in vaults.

Also the memory of mankind project is storing ceramic tablets in a salt mine.

https://www.memory-of-mankind.com/

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161018-the-worlds-knowledg...

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

#32

Post by moftz »

ivanhoe wrote: post #27
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#33

Post by sandos »

willvarfar wrote: post #8
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…

Current archeologists only excavate sites 'at risk' e.g. new building development or looting. In all other cases, they strive to do non-intrusive exploration e.g. ground penetrating radar and lidar.

Why isnt radar used for pyramid? If we have ground-penetrating radar it should work for pyramids, no?

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

#35

Post by dkersten »

paulsutter wrote: post #28
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

I hope they're recording all of the data on stone tablets in cuneiform, instead of in some digital format for which reading hardware will be obsolete in a few years... ;-)

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

#36

Post by willvarfar »

sandos wrote: post #33
willvarfar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current archeologists only excavate sites 'at risk' e.g. new building development or looting. In all other cases, they strive to do non-intrusive exploration e.g. ground penetrating radar and lidar.

Why isnt radar used for pyramid? If we have ground-penetrating radar it should work for pyramids, no?

It is. Particularly for finding tunnels and chambers near the surface.

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

#37

Post by dkersten »

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…

> Consider that we still have cuneiform tablets from ancient Babylon, and we can decipher them due to physical and cultural artifacts persisting over generations.

I've been on a bit of a wikipedia binge recently: Its actually even older than that. Babylonia was the Akkadian country that used cuneiform, but Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets exist that are much older still!

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

#38

Post by dredmorbius »

jacobush wrote: post #30
dredmorbius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A billion years is a long time.

That said, a few redundant copies elsewhere wouldn't hurt.

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

#39

Post by coldtea »

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…

>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 even without having access to 'real' artifacts? Is this actually a problem which current archaeologist think about?

That's an interesting project on it's own (and there are various types of "capsules" -- from knowledge to seeds) but it's not particularly relevant to archeology.

Archeological info to be retained is just an small subset of knowledge to be retained in general (e.g. scientific, technological, state records, cultural (music, literature, movies), software, historical, etc).

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

#40

Post by iamben »

dkersten wrote: post #35
paulsutter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I hope they're recording all of the data on stone tablets in cuneiform, instead of in some digital format for which reading hardware will be obsolete in a few years... ;-)

I remember reading about this a while back (probably on HN). They're storing a bunch of data along with the OSs and devices to read it in a bunker in Switzerland, so if we do leave a bunch of digital data, future generations can actually access it. Tried to find a decent article, but this was about the best I could do: https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363904,00.asp
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