Researchers says existence of Hidden Rooms at Great Pyramid of Giza - San Francisco Technology Time

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Researchers says existence of Hidden Rooms at Great Pyramid of Giza

Thermal scanning of the massive structure indicated that a few of the limestone blocks were hotter than others. They’ve already found something interesting – mysterious heat spots across the pyramids, including one particularly large patch inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, also known as the Khufu pyramid. Another idea is that possibly different materials were used, or internal air currents were responsible for the heat anomalies.

On October 25, the “Scan Pyramids Mission” led by the Faculty of Engineering within Cairo University, and French organization HIP have begun their project

According to the ministry’s release, there could be a number of considerations to explain the thermal anomalies, including difference in materials and internal air currents.

A team of architects and scientists has spotted an “abnormal thermal” activity in the pyramids of Egypt, Egyptian archaeological sources reported.

Other anomalies were detected at the smaller Khafre pyramid of Giza and two pyramids in Dahshur, about 20 kilometers to the south.

Last week saw Republican front-runner and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson defending his suggestion (17 years ago) that the pyramids were not built as pharaonic tombs, but rather they were built by the biblical figure Joseph for the storing of grain.

The experts carried out thermal scanning at all times of the day, including during sunrise as the sun heats the structures from the outside and then during sunset as the pyramids are cooling down. He said the rocks were also “different in formation”, and that similar findings were noted in the middle of the eastern side of the pyramid, as reported by Ahram Online. He said the team will be using muon radiography to help unlock the secrets behind the anomalies.

There may be a chamber or passage revealed behind the wall, but any explanation could reveal a lot about the ancient Egyptians that built the pyramid.

According to Antiquities Minister of Egypt, Mamdouh el-Damaty, technical experts who are working on this project detected thermal differences inside the pyramid during a live camera presentation to the press.

Antiquities Minister Mamduh al-Damati told reporters the new finds were only a beginning

It comes inside the pyramids as specialists hunt for concealed chambers. He wonders what might lie “behind” the three stones that registered on the thermal scans as heat anomalies.

He added that he has several hypotheses in mind, but can not reveal them before conducting further research.

Members of the “Scan Pyramids” project are using non-invasive techniques to put together a complete picture of the internal structure of the pyramids “without drilling the slightest opening,” The New York Times reports. The team found that some stones on the Great Pyramid were six degrees warmer or cooler than neighboring stones, and the differences in temperatures could be caused by the movement of “internal air currents” or the “presence of voids beneath the surface” of the blocks, Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities said.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is also known as the Pyramid of Khufu and the Pyramid of Cheops, and is the only wonder of the ancient world still in existence, the Times says. Although more tests need to be conducted, Mamdouh el-Damaty, the Egyptian minister of antiquities, said he’s certain “there is something like a small passage in the ground that you can see, leading up to the pyramids ground, reaching an area with different temperature. What will be behind it?” Catherine Garcia

That is one possible explanation for striking differences in temperature that the multinational research team said it found between the stones at ground level on the eastern side of the 4,500-year-old structure, according to Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities

“The first row of the pyramid’s stones are all uniform, then we come here and find that there’s a difference in the formation,” Mamdouh el-Damaty, the Egyptian minister of antiquities, said to journalists on Monday, according to The Associated Press.

He said the team found “that there is something like a small passage in the ground that you can see, leading up to the pyramids ground, reaching an area with a different temperature. What will be behind it?”

The team also found thermal anomalies on three other pyramids in Giza and Dahshur, 12 miles south, but the ministry said in a statement that the temperature differences detected at the Great Pyramid were “particularly impressive.”

While the anomalies on the other pyramids ranged from 0.1 to 0.5 degrees, the team found that some stones on the Great Pyramid were six degrees warmer or cooler than the stones next to them.

“There is something here,” Hany Helal, a professor at Cairo University involved in the project, told CNN. “Something is not normal with respect to the other parts of the Pyramid.”

The Ministry of Antiquities said the temperature differences could be caused by the “presence of voids beneath the surface” or the movement of “internal air currents” beneath the stone blocks. It said the team’s findings would face further analysis in the coming weeks.

Mehdi Tayoubi, the president of the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute, which is coordinating the project along with Cairo University, tweeted an image of a watercolor painting that he said showed the specific location on the Great Pyramid where the thermal anomaly was detected.

The Great Pyramid, also known as the Pyramid of Khufu or the Pyramid of Cheops, is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one that has survived to the present day

As such, it has been studied for hundreds of years.

The announcement on Monday came just two weeks into the “Scan Pyramids” project, a long-term effort being conducted by researchers from Cairo University, the University of Laval in Quebec and Nagoya University in Japan that is scheduled to continue until the end of 2016.

The goal is to use “non-invasive visualization techniques” like infrared scanners, lasers and drones to get a comprehensive picture of the monuments’ internal structure “without drilling the slightest opening,” according to the project’s website.

The ministry said that the team’s next project would be to build a 3-D model of the Giza Plateau in an effort to better understand the construction of the Pyramids.

Last week, the team said in a statement that it would use methods similar to those employed at the Great Pyramid to study the walls of the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, outside the city of Luxor. In September, the anitquities minister told reporters that researchers had found evidence that could point to the existence of two previously undiscovered rooms there, too, according to National Geographic.