eli5: What is the great pyramid’s big void and why is it interesting?
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Researchers used radiation from space to take something similar to an x-ray of the pyramid, and found that there’s a hollow space that’s sealed off from the other chambers.
It might just be an empty space that wasn’t filled in during construction for some reason, or it might be a room of some kind with stuff in it.
The Egyptian government isn’t too keen on letting anyone drill holes in the pyramid to find out, so for now they’re trying to find less invasive methods of figuring out if anything is in there.
It is a hypothesized empty space that was discovered by observing muons that were passing through the pyramid. It has not yet been investigated directly – by trying to find a way into it – as far as I’m aware. The muon observation method was also able to detect the grand gallery, which was already well known.
One reason the void is interesting is that there are some archeologists and engineers that think that both the void and grand gallery were used in the construction of the pyramid, as inclines that were used to slide the capstones over the king’s chamber into place. If you look up the internal ramp theory, you can see one idea of how both may have been used.
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