The officials say it could have been created to redistribute the pyramid's
weight around the entrance or another as yet undiscovered chamber.
From TFA:
Specialists have linked the corridor to the pyramid’s internal load
management. Its position near the entrance and behind the gabled stonework
suggests it may have helped redirect the immense weight pressing down from
above, much as the relieving chambers over the king’s chamber were designed
to protect spaces below.
Yeah, looks like a "relieving chamber" [0] to me. It'd be interesting to take the densities from muon tomography and plug them into finite element analysis. A recent paper using the muon tomography data to inform comparisons of ramp styles [1] says that further data is needed:
The possibility that the NFC functioned as a relieving chamber has been
previously suggested, though without consensus. . . . where the NFC’s gabled
vault—an architecture well known for load redirection—could act as a
stress-moderating feature, limiting transmission toward the Descending
Passage. This interpretation remains hypothetical and does not imply
intentional design integration; it is based solely on geometric compatibility
and structural plausibility. Verifying a load-management role will require
dedicated finite-element analyses constrained by ERT geometry and improved
characterization of internal stratigraphy.
This is why I'm a huge proponent of teaching history as an exciting course in schools.
Our understanding of the past is constantly evolving and changing shape in significant ways. It's rather sad that so many kids grow up never being exposed to an instructor with such an attitude. So many people consider the topic boring and that's tragic.
I remember this being talked about >20 years ago when the idea came up and they had to get clearance from the Egyptian gov which were not keen on the idea. If this is indeed the same "hidden passage" ... Gee .. 20 years to get clearance.
An alternative alternative view is that the pyramids are >4000 years old and 20 years is nothing in that context, so waiting a few years for technology to improve to the extent that they can be confident that the archeologists can do an investigation in a less invasive way that doesn't cause damage is time well spent.
Fibre-optic endoscopes have been around since the mid 1970s. So technology that is much older than the muon scanning techniques that the ScanPyramids project used to discover the North Face Corridor. The real problem, I think, was that Hawass went on record to reject the ScanPyramids results for reasons known only to Zahi Hawass, despite widespread scientific acceptance of the ScanPyramids papers.
The other alternate view is that it's run by an incompetent narcissist (Zahi Hawass, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Department that controls who can do what in the pyramids). Hawass was not particularly supportive of the original ScanPyramids Project results.
'On November 2, 2017, the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass told the New York Times: "They found nothing...This paper offers nothing to Egyptology. Zero."' -- wikipedia.
The result from the ScanPyramids Project that got the most coverage was a strong suggestion that there is a major void (the ScanPyramids Big Void) above the Grand Gallery leading to the King's Chamber (which has not yet been confirmed). They also found weaker evidence that suggested there was a tunnel on the north face behind the chevron blocks. The existence of the ScanPyramids North Face Corridor (referred to in the literature as the SP-NFC) was confirmed in 2023, by inserting an endoscope into a crack between two of the chevron blocks. Zahi Hawass did his best to take credit for the discovery. Nobody took him seriously.
That underground city near Derinkuyu in Turkey is suppose to have 18 levels, the first 8 are open to the public, the other 10 have been waiting for permission since 1963.
The Egyptian government is hiding some uncomfortable truths about the pyramids. They are looking to protect a generation of people who believe in the current narrative about the pyramids before they allow the truth to come out.
This seems a pretty big claim! What truths do people believe that are wrong, and what do you believe the truth to be? And why would they protect a generation and from what and why? And will they not protect the generation who are coming up now, still learning the false truth because the real truth hasn’t been revealed yet?
> What truths do people believe that are wrong, and what do you believe the truth to be?
I'm not certain.
> And why would they protect a generation and from what and why?
It's very common to delay information to minimize its impact. I suppose for "national security." My intuition is that it is a matter of country pride, and cultural "ownership" over a world wonder.
> And will they not protect the generation who are coming up now, still learning the false truth because the real truth hasn’t been revealed yet?
No, that's how delaying information works. They'll all be dead by the time it comes out anyway.
It's pretty much just cosmic rays. I suppose you can sort of create them by using an accelerator to generate a beam of the appropriate particles that'll hit a target or decay and become a beam of muons outside the accelerator but that's not really all that practical. Incidentally, this is how neutrino beams are generated.
“Muon tomography or muography is a technique that uses cosmic ray muons to generate two or three-dimensional images of volumes using information contained in the Coulomb scattering of the muons.
[…]
Since 2010s researchers are also exploring and attempting to use artificially generated muons—created by conventional accelerators or laser-plasma systems—for muon tomography.”
I may overlook something, but skimming the references, I get the impression the latter still is an idea. References are about simulating the machinery, discussing requirements of hypothetical machines, etc.
Muons are not stable, thus you cannot tear them off matter as you'd do with electrons. And they have a mass of 105 MeV each, which means you need a nice particle accelerator to create a few of them.
Furthermore, if you want (most of) them to fly in a particular direction, you need to scale that accelerator up.
Just when you think Egyptology can't get more interesting, it does. No wonder "just a quick search about the Pyramids" turns into a lifelong obsession for many.
Different Nature paper from last year. The article is regurgitating stuff that happened in 2023, with a 2026 byline date.
Your paper, on the other hand, seems to be comparing three different scanning methods (radar, ultrasound, and resistivity) for measuring the thickness of the chevron block in front of the North Face Corridor. So not related.
Wild that we're still learning new things about ancient architecture! I'd think with all the modern tech at our disposal we'd have full, high res scans of the inside by now.
What's exciting about this is the opportunity to examine an untouched area of history. Sadly, over hundreds of years, much of the artifacts from these sites were looted. Hopefully we've learned our lessons at this point and can preserve them this round.
Although from the photos of the space, it looks to be empty, so no amazing artifacts to be discovered. I would guess that any ancient unknown artifacts that are discovered in the next century will come from undersea archaeology with all the limitations that exist for finding things that have been underwater for thousands of years.
"Their lives seem to have revolved mostly around musical concerts—not so much listening to them, as recording the audio from them like trophies to share for prestige among their peers. Mostly some kind of status-jockeying activity, as the art—such as it was, and if you've heard some of these recordings you know what I mean—seems to have been incidental. It's unclear whether anyone even listened to these recordings, but one acquainted with the material must suppose: no, not often. We speculate these concerts must have been difficult or trying to attend (again, one must agree that they were surely trying...) and so obtaining a recording of them as proof of one's attendance, and endurance of the entire trial, took on an almost hunting-trophy-like role in society.
Most of their highly-prized leisure entertainment seems to have been British and Eastern European television, plus something called 'Battletoads'."
They'll find whatever they need to find (or not find) just as we do. Its simply an impossible exercise to go back in time, carrying all of our assumptions about modern life and what we have been taught about the 'Ancient world'.
1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s40494-026-02405-x
Our understanding of the past is constantly evolving and changing shape in significant ways. It's rather sad that so many kids grow up never being exposed to an instructor with such an attitude. So many people consider the topic boring and that's tragic.
Huge wins for science make me happy, too.
The alternate view is that it's mostly just hopelessly bureaucratic.
'On November 2, 2017, the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass told the New York Times: "They found nothing...This paper offers nothing to Egyptology. Zero."' -- wikipedia.
The result from the ScanPyramids Project that got the most coverage was a strong suggestion that there is a major void (the ScanPyramids Big Void) above the Grand Gallery leading to the King's Chamber (which has not yet been confirmed). They also found weaker evidence that suggested there was a tunnel on the north face behind the chevron blocks. The existence of the ScanPyramids North Face Corridor (referred to in the literature as the SP-NFC) was confirmed in 2023, by inserting an endoscope into a crack between two of the chevron blocks. Zahi Hawass did his best to take credit for the discovery. Nobody took him seriously.
I'm not certain.
> And why would they protect a generation and from what and why?
It's very common to delay information to minimize its impact. I suppose for "national security." My intuition is that it is a matter of country pride, and cultural "ownership" over a world wonder.
> And will they not protect the generation who are coming up now, still learning the false truth because the real truth hasn’t been revealed yet?
No, that's how delaying information works. They'll all be dead by the time it comes out anyway.
I don't care to comment on what they may be hiding.
Do you claim this absence of evidence is actually evidence of some fantastical claim?
And yet you subject the rest of us to your conspiratorial ramblings.
“Muon tomography or muography is a technique that uses cosmic ray muons to generate two or three-dimensional images of volumes using information contained in the Coulomb scattering of the muons.
[…]
Since 2010s researchers are also exploring and attempting to use artificially generated muons—created by conventional accelerators or laser-plasma systems—for muon tomography.”
I may overlook something, but skimming the references, I get the impression the latter still is an idea. References are about simulating the machinery, discussing requirements of hypothetical machines, etc.
Furthermore, if you want (most of) them to fly in a particular direction, you need to scale that accelerator up.
Your paper, on the other hand, seems to be comparing three different scanning methods (radar, ultrasound, and resistivity) for measuring the thickness of the chevron block in front of the North Face Corridor. So not related.
i think the recurrent problem across millenia is that "we" has varying definitions, with varying behaviors.
Would be fun to write a short story about it. I'm thinking a crossover between Motel of the Mysteries and Galaxy Quest and such.
Most of their highly-prized leisure entertainment seems to have been British and Eastern European television, plus something called 'Battletoads'."
room was revealed and photographed with endoscope in 2023, nothing new happened since
it's not even "passage" - just a room