The mission to look inside the pyramids at Giza begins in November 2015 and should last until late 2016.(Photo: Top Photo Corporation Getty Images/Top Photo Group RF)
(NEWSER)<span style="color: Red;">*</span>–
<span style="color: Red;">*</span>How do you see what's inside an Egyptian pyramid without taking it apart or even "drilling the slightest opening?" With infrared thermography, 3D scans with lasers and drones, and cosmic-ray detectors, scientists said Sunday at a press conference.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
Forbes<span style="color: Red;">*</span>translates the latter technology: Scientists will study "how the cosmic rays that continually zap our planet skitter through the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>stones."<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The<span style="color: Red;">*</span>scanning<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>which will take scientists several yards deep into the structures — will start at the Bent Pyramid at Dashour, chosen to be first "due to its distinguished and unique architectural design and because it is the first attempt at pyramid construction that has not been carefully studied," Mamdouh Eldamaty, Egypt's antiquities minister, tells<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
Ahram Online<span style="color: Red;">*</span>of the roughly 4,600-year-old pyramid.
The scanning will then continue at the Red Pyramid and the two grand Giza pyramids of Cheops and Chephren,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
the AP<span style="color: Red;">*</span>reports. Cheops, also known as Khufu, is the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing, per the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
Scan Pyramids project site. Thought to be about 480 feet in height originally,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
History.com<span style="color: Red;">*</span>notes "it took modern man until the 19th century to build a taller structure" than Khufu. Scientists have used such cosmic-ray techniques before to scan nuclear reactors ruined at Japan's Fukushima site and to peer inside ancient pyramids in Belize and Mexico. In fact, scientists "looked for the cosmic-ray signature" of chambers tucked away in the Pyramid of Chephren in the 1960s, says
Forbes, "but scanning technologies have gone through a quantum leap since then." The mission begins in November and should last until late 2016. (Has Queen Nefertiti's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
lost tomb been found? Go<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
inside the hunt.)
This story originally appeared on<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Newser:
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Scientists Find New Way to Scan Pyramids for Hidden Treasure
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Newser<span style="color: Red;">*</span>is a USA TODAY content partner providing general news, commentary and coverage from around the Web. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.
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