物理現象幫助解密金字塔謎團

For 4,500 years, the Great Pyramid, or Khufu's Pyramid, has kept watch over the Egyptian desert. In that time, it's suffered the indignities of tomb raiders and gunpowder-toting archaeologists, a la Indiana Jones.

4500年以來，大金字塔，或稱胡夫金字塔，一直在俯瞰埃及的沙漠。在這段時間裏，它飽經了盜墓者和身背火藥的考古學家--比如印第安納·瓊斯的無禮行爲。

But the latest investigation of the pyramid's mysteries is far more sophisticated--and takes a page from particle physics.

但是，最近金字塔的調查更加複雜，並從量子物理學中進行借鑑。

Scientists used muons, a by-product of the cosmic rays constantly raining down on our planet, to image the interior of the pyramid.

科學家利用μ介子給金字塔的內部成像，這是一種宇宙射線射到地球上生成的副產品

The particles interact differently with stone than with empty space--and that fact led the scientists to discover a previously unknown 100-foot-long void, sitting somewhere above the pyramid's Grand Gallery.

這些粒子與空間的作用，不同於與石頭的作用--這使得科學家發現了一個以前不爲人知的100英尺長的空洞，這個空洞坐落在金字塔大圖畫廊的某些地方上。

"The good news is the void is there, the other good news is that this void is very big. Now what is it? We need the help of other people." Mehdi Tayoubi, of the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute, and an author of a paper detailing the findings in the journal Nature.

“好消息是我們找到了空洞，其他好消息就是這個洞很大。現在這個洞到底是什麼呢？我們需要其他人的幫助。”Mehdi Tayoubi在遺蹟創新保護研究所工作。他的研究結果發表在《自然》雜誌上。

"Maybe Egyptologists and specialists in ancient Egyptian architecture will provide us with some hypotheses we can use for simulation and to compare with the data we have to find some sort of architectural explanation for this void."

“也許埃及學者和古埃及建築方面的專家，會給出一些我們可以應用的假說，並與我們所需要的數據進行比較，以便找到某種對這種空洞的建築解釋。”

Until then--the newly discovered space will be just one of many enduring mysteries of this very old wonder of the world.

但是即使到那時，這一新發現的空洞，也只是解開了這一世界偉大奇蹟神祕面紗的冰山一角。