Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13522957

by larryfreeman • 15 years ago

249 48 15 years ago

bbc.co.uk

Wickk• 15 years ago

>"These are just the sites [close to] the surface. There are many thousands of additional sites that the Nile has covered over with silt. This is just the beginning of this kind of work."

I am very curious as to what else they find through these excavations

rakkhi• 15 years ago

Exciting news indeed. Another Tutankhamen type excavation fully intact would be very cool

unwantedLetters2• 15 years ago

I wonder how they get permission to scour Egypt with a satellite camera. And even if permission was given, will Egyptian authorities allow control of the satellite and the images captured to remain with a university outside the country?

Anyone have a better idea how this process works?

nivertech• 15 years ago

Today you can order high-resolution satellite images online. Some countries will limit the resolution available by non-technical means.

mseebach2• 15 years ago

I don't think you need permission to take pictures of a country from space.

unwantedLetters2• 15 years ago

This is one of those times where I wish I could see how many points your comment got.

I don't know whether you've gotten a lot of votes or not so I don't know if your answer makes sense to other people as well.

Why do you think you don't need permission to take pictures of a country from space? I think there are certain areas in all countries that they would want to keep secret, and if you allow people to photograph in certain areas and not in others, that's exposing where these areas are (which is an invitation for governments to spy on those areas).

swombat• 15 years ago

No word on whether Goa'uld holding chambers have been found in the new pyramids, I guess.

History repeats itself. I wonder what we can find in our past that will inform our future.

(although, one might say, the main thing that one learns from the study of history is that people do not learn from history)

briggsbio• 15 years ago

Nice.

kahawe• 15 years ago

How does this work exactly? The wikipedia page on Infrared did not turn up any such use... or I missed it.

How can you see a mud brick under sand because it is "much denser than the soil that surrounds it"?

JonnieCache• 15 years ago

Denser == absorbs more of the light/different regions of the spectrum.

This is detectable in the light that is reflected back.

It's not dissimilar to how an ultrasound scanner is used to look at a baby in the womb. In fact, ultrasound is used in archaeology as well to do this sort of stuff, obviously on a smaller scale.

This is the wikipedia page you want: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_spectroscopy

Although that page discusses things at very different scales to what we're talking about here, (while I am not a physicist,) the principles are basically the same.

hugh34• 15 years ago

I am a physicist, and I'm afraid that the page on infra-red spectroscopy isn't really relevant due to (as you say) the very different length scales.

What I think is really going on is thermodynamics. Suppose I bury a big stone pyramid under the sand. Stone is (I assume) a much better conductor of heat than sand. When the sun comes up after a cold night, it heats the sand, but the sand on top of the pyramid has its heat conducted away more efficiently than the sand far from the pyramid, so it'll show up as slightly cooler when imaged with the infra-red satellite.

Plimsoll2• 15 years ago

While I'm not archaeologist that sounds about right in very theoretical level. To explain this more practically it comes down to heating properties of matter.

As specific heat capacity is inverse proportional to density, sand and pyramids react to temperature changes differently. In desert temperature changes between day and night are huge causing sand and pyramids to have different temperatures. As thermal radiation is infrared in temperatures near human body temperatures (didn't check the exact temperatures but pyramids should fit in infrared spectrum), sand and pyramids will show up in different 'colors' in infrared mapping of area.

This is probably the basic idea behind these findings, of course what they are doing certainly goes beyond this level of explanation with use of infrared spectroscopy.

bproper• 15 years ago

This is awesome.

ra2• 15 years ago

It's fascinating how many relics of ancient civilisation are concentrated in that part of the world.

Many presenting puzzles yet to be solved.

hugh34• 15 years ago

It's fascinating how many relics of ancient civilisation are concentrated in that part of the world

Not really. It'd be much more fascinating if you found relics of ancient civilisation which weren't concentrated in that part of the world.

kbutler• 15 years ago

> It'd be much more fascinating if you found relics of ancient civilisation which weren't concentrated in that part of the world.

The earliest egyptian pyramids were ~2600BC, corresponding with the rise of civilizations in China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Emperor) and Peru (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral). We've found a lot more iconic relics of Egyptian civilization from that time period, however.

shii• 15 years ago

On that line, by far the most intriguing and fascinating structure or relic from ancient human history is the site at Göbekli Tepe[1], in modern day Turkey. Shakes up pretty much every theory and timeline we have constructed on how humans probably developed over time and is much too early to fit in anywhere.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

ra2• 15 years ago

Wow! That's truly mind boggling.

Thanks for the great link!

meatpeople• 15 years ago

Gobekli Tepe is indeed fascinating. There's a good article on it in the latest National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-...

xbryanx3• 15 years ago

My searching on this topic turned up this interesting book - http://www.amazon.com/Remote-Sensing-Archaeology-Interdiscip...

Seems like these techniques are going to radically change how we find new archaeological sites. Tech. project idea: Build some tools to help archaeologists learn and share from each other with this data. Build a world wide database of IR imagery just a few meters below the surface?

phlux2• 15 years ago

Build a small sensor array with OTS parts arduino etc and attach to balloon that the Arch can use in the field to look around his position in real time with such techniques.

And mount to DIYDrones for added awesome.

mturmon2• 15 years ago

Yes, the idea in the OP is not new.

To my knowledge, the first people to use remote sensing data in an archeological context used radar (SRTM, a synthetic aperture radar mapping mission that flew on the space shuttle). Radar can penetrate the land to a depth of ~meters depending on lots of factors.

They discovered the lost city of Ubar, which was a trading city (ca. 3000 BC) in the Arabian peninsula that had been lost to the desert.

They discovered it because trails that had formerly led into Ubar gave off stronger radar reflections.

Later on-site digs confirmed actual ruins. This was in 1992. A link:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01721

The person who blurbed the book you found, Charles Elachi, was a key member of the team that designed the radar instrument that found Ubar.

All of the SRTM data is online somewhere. The desert turns out to be a really good place to look for stuff. Less clutter.

xbryanx3• 15 years ago

A colleague of mine worked with Sarah Parcak (the researcher featured) and says: "They use standard satellite images taken by NASA and then apply various photoshop filters to those images to find subtle differences in the terrain. Egypt works great because the starting palette is so clean. They've tried the same technology in South America and haven't had as much success."

Not sure if this is the exact technique they are using in this article, but it's what we featured in an exhibit on Egypt he worked on.

Jun83• 15 years ago

Is it me or does news like this throw anyone else into a frenzy of daydreaming for a short while: using my computer expertise to enhance infrared images to reveal hitherto unknown pyramids (combining images from multiple spectral bands, SIFT object detection), battling with corrupt local authorities and looters, digging for the pyramid (and unfortunately losing a few of the team when the tunnel gives in), deciphering the Old Egyptian hieroglyphs on the door (with some help from my hardy MBP and my custom linguistic text analysis tools, written in a mixture of C++, Perl, and Scheme), going in and getting stumped by an empty chamber, but wait, there's a small tunnel leading away, investigating it with a remote controlled Arduiono-based robot I control with my Android tablet (e.g. http://www.gizapyramid.com/hidden.htm) and awakening a long-sleeping evil force within. Then, the final battle to save Earth.

OK, back to a rainy day in Chicago and trying to understand Puppet.

phlux2• 15 years ago

INDY! NOOOOO

saurabh• 15 years ago

Yes. It's a curse.

awj• 15 years ago

FWIW, the puppet book [1] was pretty good. Didn't end up using it for the project, but it seemed readable/informative.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Pulling-Strings-Puppet-Automated-Admin...

Jun83• 15 years ago

Thanks a lot for the link. I've started to read Pro Puppet by the same guy.

NickPollard2• 15 years ago

Obligatory xkcd:

http://xkcd.com/208/

It seems we've reached the point where there's an xkcd for every situation (on HN at least) now. Maybe a corollary to rule 34[1] is needed.

[1] http://xkcd.com/305/

Jun83• 15 years ago

Definitely! BTW, wetriffs.com is gone but .org is available

brianbreslin• 15 years ago

Does anyone know if satellite imagery could be used to map ocean floors for this type of use? Or would the water disrupt the infrared wavelength?

dmboyd• 15 years ago

check the absorption spectrum : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Water_absorption_spectrum....

Which also explains why the ocean is blue.

ars• 15 years ago

Where does the soil to cover the pyramids come from? Those are not small structures, and you aren't just covering them - you are covering a huge area of land.

That soil has to come from somewhere, anyone know where?

xbryanx3• 15 years ago

Most of the soils in this area are Nile delta deposits.

Groxx2• 15 years ago

>... by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings.

Yeah, I have to: those poor underground buildings... they just don't hold a candle to infra-red images from space, do they?

Come on BBC, "show up"? We need a Ballmer-like "Editors! Editors! Editors!" chant right about now.

strebel• 15 years ago

Maybe we can find Atlantis now.

Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images

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