物理现象帮助解密金字塔谜团

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年以来，大金字塔，或称胡夫金字塔，一直在俯瞰埃及的沙漠。在这段时间里，它饱经了盗墓者和身背火药的考古学家--比如印第安纳·琼斯的无礼行为。

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

但是，最近金字塔的调查更加复杂，并从量子物理学中进行借鉴。

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

科学家利用μ介子给金字塔的内部成像，这是一种宇宙射线射到地球上生成的副产品

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.

这些粒子与空间的作用，不同于与石头的作用--这使得科学家发现了一个以前不为人知的100英尺长的空洞，这个空洞坐落在金字塔大图画廊的某些地方上。

"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.

“好消息是我们找到了空洞，其他好消息就是这个洞很大。现在这个洞到底是什么呢？我们需要其他人的帮助。”Mehdi Tayoubi在遗迹创新保护研究所工作。他的研究结果发表在《自然》杂志上。

"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."

“也许埃及学者和古埃及建筑方面的专家，会给出一些我们可以应用的假说，并与我们所需要的数据进行比较，以便找到某种对这种空洞的建筑解释。”

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

但是即使到那时，这一新发现的空洞，也只是解开了这一世界伟大奇迹神秘面纱的冰山一角。