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The Great Pyramid, or Khufu's Pyramid, was built on the Giza plateau in Egypt during the fourth dynasty by the pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), who reigned from 2509 bc to 2483 bc. Despite being one of the oldest and largest monuments on Earth, there is no consensus about how it was built. To understand its internal structure better, we imaged the pyramid using muons, which are by-products of cosmic rays that are only partially absorbed by stone. The resulting cosmic-ray muon radiography allows us to visualize the known and any unknown voids in the pyramid in a non-invasive way. Here we report the discovery of a large void (with a cross-section similar to that of the Grand Gallery and a minimum length of 30 metres) situated above the Grand Gallery. This constitutes the first major inner structure found in the Great Pyramid since the nineteenth century. The void, named ScanPyramids' Big Void, was first observed with nuclear emulsion films installed in the Queen's chamber, then confirmed with scintillator hodoscopes set up in the same chamber and finally re-confirmed with gas detectors outside the pyramid. This large void has therefore been detected with high confidence by three different muon detection technologies and three independent analyses. These results constitute a breakthrough for the understanding of the internal structure of Khufu's Pyramid. Although there is currently no information about the intended purpose of this void, these findings show how modern particle physics can shed new light on the world's archaeological heritage.

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The dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) in the Milky Way are the primary targets in the indirect searches for particle dark matter. To set robust constraints on candidate of dark matter particles, understanding the dark halo structure of these systems is of substantial importance. In this paper, we first evaluate the astrophysical factors for dark matter annihilation and decay for 24 dSphs, with taking into account a non-spherical dark halo, using generalized axisymmetric mass models based on axisymmetric Jeans equations. First, from a fitting analysis of the most recent kinematic data available, our axisymmetric mass models are a much better fit than previous spherical ones, thus, our work should be the most realistic and reliable estimator for astrophysical factors. Secondly, we find that among analysed dSphs, the ultra-faint dwarf galaxies Triangulum II and Ursa Major II are the most promising but large uncertain targets for dark matter annihilation while the classical dSph Draco is the most robust and detectable target for dark matter decay. It is also found that the non-sphericity of luminous and dark components influences the estimate of astrophysical factors, even though these factors largely depend on the sample size, the prior range of parameters and the spatial extent of the dark halo. Moreover, owing to these effects, the constraints on the dark matter annihilation cross-section are more conservative than those of previous spherical works. These results are important for optimizing and designing dark matter searches in current and future multi-messenger observations by space and ground-based telescopes.