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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Khufu’s Pyramid is one of the largest archaeological monument all over the world, which still holds many mysteries. In 2016 and 2017, the ScanPyramids team reported on several discoveries of previously unknown voids by cosmic-ray muon radiography that is a non-destructive technique ideal for the investigation of large-scale structures. Among these discoveries, a corridor-shaped structure has been observed behind the so-called Chevron zone on the North face, with a length of at least 5 meters. A dedicated study of this structure was thus necessary to better understand its function in relation with the enigmatic architectural role of this Chevron. Here we report on new measurements of excellent sensitivity obtained with nuclear emulsion films from Nagoya University and gaseous detectors from CEA, revealing a structure of about 9 m length with a transverse section of about 2.0 m by 2.0 m.

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Global impacts of climate change are wide-ranging and unprecedented in scope, ranging from shifting weather patterns that threaten a permanent change of the ecosystem on earth (which may severely affect human life, including water and food security), to major events directly affecting human lives, such as natural / climate-related disasters, rising sea levels, etc. With the organization of two successive conferences of the parties (COP) in the Arab region, it became evident that there is extensive attention from governments and regional bodies in the Arab region towards issues related to climate change. In this study, we aim to analyze the research performance of Arab scholars on climate change based via a bibliometric analysis of published research articles in 22 Arab countries. We have used a multivariate approach for data analysis and bibliometric indicators characterization. Many indicators are used to examine scientific performance, as well as the trends of a growing number of publications, number of citations, number of authors, etc. Using a predefined set of keywords related to climate change and UN climate change themes, we were able to assemble a dataset of 68,193 documents (published papers) that were further analyzed to set the scene and show the status of scholarly publications from authors of the Arab world. Saudi Arabia comes on top of the Arab countries in terms of the number of publications in climate change research-related publications, followed by Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, while IEEE, Energy Procedia and Arabian journal of geosciences are the top three choices for publications related to climate change among the Arab researchers.