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The thermal scanning was made at sunrise as the sun heats the structures from the outside, and then at sunset when the pyramids are cooling down. The speed of the heating and cooling phases was used to uncover "anomalies" such as empty areas in the pyramids, which could be internal air currents or different building materials. Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty told reporters at a press conference, which was held Monday night at the step of the Great Pyramid plateau, that the result of the infrared thermography scan on the first row of the pyramid’s limestone blocks shows that all...

Is this the ultimate evidence that ancient civilizations inhabited the red planet in the distant past? NASA’s curiosity rover has photographed on of the most interesting images of the surface of Mars ever since it touched down on the red planet in 2012. Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 10:02 EST aboard the MSL spacecraft and landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012 You can check out the RAW image of the pyramid here. Ufologists and researchers have already started speculating what this artifact is and according to many...

The latest images of Ceres taken by the Dawn spacecraft have captured a fascinating pyramid-shaped mountain on the surface. As the spacecraft gets closer, more and more features are beginning to reveal themselves. This includes the mysterious bright spots, which appear now as an array of dots scattered across the floor of a crater - but their source remains unknown. These images were taken by the Dawn spacecraft in its second mapping orbit, from a height of 2,700 miles (4,400km). Just six months ago, Ceres appeared as nothing more than a few pixels of light to Dawn. Now it is...

On his last full day in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Terry Virts at last captured a truly iconic shot of one of the “Seven Wonders of the World” – the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. Virts snapped the exquisitely sharp view of the Egyptian pyramids at Giza on June 10 looking out from the stations windows, just hours before entering the Soyuz return spaceship and closing the hatches behind him for his planned plummet back to Earth. He proudly posted the spectacular photo on his twitter social media account from space while serving as...

Does Religious Law Permit Visiting Egyptian Pyramids? Saudi religious authorities have recently been probing the issue of whether a Muslim is permitted to visit the Egyptian pyramids - a tourist site favored by the Saudis - or any other tombs of infidels. Fatwas have been issued permitting visiting the pyramids only for the sake of learning a moral lesson (pertaining to death and the world to come) based on the Prophet's words in the hadith: "Visit tombs, for they remind you of the world to come." Other religious authorities, however, have prohibited visiting the pyramids because they are tombs of...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The discovery of a tomb filled with decapitated bodies suggests Mexico's 2,000 year-old "Pyramid of the Moon" may have been the site of horrifically gory sacrifices, archeologists said on Thursday. The tomb at Teotihuacan, the first major city built in the Americas, whose origins are one of history's great mysteries, also held the bound carcasses of eagles, dogs and other animals. "It is hard to believe that the ritual consisted of clean, symbolic performances -- it is most likely that the ceremony created a horrible scene of bloodshed with sacrificed people and animals," said Saburo Sugiyama,...

A Mexican archeologist hunting for a royal tomb in a deep, dark tunnel beneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid has made a discovery that may have brought him a step closer: liquid mercury. In the bowels of Teotihuacan, a mysterious ancient city that was once the largest in the Americas, Sergio Gomez this month found "large quantities" of the silvery metal in a chamber at the end of a sacred tunnel sealed for nearly 1,800 years. "It's something that completely surprised us," Gomez said at the entrance to the tunnel below Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent, about 30 miles (50...

La Paz, Mar 27 (EFE).- The government of Bolivia announced it will start exploratory excavations this year at the ancient fortress of Tiahuanaco after a buried pyramid was detected. Ludwing Cayo, director of the Tiahuanaco Archeological Research Center, told Efe that the formation is located in the area of Kantatallita, east of the Akapana pyramid. In a presentation for the media, Cayo outlined a five-year for further research at Tiahuanaco, an archaeological site 71 kilometers (44 miles) west of La Paz that was the cradle of an ancient civilization predating the Incas. Excavations may start in May or June, depending...

An Egyptian citizen, identified as "Nagy" by Arabic news site Ahram.org, was illegally digging in his backyard when he found a tunnel leading to the Pyramid of Khufu. The pyramid, nicknamed the Great Pyramid, is the oldest and largest of the three Giza Pyramids. Nagy, a resident of the El Haraneya village, near the Giza Plateau, dug 33 feet beneath his house before he found the corridor, made from stone blocks. Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities sent archaeologists to the scene, and a committee confirmed the passage to be the pyramid's legendary causeway.

In April 2013, the three Germans -- two amateur archaeologists and a film-making accomplice -- crept inside the inner sanctum of the Great Pyramid at Giza, the last the seven wonders of the ancient world to remain relatively intact. The trio, conspiracy theorists Dominique Gorlitz, Stefan Erdmann and Peter Hoefer, wanted to show that the pyramid was not the final resting place of the pharaoh Khufu, as has long been accepted, but was in fact a relic of an even older empire. In an attempt to prove this, they scraped off part of the pyramid's cartouche -- the insignia that...

Part 1 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2210qr_land-of-the-pharaohs-1955-1-2_lifestyle Part 2 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x221665_land-of-the-pharaohs-1955-2-2_lifestyle

Jean-Pierre Houdin -- who was rebuffed three years ago by Egypt in his appeal for a probe into how the Pyramid was built -- said 3-D simulation and data from a U.S. egyptologist, Bob Brier, pointed to two secret chambers in the heart of the structure. The rooms would have housed furniture for use in the afterlife by the pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops in Greek, he told a press conference. "I am convinced there are antechambers in this pyramid. What I want is to find them," he said. In March 2007, Houdin advanced the theory that the Great...

All of the current theories -- a long, straight ramp, a ramp that corkscrewed around the outside of the pyramid, or cranelike shadoufs (used in Egypt until recently for irrigating fields) -- have serious flaws... architect Jean-Pierre Houdin and I presented a radical new theory: that blocks of stone were raised to the very top of the pyramid on an internal ramp. We gave what we felt was strong evidence for the theory, which explains a French team's microgravemetric survey in the 1980s that recorded variations in the density of the pyramid... an image from the survey may show a...

Using cutting edge technology, Egyptologist Bob Brier of the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University delved into the only standing wonder of the ancient world, the Great Pyramid, and uncovered the mystery behind cracks in the massive Egyptian structure, unearthing a new room along the way. Brier, French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin and a team of software specialists from Dassault Systems in Paris used 3-D modeling software to determine that the burial chamber's stone support beams cracked as final construction of the Giza wonder was near completion 4,500 years ago. The team discovered that the cracks occurred when three...

A French architect said on Friday he had cracked a 4,500-year-old mystery surrounding Egypt's Great Pyramid, saying it was built from the inside out. Previous theories have suggested Pharaoh Khufu's tomb, the last surviving example of the seven great wonders of antiquity, was built using either a vast frontal ramp or a ramp in a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework. But flouting previous wisdom, Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3D technology had shown the main ramp which was used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 10-15 meters beneath the outer skin, tracing...

Egypt said Wednesday archaeologists have unearthed a 5,600-year-old preserved tomb and mummy predating the pharaonic First Dynasty, a discovery that will shed new light on the pre-dynastic era. The tomb was built before the rule of king Narmer, the founder of the First Dynasty who unified Upper and Lower Egypt in the 31th century BC, the antiquities ministry said in a statement. The tomb was discovered in the Kom al-Ahmar region, between Luxor and Aswan, on the site of ancient Hierakonpolis, the city of the falcon, which was the capital of the Kingdom of Upper Egypt. The archaeologists found an...

The question of just how an ancient civilization—without the help of modern technology—moved the 2.5 ton stones that made up their famed pyramids has long plagued Egyptologists and mechanical engineers alike. But now, a team from the University of Amsterdam believes they've figured it out, even though the solution was staring them in the face all along. It all comes down to friction. See, the ancient Egyptians would transport their rocky cargo across the desert sands, from quarry to monument site with large sleds. Pretty basic sleds, basically just large slabs with upturned edges. Now, when you try to pull...

Future generations of Bitcoin billionaires may someday look back on 2014 with knowing smiles. Here was a year when thefts spread, exchanges collapsed, rates gyrated like a teenager’s moods. And yet the buying of bitcoins showed no signs of abating. The past week was particularly extreme. The apparent suicide of an American business executive in Singapore was investigated for possible ties to her Bitcoin investments. A California man fingered as the currency’s mysterious inventor reacted to his sudden fame by asking that journalists buy him lunch. After finishing his meal at a sushi restaurant, he went on to deny any...

Just before the bankruptcy of the Mt. Gox bitcoin digital-money (or virtual-currency) exchange, Japanese finance minister Taro Aso predicted the inevitable failure. “No one recognizes them as a real currency,” he told reporters. “I expected such a thing to collapse.” I totally agree with Mr. Aso. For weeks and weeks I have been tweeting and broadcasting that bitcoin is not real money. It is not a reliable medium of exchange, nor is it a reliable store of value. It has no central-bank regulation, network operations, or even centralized issuance. And because of its wild price fluctuations, bitcoin can never...

U.S. and Japanese regulators are investigating the collapse of the world's largest exchange for trading bitcoins, the virtual currency that has grown in popularity among technophiles for buying products and services online. The separate investigations were launched Wednesday as supporters of the virtual currency insisted that the shutdown of Mt. Gox was only a temporary setback for the novel monetary system. The failure of the Tokyo exchange, which may have included the theft of almost 750,000 bitcoins worth more than $300 million, was seen by critics as derailing prospects for the virtual currency. But several high-profile bitcoin investors came forward...