Scientists are going to look inside the secret chamber of the first emperor of China, using cosmic rays to discover artifacts hidden in the famous tomb guarded by the Terracotta army, including deadly traps, an ancient map and rivers of mercury. The Imperial Tomb was never opened for fear of damaging its contents. Now scientists have proposed scanning the complex with muon radiation, which is formed by the interaction of cosmic rays with particles in the upper atmosphere.
Cosmic rays can be used to scan the sealed tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, – rumored to have deadly traps and an ancient map of rivers of liquid mercury.
According to the Daily Mail, the tomb, buried under a 249-foot pyramidal mound, is located in a necropolis in the Lingtong Xi’an region and is guarded by a large army of terracotta warriors. Each statue was once brightly colored. However, exposure to the dry air of Xi’an before proper conservation methods were invented resulted in most of the soldiers fading after restoration. For this reason, Chinese officials have long been reluctant to allow excavations of the imperial tomb itself until they can guarantee the safety of any artifacts inside.
However, according to new proposals, subatomic particle detectors will be placed under the 2,229-year-old tomb to display the structure of the structure in three dimensions.
Emperor Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BC) succeeded in conquering and uniting all of China in 221 BC, creating an empire that lasted for about two millennia. Among his other achievements are the beginning of the construction of the Great Wall of China, the creation of a nationwide road network, and the standardization of writing and units of measurement. His luxurious burial site was discovered in 1974.
When high-energy cosmic rays from space interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, they create a stream of subatomic particles, including some called “muons.” The scanning method – “muon tomography” – works like X-rays, with detectors measuring the rate at which muons are absorbed by the material they pass through. Just as bones absorb relatively more X-rays than flesh to create contrast on an X-ray, so stone and metal block the passage of more muons. This approach was previously used in 2017 to reveal the presence of a previously hidden camera in the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The muon scanning technique was proposed by physicist Yuanyuan Liu of Beijing Normal University and her colleagues, who routinely use cosmic rays to study dark matter at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, which is the world’s deepest cosmic ray laboratory.
“As an ancient civilization with a long history, China has a large number of cultural relics that need archaeological research,” they told the Times.
“For non-penetrating detection of the internal structure of some large artifacts, such as imperial tombs, traditional geophysical methods used in archeology have certain limitations. The application of muon absorption imaging in archeology could be an important addition to traditional geophysical methods, ”they concluded.
To test their proposal, the group used existing archaeological and historical evidence of the mausoleum to create models of the tomb complex. The scientists then buried them in the ground on top of two muon detectors to show that they could actually display cameras in their models.
“Preliminary imaging results confirm the feasibility of muon absorption imaging for the underground chamber of the mausoleum of the first Qin emperor,” the research team said.
The feasibility study was funded by the central government of China.
Based on their tests, the team concluded that in order to scan a real tomb, at least two muon detectors, each about the size of a washing machine, must be placed in different locations within 100 meters of the tomb’s surface.
This is not the first time that archaeologists and other scientists have tried to use non-invasive methods to study the Qin Tomb from the inside. Unfortunately, most approaches have limitations that make them difficult to apply in the specific circumstances of the mausoleum. Gravity anomaly detectors are good at detecting changes in density underground, but they are easily influenced by external factors, and their range is limited to a small area. Meanwhile, the georadar, beloved by archaeologists and geophysicists, is too limited in depth to be a useful tool here.
Previous research, however, has shown that an underground complex of some kind of preserved state does indeed extend for about 30 meters under the pyramidal hill.
Archaeologists believe there is a high probability that the underground chambers are still intact. There was no evidence that the robbers were able to work their way into the tomb.
Geophysicist Yang Dikun of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, who was not involved in the present study, told the South China Morning Post that the latest proposal to scan the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang is feasible.
“The muon detectors we are building and using for field research today have become so small that a child can carry them around,” he commented.
However, Dr. Yang warned that the cosmic ray approach has potential problems, the main one being that detectors must be physically placed underneath the mausoleum complex without damaging it or the artifacts inside.
He added that this will also require a lot of patience. Unlike other imaging techniques, muon tomography is far from instantaneous and detectors will need to work until they have collected enough particles for meaningful analysis. In fact, simulations by the research team have shown that detectors need to be left in place for at least one year to get a clear image of the tomb’s structure.
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