Current:Home > NewsNew technology allows archaeologists to use particle physics to explore the past -Achieve Wealth Network
New technology allows archaeologists to use particle physics to explore the past
View
Date:2025-04-14 07:14:35
Naples, Italy — Beneath the honking horns and operatic yelling of Naples, the most blissfully chaotic city in Italy, archeologist Raffaella Bosso descends into the deafening silence of an underground maze, zigzagging back in time roughly 2,300 years.
Before the Ancient Romans, it was the Ancient Greeks who colonized Naples, leaving behind traces of life, and death, inside ancient burial chambers, she says.
She points a flashlight at a stone-relief tombstone that depicts the legs and feet of those buried inside.
"There are two people, a man and a woman" in this one tomb, she explains. "Normally you can find eight or even more."
This tomb was discovered in 1981, the old-fashioned way, by digging.
Now, archeologists are joining forces with physicists, trading their pickaxes for subatomic particle detectors about the size of a household microwave.
Thanks to breakthrough technology, particle physicists like Valeri Tioukov can use them to see through hundreds of feet of rock, no matter the apartment building located 60 feet above us.
"It's very similar to radiography," he says, as he places his particle detector beside the damp wall, still adorned by colorful floral frescoes.
Archeologists long suspected there were additional chambers on the other side of the wall. But just to peek, they would have had to break them down.
Thanks to this detector, they now know for sure, and they didn't even have to use a shovel.
To understand the technology at work, Tioukov takes us to his laboratory at the University of Naples, where researchers scour the images from that detector.
Specifically, they're looking for muons, cosmic rays left over from the Big Bang.
The muon detector tracks and counts the muons passing through the structure, then determines the density of the structure's internal space by tracking the number of muons that pass through it.
At the burial chamber, it captured about 10 million muons in the span of 28 days.
"There's a muon right there," says Tioukov, pointing to a squiggly line he's blown up using a microscope.
After months of painstaking analysis, Tioukov and his team are able to put together a three-dimensional model of that hidden burial chamber, closed to human eyes for centuries, now opened thanks to particle physics.
What seems like science fiction is also being used to peer inside the pyramids in Egypt, chambers beneath volcanoes, and even treat cancer, says Professor Giovanni De Lellis.
"Especially cancers which are deep inside the body," he says. "This technology is being used to measure possible damage to healthy tissue surrounding the cancer. It's very hard to predict the breakthrough that this technology could actually bring into any of these fields, because we have never observed objects with this accuracy."
"This is a new era," he marvels.
- In:
- Technology
- Italy
- Archaeologist
- Physics
Chris Livesay is a CBS News foreign correspondent based in Rome.
TwitterveryGood! (33)
Related
- Whoopi Goldberg is delightfully vile as Miss Hannigan in ‘Annie’ stage return
- Wisconsin man accused of pepper-spraying police at US Capitol on Jan. 6 pleads guilty
- Jeezy Files for Divorce From Jeannie Mai After 2 Years of Marriage
- Armed man arrested at RFK Jr campaign event in Los Angeles
- McConnell absent from Senate on Thursday as he recovers from fall in Capitol
- What’s behind the surge in migrant arrivals to Italy?
- World Cup champion Spain willing to sacrifice their own glory to end sexism, abuse
- Drake and SZA release first collab 'Slime You Out' ahead of Drake's new album: Listen
- What do we know about the mysterious drones reported flying over New Jersey?
- One American, two Russians ride Russian capsule to the International Space Station
Ranking
- Taylor Swift Eras Archive site launches on singer's 35th birthday. What is it?
- 3 dead after possible hostage situation in Sacramento, including the shooter
- Offshore wind projects need federal help to get built, six governors tell Biden
- Record-high summer temps give a 'sneak peek' into future warming
- Nearly half of US teens are online ‘constantly,’ Pew report finds
- You can pre-order the iPhone 15 Friday. Here's what to know about the new phones.
- Remains exhumed from a Tulsa cemetery as the search for 1921 Race Massacre victims has resumed
- Huluween and Disney+’s Hallowstream Will Get Every Witch Ready for the Spooky Season With These Premieres
Recommendation
Biden administration makes final diplomatic push for stability across a turbulent Mideast
At the request of Baghdad, UN will end in 1 year its probe of Islamic State extremists in Iraq
Armed man arrested at RFK Jr campaign event in Los Angeles
Offshore wind projects need federal help to get built, six governors tell Biden
Stamford Road collision sends motorcyclist flying; driver arrested
Security forces are seen across Iran as country prepares for anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death
Jeezy Files for Divorce From Jeannie Mai After 2 Years of Marriage
Judge temporarily halts trial in New York's fraud lawsuit against Trump