Now that's a dodgy Giza: Eggheads claim Great Pyramid can focus electromagnetic waves

Re: An awful lot of Dr Zaius maniacs in today.

"a lot of the most successful Sci-Fi series and stories have the Ancient Alien element in there somewhere. BattleStar Galactica and Stargate being the more famous examples."

Although I'm sure you know this, it's worth pointing out that most of those SciFi ideas not only re-date the TV show Ancient Aliens, but they drew their ideas from much earlier "aliens are among us", "aliens have visited us in the past" popularised by Erich Von Daniken (who is Georgio's mentor and makes the odd appearance on the show every now and then). And not forgetting the influence of Charles Berlitz and Lyall Watson's books too.

Re: Finally revealed!

It's a shame the pyramids were built before USB-C, so you'll have to plug the thing in three times to get the right orientation.

There were theories that some ancient jars found in Iraq were batteries, but these theories have largely been rejected - not least because no electroplated items have been found.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery

Re: Has The Register been hacked by the Express ?

"Because they were built to a plan using the (ridiculously simple) tools to maintain angles and lines."

And several thousand years of compressive force along with the absorption by limestone of carbon dioxide tends to reduce any gaps, explaining the apparently perfect fit.

Re: Has The Register been hacked by the Express ?

"We can even have a stab at what they were used for. Sodding big mausoleums. "

That's a good point I haven't realized before: We know why the pyramids were built for because they luckily left documentation in a way that survived thousands of years (reliefs and paintings in/on stone). With, say, Stonhenge, we do not have such a documentation, for a variety of reason. Hence, it's a mystery. That doesn't mean much. Just that we do not have documentation, just speculation.

The same goes for so-called "out of place" artifacts: They're out of place because the tools that put them in this place have not survived the millennia. They rotted away. There's some frickin' big deduction being made from that, except not the that's typically made: Those people were intelligent and could make tools, and use those tools to do amazing things. Because we see the results of their thinking and their tools.

There was a fallacy being made for a long time: The lack of tools was equated with a lack of intelligence. That's wrong. It just means the tools aren't there. Maybe because they were made in such a way that they did not survive.

Re: I went to Egypt and all I got was this ....

lousy brain cancer.

That's what you get for sleeping in a pyramid. All those mysterious Cosmic Rays..

Re: IgNobel nomination, anybody?

nope, the IgNobel is for sound science that sounds weird / stupid at first. Basically it should make you go "What?" and then get you thinking about it. Like the post-mortem brain scans of salmon, which went to show you should f'ing correct for multiple testing

Sorry, I sometimes get these twitches...

Re: Maybe Rob ("Robert") Newman was onto something ?

Using the examples you have, I can see the point you are raising, but on the other hand, those trains going London to Edinburgh 100 years ago, faster than today, were running an nearly empty lines with a huge amount of manpower, specialised infrastructure and pollution. Likewise, Concorde was incredibly inefficient by todays standards, fantastic as she was. The world, and it's attitudes, have changed. Other tech has come on in leaps and bounds since then and still is advancing at a pace.

Changing attitudes is also who so many can't quite get their heads around the construction of the pyramids too. In todays world, for many people, it's simply inconceivable that 1000's of people would toil day in and day out for years if not their entire lives on a single project without high rise cranes, diggers etc. Maybe they were well paid. Maybe they were slaves. Maybe they believed with all their being in a higher purpose. Whatever it was, it was a very, very different world back then.

Just look at the 1000's of people, in a mechanised, starting to be computerised, world who worked for years so a couple of guys could walk on the moon. I wonder how that will be viewed in a few thousand years?

Re: Maybe Rob ("Robert") Newman was onto something ?

"Given that 20 years ago we had passenger supersonic flight - but none now. It was quicker to go London - Edinburgh by train a century ago."

To be pedantic it wasn't, because there was a war on and trains were frequently disrupted due to military traffic, the running of the railways by the War Office, bombing, and the fact that skilled railway engineers like my grandfather were either running the railways in France or recuperating from injuries.

And it wasn't between the wars. It's roughly 400 miles from London to Edinburgh and I think you'll find no scheduled steam train has averaged over about 75mph. That's over 5 hours equivalent. The current time is an average of about 4 hours 40. The fuel consumption of the steam train was enormously greater than that of even a Diesel.

Same with supersonic passenger travel. A tiny niche which could only be afforded by the rich and then only because the vast R&D expense had been written off, really doesn't count.

Re: An attitude based on unfounded snobbery

So you're convinced steel was actually discovered and used 10,000 years ago? Of course not. The only materials they had to use back then was stone and later on, copper. It's already been shown that the standard tools like saws do not work well on granite, for example. And yes, while it has been shown that adding an abrasive material such as sand and lubrication can indeed help to cut using copper, this again, is just a possible theory that is unlikely to ever be proved.

The point I'm making, is you cannot use one theory to disprove another - both are equally valid until concrete evidence is found.

Re: An attitude based on unfounded snobbery

the ancients were masters of their arts. The Pyramids, Colosseum, Tenochtitlan, and others are still here, after centuries of earthquakes and vandalism. How many "modern" constructions will survive 3000 years of natural and human assaults?

Not necessarily a safe argument. Build 10 things and have them all still standing in 3000 years, you're a master. Build 10,000 and have 10 still standing in 3000 years, you just got lucky sometimes.

Re: An attitude based on unfounded snobbery

They lacked modern tools and machinery we've become totally dependent on and can't imagine not using. So those ignorant savages couldn't have done it themselves with stupid hand tools! It had to be someone else!"

And, as pointed out to me by a friend in a slightly different context, they also lacked TV. Amazing what you can get done...

"we assumed that there are no unknown cavities inside [erm, afaik, there are],"

Hang on! We "know" there are "unknown" voids? I think my head just exploded!

There are voids we know about, and voids we suspect may be there (at least one significantly large one which needs more investigation to see if it really is there), but for all we know, using cosmic ray detection as a method of finding voids in pyramids is only really telling us there sections of lower density. The Egyptians are very sensitive about who and what is allowed to be inside the pyramids.