Scientists discover hidden chamber in Great Pyramid

A hidden void has been found inside the Great Pyramid of Giza — and scientists basically have no clue what the space was used for.

The mysterious chamber, untouched since the pyramid’s construction, is roughly the length of the Statue of Liberty from head to toe.

It was discovered by an international team of experts after they beamed cosmic rays at the Egyptian monument.

The revolutionary imaging technique allows scientists to peer inside the 4,500-year-old structure and see what’s been hiding for so many years.

The findings were published Thursday in the journal Nature.

Researchers harnessed subatomic particles called muons — by-products of cosmic rays formed in the Earth’s upper atmosphere — to look through the stone of the pyramid in the same way doctors use X-rays to see through flesh.

The team then used muon-detection technologies to determine which areas were solid and which appeared to be empty.

The process led them straight to the void.

“It was hidden, I think, since the construction of the pyramid,” explained Mehdi Tayoubi, co-founder of the ScanPyramids project that made the discovery and president of the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute.

“We don’t know if it’s a chamber, a tunnel, a big gallery or things like that,” he told The New York Times. “We have chosen the word ‘void’ and nothing else because we don’t know what this void is.”

While experts are scratching their heads over the empty space, some believe it may have been a room designed to decrease the pressure and lessen the weight on the pyramid’s royal burial chambers.

The Great Pyramid, also known as Khufu’s Pyramid, for its builder, is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the pyramid complex outside the modern-day city of Giza.

The nearly 500-foot-tall tomb was constructed by Pharaoh Khufu, of Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty, in around 2550 BC.

The newly discovered void is located above the pyramid’s central Grand Gallery, and does not appear to lead to any known passages elsewhere.

“This is a premier,” Tayoubi said . “It could be composed of one or several structures . . . Maybe it could be another Grand Gallery. It could be a chamber, it could be a lot of things . . . The good news is that the void is there, and it’s very big.”

With Post wires