For 4,500 years, the Great Pyramid, or Khufu’s Pyramid, has kept watch over the Egyptian desert. In that time, it’s suffered the indignities of tomb raiders and gunpowder-toting archaeologists, a la Indiana Jones. But the latest investigation of the pyramid’s mysteries is far more sophisticated—and takes a page from particle physics.

　　大金字塔或胡夫金字塔已经守望着埃及这篇沙漠达4500年了。它忍受着盗墓者的凌辱，忍受着手提炸药箱考古学家印第安阿琼斯的侮辱。但最近金字塔奥秘的调查却要复杂的多，因为它用到了粒子物理学知识。

　　Scientists used muons, a by-product of the cosmic rays constantly raining down on our planet, to image the interior of the pyramid. The particles interact differently with stone than with empty space—and that fact led the scientists to discover a previously unknown 100-foot-long void, sitting somewhere above the pyramid’s Grand Gallery.

　　科学家们利用了中介子，它是宇宙射线持续降落在地球上的副产品，利用它科学家们使金字塔的内部得意成像。这些粒子接触到石头和空间时反映会出现不同，正是这种物理现象使科学家们发现了之前坐落于金字塔大画廊上部不为人知的空洞，该空洞深达100英尺。

　　“The good news is the void is there, the other good news is that this void is very big. Now what is it? We need the help of other people.” Mehdi Tayoubi, of the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute, and an author of a paper detailing the findings in the journal Nature.

　　遗迹创新保护研究所的Mehdi Tayoubi 是将此发现的细节刊登在《自然》杂志上的作者，他说：“好消息是空洞确定就在那儿，另一个好消息是这个空洞非常大。到底是什么?我们还需要其他人帮忙。”

　　"Maybe Egyptologists and specialists in ancient Egyptian architecture will provide us with some hypotheses we can use for simulation and to compare with the data we have to find some sort of architectural explanation for this void."

　　“也许埃及学家和古埃及建筑专家会为我们提供用来模拟的假设，而且可以与一些数据作比较，我们要为这个空洞找到一类建筑上的分析解释。”

　　Until then—the newly discovered space will be just one of many enduring mysteries of this very old wonder of the world.

　　到那个时候—新发现的空间将仅仅是这个世界上非常古老的奇迹且是许多永恒之谜的其中之一。