Secrets of the Pyramids

My friend Jack was telling me about a new theory a Frenchman (Jean-Pierre Houdin) has come up with to explain how the pyramids were built. I, for one, never worried too much about it. I figure a bunch of guys got a bunch of rocks and piled them up and presto, there you go: a big pile of rocks. But for some people, that wasn't good enough. Seems they found some really big rocks very high up in the pyramid. That along with the huge volume of rock involved overall caused them to wonder just how did these ancient (ignorant, unskilled, third world peasants) people get those big rocks in place? Just how would you would build such a massive stone edifice using only sticks and stones and strong backs?

A number of theories have been put forth over the years, but none have stood up to scrutiny. Now along comes this wiseguy Frenchie, and he's got a new theory. The best part is that this theory involves secret tunnels that no one has actually seen. Dassault Systems has a web page with a 3-D graphics presentation that explains the whole thing. It's kind of a CPU/Memory hog, but I was able to run it on my four year old Dell. All this make my conspiracy antennae just quiver with anticipation.

One of the clues that led Jean-Pierre to his theory was this image. It was generated from a set of gravity measurements taken in the 1980's. The less dense areas are indicated by the green color, and correspond to the idea of having an internal spiral tunnel.

I did a little looking to see just what kind of equipment would be needed to measure gravity accurately enough to be able to detect a tunnel. I found things like:

Tests run using Sundstrand vibrating beam accelerometers to sense microgravity are described. Lunar-solar tidal effects were used as a highly predictable signal which varies by approximately 200 billionths of the full-scale gravitation level.

and

Spring Gravimeters and Other Alternatives

Even now it seems to fall in the realm of scientific research, not a practical technique for which you can just buy a meter and go at it. Interesting that the two companies names I came across in all this are both big aerospace contractors: Hamilton Sundstrand and Groupe Dassault.