Satellites image 17 new Pyramids

[ballaratdragons]

Space archaeologists have discovered 17 previously unknown Pyramids and whole cities buried just beneath the sands of Egypt.

They become visible with Infra-red imaging from Space!

http://earthsky.org/human-world/egyptologists-discover-17-new-pyramids

[Suzy]

That's so incredible!
The technology these days is mind blowing.
I look forward to this doco appearing on the BBC network and would appreciate anyone giving a heads up on it when details are known. :thanx:
Thanks for posting Ken. :thumbsup:

Hey, I just had a thought...
Wonder if they'll go after the lost city of Atlantis... :question:

[jenchris]

Oh boy - now we'll find out where they buried the machinery...

[gary]

Thanks Ken,

One minute 30 second BBC video news clip here, including sound bite by Dr. Parcack -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13552329

And a BBC text news story here -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13522957
... including a one minute video clip from the documentary.
This clip highlights where outlines of where streets and buildings once were
can be seen in the infrared imagery.

[renormalised]

Very interesting:).

They've been using remote sensing technology for years to peer under the deserts in Africa, and in other parts of the world. They used to fly X-band radar in the Shuttle cargo bay for that purpose. In the late 80's-early 90's, they found complete evidence for a river under the Sahara that was both larger and longer than the Nile, flowing west to east. Many of the oases and some wadis in the desert were surface remnants of the old river system.

[multiweb]

So those stories about the sahara being lush and green once are true. :question:

[renormalised]

Oh yes....actually, up until about 7500BC, most of the Sahara was very much like Ngorogoro National Park in Kenya....grassland with interspersed Acacia forests. The Sahara only really started to dry right out from around 6000BC and the drying out hit its peak around 4000-4500BC. Although, between 8700-7500BC there were patches of desert that did appear in the region during a dry spell that was about 1000 years in length. However, during most of the previous northern ice age (called the Wurm in Europe, Wisconsonian in North America), North Africa was rather wet and very fertile. Around 13000BC, in Egypt, they were growing barley and wheat varieties in the Nile Valley and elsewhere. That lasted up until about 10900-10450BC, then there were a series of major floods in the valley which ended that agricultural era in Egypt. Another set of floods also occurred around 9000-9200BC, but not as big.

One of the big controversies about the dating of the Sphinx has to do with this antedeluvian period. There is convincing evidence from the older weathering patterns on the body of the Sphinx and the induration weathering of the Sphinx enclosure that instead of being a carved statue of Pharoah Khafre's face on the body of a lion, the actual Sphinx was carved at least around 8000-9000BC and maybe even earlier. However, the Egyptologist are very much against this and Zahi Hawass won't let any testing be done on the Sphinx to prove it either way.

[gary]

Hi Carl,

Thank you for the interesting and informative post.

Just one trivial correction, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area is in Tanzania,
but not too far from the Kenyan border.

Ngorongoro is at the southern end of the Serengeti/Masai Mara plains.
What is quite dramatic about the geography there today is that as you travel north
through Kenya, up through the Masai Mara where you are up at 1600m/1500m,
when you reach the Marich Pass, you plummet down to around 500m and with
it the vegetation changes very suddenly, from the acacia forests and richer vegetation
around places like Mount Kenya to dry desert areas that continue their way north
up through the Sudan and into Egypt. The mean elevation continues to drop
all the way to the Mediterranean.

So the elevation also appears to play some part in that transition from the deserts
of the north to the acacia plains further south nearer the equator perhaps?

[renormalised]

That's right....thanks for the correction. I was tossing around whether to write Tanzania or not, because I knew it was close to Kenya.

It's not so much a change in elevation that dictates where the deserts are, but that can have an effect (especially in localised orographically generated climate systems). It's the atmospheric circulation patterns which are present that dictate where they are (plus some other factors). Most of the world's deserts lie in belts that roughly straddle an area between 20-35 degrees north and south of the equator. This is no coincidence. What we have is the downflow stream of the Hadley Cells in these areas. They're essentially the subtropical high pressure belts. You have cool to cold, dry upper level air coming down from height towards the surface at these positions. That's why deserts form in these regions because there's little moisture in the air and/or little upwelling occurring in these areas.

[gary]

Hi Carl,

Thanks for taking the time with another informative and interesting reply.

You touched on briefly what they were, but I had to Google "Hadley cell" and interested
readers can find an enlightening Wikipedia article here -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell

Thanks again Carl.

[renormalised]

Sure Gary, no problem :)

[Spanrz]

They need to use this technology to find the missing "Amber Room".

[mikerr]

Now wouldn't that be something. Maybe the first Nuclear powered Cranes and Bulldozers:eyepop:

Michael

[el_draco]

Next numb-nut says space exploration is a waste of money gets this rammed down their throat!

[renormalised]

Yep, the pointy end of all three great pyramids:):P

[shelltree]

:eyepop: That just blows my mind! How amazing, this has really made my day :)