Physicists explore Teotihuacan

[Brian G Turner]

The largest particle detector in Mexico is being built inside a pyramid in the ancient settlement of Teotihuacan. The equipment will detect muons, tiny particles that are created when cosmic rays bombard the Earth's atmosphere.

Dr Arturo Menchaca and colleagues from Mexico's National Autonomous University hope that by tracking the muons through the pyramid, they can find cavities.

This could indicate whether the kings of the ancient people who built the site are also entombed within it.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3710735.stm

 

[littlemissattitude]

Interesting article. That is a novel way of looking for open spaces within the pyramid.

One thing really caught my eye, though. Although in the body of the article it says:

The city they built here was once the largest metropolis in the Americas. It rose and fell around the same time as ancient Rome

,

the first paragraph in the article calls the city of Teotihuacan a "settlement".

Some settlement. According to World Book online, at it's height in the A.D. 500s, the city had a population of 150,000 to 200,000 in an area of 8 square miles. I don't know, maybe I'm just being nit-picky tonight, but that sounds like more than just a settlement to me, especially since Merriam-Webster defines a "settlement" as "a place or region newly settled" or "a small village".

But don't mind me. I wrote an e-mail to CNN last night because in one of their articles they called Modesto, a city north of where I live (and, by the way, George Lucas's hometown) a suburb of San Francisco, even though they are 91 miles apart and separated by a mountain range and a good deal of open country.