Physical Society Colloquium

The University of Texas ‘Maya-Muon’ Project: an Application of the Tools and Methods of High Energy Physics to Archeology

Roy Schwitters

Department of Physics
University of Texas at Austin

For the past several years our group at the University of Texas at Austin has been developing practical detectors and analysis tools to image meter-scale objects hidden from ordinary view by meters of rock, dirt, or other surrounding materials by detecting naturally occurring cosmic ray muons which traverse the objects of interest and comparing observed fluxes with “flat-field” images of the open sky. Our plan is to deploy muon-imaging detectors at an archeological site in Belize over the next year to image interiors of Maya pyramid ruins in a search for artifacts from this fascinating civilization. Quantitative results of imaging laboratory objects and blind test objects will be discussed.