Speaker
Description
The NAUM (Non-invasive Archaeometry Using Muons) project is a collaboration between US and Mexican institutions exploring El Castillo pyramid in the archaeological zone of Chichen Itza, Mexico, using a scintillator-based muon tracker. The development of non-intrusive remote sensing techniques has been one of the major interdisciplinary successes of archaeometry. Ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography are examples mainly used for subsurface exploration. We are employing an alternative technique that uses the transmission of atmospheric muons through large archaeological structures. Since February of this year, the detector has been measuring the flow and direction of atmospheric muons beneath the pyramid. In this talk, we will outline the project's scope, the detector, results from prototype tests, and the project's status. This work is partly supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. NSF-PHY-2011339 and NSF-PHY-2011442.