Colloquia

Using muon tomography, the Non-invasive Archaeometry Using Muons (NAUM) Project will image the interiors of ancient Maya temples in Chichén Itzá, Mexico to uncover their unknown internal structures.
Conceptually, muon tomography is the nascent science of collecting muon flux measurements through cross sections of an object to graphically visualize the internal massive structure. NAUM’s volumes of interest lie beneath the multi-stacked Maya temples at Chichén Itzá. The Maya city of Chichén Itzá, on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, was a regional capital housing a great deal of historical and cultural significance for the Maya people. By imaging the Temple of Kukulcán with muon tomography, we can non-invasively explore inside this monumental structure while preserving its history and glean information on how and why the scientifically and mathematically intelligent Maya civilization built these great landmarks. This presentation describes the project's history, process, and progress, including results from a trip to Chichén Itzá, muon flux simulations, prototype detector fabrication and testing at the Fermilab Test Beam, and the prototype's resolution analysis.