NAPLES, ITALY—According to a Live Science report, a void in the earth that may be a 2,500-year-old Greek tomb has been detected in southern Italy, some 33 feet beneath the city streets of Naples. Valeri Tioukov of Italy’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), Kunihiro Morishima of Nagoya University, and their colleagues found the possible burial by tracking the path of subatomic particles called muons with a technique known as muography. First, the researchers placed a muon tracking device in a nineteenth-century cellar some 60 feet underground. After 28 days, they compared the pattern created on the tracking device by some 10 million cosmic particles that had traveled from the atmosphere, through the earth, and to the device, with 3-D laser scans of known underground structures. The study revealed at least one unknown void in the earth, which is now thought to be a previously unrecorded burial chamber measuring about 6.5 feet by 11.5 feet. The depth of the rectangular space suggests it is part of a Hellenistic necropolis that was discovered in the area some 100 years ago. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Scientific Reports. To read about excavations of a luxurious villa beneath Positano, go to "Romans on the Bay of Naples."
