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Muon Radiography of Ancient Mines: The San Silvestro Archaeo-Mining Park (Campiglia Marittima, Tuscany)
- Source :
- Universe, Volume 5, Issue 1, Universe, Vol 5, Iss 1, p 34 (2019)
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2019.
-
Abstract
- Muon absorption radiography is an imaging technique based on the measurement of the absorption of cosmic ray muons. This technique has recently been used successfully to investigate the presence of unknown cavities in the Bourbon Gallery in Naples and in the Chephren Pyramid at Cairo. The MIMA detector (Muon Imaging for Mining and Archaeology) is a prototype muon tracker for muon radiography for application in the fields of archaelogy and mining. It is made of three pairs of X-Y planes each consisting of 21 scintillator bars with a silicon photomultiplier readout. The detector is compact, robust, easily transportable, and has a low power consumption: all of which makes the detector ideal for measurements in confined and isolated environments. With this detector, a measurement from inside the Temperino mine in the San Silvestro archaeo-mining park in Tuscany was performed. The park includes about 25 km of mining tunnels arranged on several levels that have been exploited from the Etruscan time. The measured muon absorption was compared to the simulated one, obtained from the information provided by 3D laser scanner measurements and cartographic maps of the mountain above the mine, in order to obtain information about the average density of the rock. This allowed one to confirm the presence of a partially accessible exploitation opening and provided some hints regarding the presence of a high-density body within the rock.
- Subjects :
- lcsh:QC793-793.5
Physics::Instrumentation and Detectors
General Physics and Astronomy
Cosmic ray
Scintillator
mining
010502 geochemistry & geophysics
01 natural sciences
Silicon photomultiplier
cosmic rays
0103 physical sciences
Pyramid
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Remote sensing
Physics
Muon
010308 nuclear & particles physics
muon radiography
lcsh:Elementary particle physics
Detector
Muon radiography
geophysical prospection
imaging
tracking detectors
High Energy Physics::Experiment
3d laser scanner
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 22181997
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Universe
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....815d0a8134ccdc364e65543d9c94ddff
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3390/universe5010034