I always thought something like the Ground Penetrating Radar GPR would be very useful to determine where to the ruins are and avoid them while building a subway.
One of the (many) reasons why Rome has only 3 subway lines is that it's very common to find ancient rome building while digging.
The invasiveness is still necessary. We want to get to the goodies. However we might be able to know what’s there without having to manually dig first.
Muons scanning works for seeing through things, not into them. There are no muons coming from underground because the Earth blocks them. Scanning the pyramids (fun fact: you can DIY a muon detector for <$100) relies on the fact that muons coming from the sun are all highly collimated- they're all travelling in the same direction. Because of that you know that a muon coming from direction x passed through point y.
If you wanted to image underground with muons, you're basically using them as backlight- muons come from behind the detector, penetrate the ground, and occasionally reflect backwards into the detector. Since the return point and angle are random you wouldn't be able to do it without a very expensive muon source or detector.
[+] [-] Luc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PTOB|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giorgioz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BurningFrog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] virmundi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joe5150|5 years ago|reply
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/largest-and-oldest...
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] adolph|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon_tomography
http://www.bldgblog.com/2008/08/mayan-muons-and-unmapped-roo...
[+] [-] hwillis|5 years ago|reply
If you wanted to image underground with muons, you're basically using them as backlight- muons come from behind the detector, penetrate the ground, and occasionally reflect backwards into the detector. Since the return point and angle are random you wouldn't be able to do it without a very expensive muon source or detector.
[+] [-] afeezaziz|5 years ago|reply