For thousands of years, the pyramids of Giza have stood above one of archaeology's greatest mysteries. But in 2025, a claim emerged that potentially made the mystery considerably larger.
Researchers using satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) said they had detected enormous structures beneath the Pyramid of Khafre — including vertical shafts, chambers and possible interconnected underground features extending far below the Giza Plateau.
The claims quickly spread around the world, with some reports describing an enormous underground "city" beneath the pyramids.
But there is a crucial question: Did the radar actually detect what the researchers claimed it detected?
The Khafre claim
The research was associated with Italian researcher Corrado Malanga and radar specialist Filippo Biondi.
Their approach involved analysing SAR data from satellites and, rather than simply looking at conventional radar images, examining extremely small movements and signals associated with structures on and beneath the pyramid.
The researchers argued that these measurements could be processed to produce a form of three-dimensional reconstruction.
According to their interpretation, the area beneath Khafre contained multiple large structures, including shaft-like formations and chambers.
Some descriptions of the claimed reconstruction suggested structures extending hundreds of metres — and in some reports more than a kilometre — beneath the surface.
Those numbers are extraordinary.
And that is where the controversy begins.
SAR cannot simply "see through" rock
Conventional Synthetic Aperture Radar does not work like an underground X-ray.
SAR sends electromagnetic signals towards the Earth's surface and analyses the returned signal. Its normal applications include mapping terrain, monitoring changes in the ground and identifying surface features.
Solid rock presents a major problem for conventional radar penetration.
Critics therefore questioned whether SAR could produce the enormous subsurface structures shown in the Khafre Project's reconstructions.
Radar experts and archaeologists publicly challenged the interpretation, arguing that the claimed depths went far beyond what conventional satellite SAR could reasonably resolve.
The criticism is important because the entire extraordinary conclusion depends upon the validity of the processing technique.
The researchers, however, argued that they were not simply claiming that radar waves had travelled hundreds of metres through solid limestone. Instead, their method involved analysing tiny movements and variations detected in repeated satellite observations.
That distinction is central to the debate.
The question is therefore not simply: "Can radar penetrate 2,000 feet of limestone?"
It is also: "Can the mathematical processing of satellite observations legitimately reconstruct structures at those depths?"
That remains disputed.
There is another complication
The Khafre claims became particularly controversial because they were sometimes presented alongside genuinely established discoveries inside the Giza pyramids. And those discoveries are remarkable in their own right.
In 2017, the international ScanPyramids collaboration announced the discovery of a previously unknown enormous void inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu.
It was detected using cosmic-ray muons.
Muons are naturally produced by cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere. They can pass through large amounts of rock, although some are absorbed along the way.
By measuring how many muons arrive at detectors positioned around a pyramid, researchers can identify areas where more particles are passing through than expected.
Those areas can indicate empty spaces.
The 2017 ScanPyramids study identified a void at least approximately 30 metres long above the Grand Gallery. Importantly, the result was detected using three different muon-detection technologies and independent analyses.
That is a very different evidential situation from the controversial Khafre SAR claim.
Another hidden corridor
The same scientific collaboration later identified another previously unknown feature inside Khufu. In 2023, researchers published detailed results concerning a corridor-shaped structure near the pyramid's northern face.
The feature is approximately 9 metres long and around 2 metres across. Subsequent work has continued to investigate the corridor using additional non-destructive techniques.
So we know that modern scanning technology really can reveal previously unknown spaces inside the pyramids.
That makes the distinction between established discoveries and disputed claims particularly important.
What makes the Khafre claim different?
The 2017 and 2023 discoveries relied heavily on muon tomography, a physical measurement technique specifically suited to detecting density differences inside massive structures.
The controversial Khafre research used a very different approach based on satellite SAR observations and specialised signal processing.
The researchers claimed that their processing could reconstruct structures beneath the pyramid and surrounding ground.
Critics argued that the method did not provide sufficient evidence for such a reconstruction.
As of 2026, there has been no archaeological excavation demonstrating the enormous underground complex described in the viral reports.
Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass publicly rejected the claims, stating that there was no scientific evidence supporting the alleged underground structures.
Then came another development
The controversy became even more complicated in August 2026.
A scientific paper published by Biondi and Malanga in 2022, which had made earlier claims about detecting previously unknown structures within the Great Pyramid using SAR Doppler tomography, was retracted.
The retraction is significant because that earlier work used the same general research approach that subsequently became associated with the much larger Khafre claims.
Retraction Watch reported that the journal's notice cited methodological and statistical concerns. The authors disagreed with the retraction.
However, this does not automatically prove that every claim made by the researchers is false.
It does mean that the evidence needs to be examined particularly carefully.
What would settle the argument?
Ultimately, the simplest way to resolve the controversy would be independent confirmation.
If enormous shafts and chambers really exist beneath Khafre, other techniques should eventually be able to detect them.
Possible approaches could include:
- Muon tomography
- Ground-penetrating radar where technically appropriate
- Electrical resistivity tomography
- Seismic methods
- Microgravity surveys
- Borehole investigation
- Archaeological excavation
Ideally, several independent techniques would identify the same structures.
That is essentially what makes the established ScanPyramids discoveries so compelling: the Big Void was independently detected using multiple muon systems.
There may still be something to investigate
Rejecting an extraordinary interpretation does not mean that the Giza Plateau contains nothing unusual.
Quite the opposite.
The pyramids themselves contain previously unknown spaces. The Great Pyramid's Big Void remains of unknown function. The North Face Corridor remains sealed.
And other geophysical investigations around the Giza Plateau continue to identify subsurface anomalies.
In 2024, researchers using ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography investigated an L-shaped feature in the Western Cemetery near the Great Pyramid, together with a deeper anomaly. The researchers suggested that the features could represent buried structures, although their precise nature requires further investigation.
The real archaeological story may therefore be considerably more interesting than the viral "underground city" headline.
So, did radar find an underground city?
It has not been established. There is a genuine research claim that satellite SAR processing revealed enormous underground structures beneath Khafre.
There is also substantial scientific criticism of the methodology and interpretation.
No archaeological excavation has yet confirmed the enormous network described in the viral reports.
At the same time, modern non-invasive scanning has already demonstrated that the pyramids contain previously unknown spaces.
The question is not whether the pyramids still contain mysteries. They unquestionably do.
The question is how much of what appears in a computer-generated reconstruction represents a physical structure — and how much represents an interpretation of complicated signals.
For now, the alleged subterranean city beneath Khafre belongs firmly in the unconfirmed category.
But if future independent scanning were to reproduce even part of the claimed structures, the story would become considerably more interesting.
The technology may eventually tell us what lies beneath Giza. The difficult part is determining which signals are archaeological discoveries — and which are artefacts of the method used to interpret them.
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