Imaging the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore using cosmic rays

Abstract

The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence Cathedral, was built between 1420 and 1436 by architect Filippo Brunelleschi and it is now cracking under its own weight. Engineering efforts are under way to model the dome's structure and reinforce it against further deterioration. According to some scholars, Brunelleschi might have built reinforcement structures into the dome itself; however, the only known reinforcement is a wood chain 7.75 m above the springing of the Cupola. Multiple scattering muon radiography is a non-destructive imaging method that can be used to image the interior of the dome's wall and therefore ascertain the layout and status of any iron substructure in it. A demonstration measurement was performed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on a mock-up wall to show the feasibility of the work proposed, and a lightweight and modular imaging system is currently under construction. We will discuss here the results of the demonstration measurement and the potential of the proposed technique, describe the imaging system under construction and outline the plans for the measurement. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Cosmic-ray muography’.

Simulation and validation studies of a large drift tube muon tracker

“…Many of the past studies in cosmic ray imaging were performed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) using a Medium Muon Tracker (MMT). The MMT consists of two modules of drift tubes with dimensions of 4'×4' [3], [7], [9], [10]. Each module contains submodules with layers of perpendicular drift tubes to enable the reconstruction of positions on detector planes where muon tracks underwent interactions.…”

Muons for cultural heritage

“…In another example, density anomalies (potentially posing safety hazards) have been found in a rampart of a defensive wall of Xi'an (China) in 2022 [12]. Furthermore, scattering-based muography has been proposed to search for iron chains within the brickwork of the Florence cathedral's dome in Italy [13], and a proof-of-principle test on a mock-up wall was successfully conducted to demonstrate the conceptual validity of the method.…”

Muography as a new tool to study the historic earthquakes recorded in ancient burial mounds

“…The result is a pattern of the contrast in the density distribution inside the objects, which is projected onto a 2-dimensional plane. Muography has been applied to the imaging of the internal structure of volcanoes (Tanaka et al, 2007(Tanaka et al, , 2009(Tanaka et al, , 2014Lesparre et al, 2012;Oláh et al, 2019), cultural heritage sites, including the Giza pyramids (Cheops and Chephren), Egypt, the Prambanan temples, Indonesia, Mount Echia, Italy, and Santa Maria del Fiore, Italy (Alvarez et al, 1970;Hanazato and Tanaka, 2016;Tanaka and Ohshiro, 2016;Morishima et al, 2017;Guardincerri et al, 2018;Cimmino et al 2019), industrial plants (Tanaka, 2013), and other natural (Tanaka et al, 2011;Oláh et al, 2012;Schouten, 2018) and man-made structures (Mahon et al, 2018). Prior works have focused on searching for undiscovered chambers or the total weight of the heritage site.…”