Pyramid power

Pyramid power is the idea that the shape of a pyramid has a special effect – for instance sharpening razor blades, keeping food fresh for longer or promoting well-being. At the Kyborg Institute we work with the pyramid shape as a spiritual object of experience and design (see Energy pyramid). On this page we assess, separately and neutrally, what research and methodology actually show about a claimed physical effect – for and against, without glossing over anything and without health promises.

Is there scientific evidence for pyramid power?

In short: there is no robust evidence of a shape-specific effect. The idea has been discussed since the 1930s – first in dowsing, popularised from the 1950s by the “sharpening” of razor blades, later through field trials (such as the Russian Golod pyramids) and many personal accounts. Look closely, however, and a pattern emerges: the more carefully a study is controlled, the less remains of the special pyramid effect. That is an honest non-confirmation – not proof that “nothing” is possible, but no evidence for pyramid power either.

Why does the difference between controlled and uncontrolled studies matter?

The real dividing line runs not between “pyramid enthusiasts” and “sceptics”, but between studies with a control and studies without one. A control means testing, at the same time, a comparison shape of the same size without a pyramid apex (such as a box made of the same material) – only then can one say whether the shape does anything or merely the act of covering.

• An editorial replication test by Bowu, a Chinese popular-science magazine (2006), set a granite pyramid against a stone box of the same material. Result: no difference; in a follow-up test, pyramid and box kept slices of fruit equally well – an effect of covering, not of shape.
• Where effects are reported, this very control is very often missing. Such reports document an experience, but not a cause.

Fairness matters in both directions: a non-confirmation is not a blanket “disproved”. It only says: where testing is done properly, no pyramid-specific effect appears.

Does the shape work – or does any shape work?

A revealing detail: once different shapes are tested alongside, the pyramid’s special status disappears.

• A study in the Mansoura Engineering Journal (2013) examined bodies of equal volume built with the four different angles of the Great Pyramid, together with a square control. The authors’ result: bacterial growth was inhibited in all of the angled shapes. Even if one takes the effect to be real, it follows that it is not pyramid-specific – if “any shape” works, “the pyramid shape” is not an active principle.
• It becomes even clearer at the origin of the razor-blade myth: in 1952 the engineer Karel Drbal had the idea protected by a patent. An analysis of this patent (Harry Edwards, The Skeptic, 1991) shows that the specification itself concedes that the form “could also have a different geometric shape”, that a north–south alignment is “preferable but not necessary”, and that the dimensions are open. Once shape, alignment and dimensions fall away, no pyramid-specific hypothesis remains.

What does the 2018 physics study of the Great Pyramid say – and what does it not say?

A genuine physics publication is sometimes cited as evidence: in 2018, Balezin and colleagues showed in the Journal of Applied Physics, by means of a simulation, that the Great Pyramid of Khufu scatters incoming radio waves (wavelength roughly 200 to 600 metres) and can concentrate them in its chambers. Three things are decisive:

1. It concerns the Great Pyramid – a structure more than 100 metres high.
2. The effect only occurs when wavelength and object size are comparable. It cannot be transferred to an object of a few centimetres or a few metres in a living room.
3. The authors state explicitly that they wanted to dispel “unfounded speculation” about the pyramid – it is not evidence for “pyramid power”.

In short: a serious scattering simulation of a giant structure and long radio waves – and no statement about small pyramids in a room.

What about the radar scans of the Giza pyramids?

Since 2025, reports have been circulating that satellite radar revealed enormous shafts, chambers and corridors beneath and inside the pyramids of Giza; some videos therefore interpret the pyramid as a “power plant” or “resonator”. The claims go back to the engineer Filippo Biondi and the chemist Corrado Malanga. Their only peer-reviewed paper on the method appeared in 2022 in the journal Remote Sensing and concerned the Pyramid of Khufu; already there, the authors interpret the structures, “in our personal opinion”, as a giant acoustic resonator. The 2025 statements about the Pyramid of Khafre were never published after peer review.

In August 2026 the journal retracted the 2022 paper – for “serious methodological flaws and statistical errors”. The authors disagree and are demanding that the publisher specify the errors in detail; so far this has not happened. Specialists in radar for archaeology consider the method physically untenable: satellite radar does not penetrate solid stone, and the tiny vibrations through which the method is supposed to “look” inside are, in their assessment, far below what a satellite can detect. The 2022 peer reviews had already criticised that the method was never tested on known objects – which left open whether the images show real voids or artefacts of the processing.

These should be distinguished from genuine finds: using muons – particles from cosmic radiation – the ScanPyramids project detected a large void above the Grand Gallery of the Pyramid of Khufu in 2017 (Nature) and, in 2023, a corridor behind the north face (Nature Communications); the corridor was subsequently confirmed with ground-penetrating radar, ultrasound and electrical resistivity measurements, and viewed with an endoscope camera. The pyramids do still hold unknowns – documented by verifiable measurements, not by the satellite images. And none of these finds says anything about a special effect of the pyramid shape.

What are Bovis units, and what do they really measure?

The “radiation” of pyramids is often given in Bovis units. These values come from dowsing (radiesthesia) and are a subjective method. Two proponents of the field themselves are remarkably candid, almost 80 years apart: as early as 1931 the engineer Giovanni Paris noted that science could build no device to detect such “radiations” – the only “instrument” was the human being, “unfortunately also influenced by suggestion”. In 2009 Stéphane Cardinaux reached the same conclusion: the only thing that indicates the “invisible” is the human body. A Bovis figure is therefore a subjective dowsing measure, not a physical measurement. More on this in the entry Bovis units.

How should the evidence be assessed fairly?

To sum up fairly:

• Where testing is properly controlled, no pyramid-specific effect appears. When different shapes are tested, “any shape” works – if anything does.
• There are many positive personal accounts. They deserve to be taken seriously as experience, but they do not serve as proof of an effect: expectation, attention and selection effects explain much of what subjectively appears as an effect.
• Be careful with “peer-reviewed”: some of the pyramid studies presented as “peer-reviewed” appear with publishers without effective peer review; there, “peer-reviewed” is no seal of quality.
• Far-reaching claims of effects, especially health-related ones (such as those circulating around some large pyramids), are not scientifically substantiated and may not legally be advertised as effects – we do not repeat them here.

Our position is therefore consistent: we claim no physical pyramid power. What convinces us is the experience of many people and the aesthetic, contemplative value of the form – as a personal view rooted in our outlook on life, not as proven physics. We keep exactly this separation clean: the neutral knowledge page here, the experience and the objects under Energy pyramid.

This entry assesses the state of research neutrally and is not a recommendation to buy. The Horus Energy Pyramids of the Kyborg Institute are spiritual objects of experience and design, not a remedy and not a medical device.

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By Tobias O. R. Alke