Name: The Deepest Underground Lab in the U.S.
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Invisible and mysterious, dark matter shapes the cosmos, but scientists are still trying to figure out what exactly it is.

A team of researchers hunt for dark matter deep underground in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

The Deepest Underground Lab in the U.S.

Deepest Underground Lab in the U.S.

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Invisible and mysterious, dark matter shapes the cosmos, but scientists are still trying to figure out what exactly it is.

A team of researchers hunt for dark matter deep underground in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Tech & Engineering

The Deepest Underground Lab in the U.S.Published: August 5, 2024Speaker 1: In the town of Lead, a retired gold mine houses the Sanford Underground Research Facility. Chamkaur Ghag, a professor at University College London, is a founding member of a team of researchers drawn from universities around the world that's on the hunt for dark matter.Chamkaur Ghag: To get down a mile takes a bit of time. This experiment up on the surface just wouldn't be able to run at all. It's just far too sensitive.Speaker 1: After the 10-minute ride down, it's on to a battery-powered locomotive, followed by a brief hike to get to the cavern that holds the lab of the LUX-ZEPLIN or LZ detector experiment.Chamkaur Ghag: The core of the experiment is liquid xenon. It's xenon gas that's been condensed and we've got to keep that clean and we've got to keep it cold. So much of what we'll see around here is all for that, really.Speaker 1: LZ isn't the only experiment using cooled xenon, but it now leads the pack in sensitivity.Chamkaur Ghag: It's the front-runner now, so we're entering discovery territory.Speaker 1: Direct dark matter detection experiments go back to the 1980s, xenon-based experiments, similar in design to LZ, to the 2000s. So far, all the experiments combined have detected nothing.Chamkaur Ghag: You can see the flashing [inaudible 00:01:33].Speaker 1: But the process constantly narrows down what dark matter could possibly be.Speaker 3: Whenever we do see the S1 [inaudible 00:01:41].

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The Deepest Underground Lab in the U.S.

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