|
|
Welcome to Underground Science
 Dr. Ray Davis inspects his neutrino detector under construction in the Homestake gold mine. (1965) A laboratory 4,850 feet underground in the Homestake gold mine in Lead, South Dakota, helped start a revolution in physics.
Dr. Ray Davis installed a neutrino detector in Homestake in 1965. Neutrinos are subatomic particles produced by fusion in stars, and over the course of three decades, the Davis experiment led to the discovery that the neutrinos produced in our sun change type, or "flavor," on their way to earth. The change in flavor meant neutrinos had to have at least a wisp of mass -- a wisp that required a significant change in the Standard Model of how the universe works.
Read More
|
The Sanford Lab Plan
South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds explains the Sanford Laboratory plan. Click here for video
The DUSEL Plan
 An NSF DUSEL at Homestake The National Science Foundation’s DUSEL at Homestake, would have campuses from the surface down to 8,000 feet. Click Here...
|
|
"Hunting WIMPs" draws 100 in Pierre |
"Deep Science" dark-matter lecture now available in SD Public Broadcasting archives. Click here and look for "Hunting Wimps in the Black Hills."
|
|
Dr. Rick Gaitskell, left, Dr. Tom Shutt, center, and Ron Wheeler, Executive Director of the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority, confer on the 4,850-foot level of the Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake.
|
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following story was a press release announcing a Deep Science for Everyone lecture in Pierre, S.D. on Jan. 26. More than 100 people attended, and South Dakota Public Broadcasting also made the talk available as a live webcast. Now the webcast is archived at the SDPB website. For more information contact Communications Officer Bill Harlan at bharlan@sanfordlab.org.
Two physicists leading a hunt for one of nature's most mysterious substances -- dark matter -- will discuss their experiment Tuesday evening during a free public lecture in Pierre.
"Hunting WIMPs in the Black Hills" is at 7 p.m. at the Ramkota (Amphitheater 2) at 920 W. Sioux Ave.
For those unable to attend, South Dakota Public Broadcasting will provide a live web cast of the lecture. Web viewers can even ask questions during the lecture via Twitter or e-mail. (Instructions are on the SDBP link.)
Dr. Rick Gaitskell of Brown University and Dr. Tom Shutt of Case Western Reserve University are installing a dark-matter detector 4,850 feet deep underground in the Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake in Lead. "We need the unique opportunity this facility gives us," Dr. Gaitskell said. "This tremendous depth -- all those 4,850 feet." The Sanford Lab's depth will shield the sensitive dark-matter experiment from background cosmic radiation.
So far, no one has detected a "weakly interacting massive particle," or WIMP, which is a leading candidate for dark matter. "It's truly one of the great challenges of the early 21st Century," Dr. Gaitskell says.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Friday, 06 November 2009 18:02 |
 RCS Construction reaches the 4850 LevelLead, S.D. -- After nearly a year of work, a Rapid City construction company has reopened the second deep shaft to the 4,850-foot level of the Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake."This is a significant step forward toward creating the Sanford Undergroun… |
|
Read more...
|
|
Monday, 28 September 2009 09:58 |
 Lead, S.D. -- The first blast in nearly eight years at the former Homestake gold mine was detonated at 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 23 in a tunnel 4,850 feet underground. "I never thought a pile of rock could look so beautiful," Sanford Laboratory Engineering Project Manager Willy McElroy said after the blast… |
|
Read more...
|
|
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 14:09 |
 LEAD, S.D. -- The Sanford Underground Laboratory family is sad to report the death of Dave Bozied, a long-time member of the South Dakota Science and Technology Board of Directors. He died Wednesday, Oct. 7, at his home in Sioux Falls, S.D., after a battle with esophageal cancer. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Friday, 16 October 2009 03:58 |
October 13, 2009
UC Davis News
A consortium led by UC Davis physics professor Robert Svoboda will design the world's largest neutrino detector under a $4.4 million contract recently awarded by the National Science Foundation.
The detector will contain about 330,000 tons of ultrapure water 4,800 feet below ground in the former Homestake goldmine in South Dakota. It will be about 15 times bigger than the current largest neutrino experiment, the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan. "If our design is approved and construction is funded, this will be the largest particle physics experiment in the U.S. in the next decade," Svoboda said.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Friday, 16 October 2009 03:29 |
 By Robert Sanders, Media RelationsUC Berkeley News
BERKELEY, Calif. -- The National Science Foundation (NSF) has authorized more than $29 million for the University of California, Berkeley, to create a preliminary plan for turning a former gold mine in South Dakota into the world's deepest laborato… |
|
Read more...
|
|
Thursday, 20 August 2009 09:34 |
 Nine years ago, Jim Hanhardt was a contract miner at Homestake. His son Mark was a physics student at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. That’s also when physicists began talking about converting the gold mine into a laboratory. Jim and Mark discussed the possibility they might work togeth… |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
|
|
