OSTIblog Articles in the Sanford Lab Topic

Mining for Gold, Neutrinos and the Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

Deep within the caverns of Lead, South Dakota is one of the nation’s preeminent underground laboratories. The site of the former Homestake Mine was once one of the largest and deepest gold mines in North America. This famous mine was discovered during the 1876 Black Hills gold rush and maintained a rich and colorful mining history for the next 125 years. When the mine became unprofitable it closed in 2003, having produced more than 40 million ounces of gold over its lifetime.

Mining continued after its closure for a different type of treasure. Scientific researchers recognized they now had a unique space a mile underground where sensitive physics experiments could be shielded from contaminants and cosmic radiation. Here nuclear chemist Ray Davis and his colleagues installed a solar neutrino experiment underground in the mine called the "Homestake Experiment," the large-scale radiochemical neutrino detector which first detected evidence of neutrinos from the sun. Davis shared the 2002 Noble Prize in Physics for this discovery with physicist Masatoshi Koshiba and Riccardo Giacconi.

After the Homestake Mine...

Related Topics: dark matter, gold mine, HomeStake MIne, Large Underground Xenon Detector, LBNE, Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment, LUX, MAJORANA Demonstrator, neutrinos Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay, Sanford Lab, Sanford Underground Research Facilities, South Dakota