Located one kilometer underground, the Southern Hemisphere’s first underground dark matter physics laboratory is open. The unique laboratory will allow researchers from several Australian universities to try to understand the nature of dark matter and unlock the secrets of our universe.
The project’s principal investigator, Professor Elisabetta Barberio from the University of Melbourne, presents the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory
A laboratory to shine a light in the darkness
The first stage of the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory, located at the active Stawell gold mine in Victoria’s Wimmera region, has been completed.
It takes half an hour to get down to the lab site along a 10 kilometer route through what looks like a maze of tunnels. Once there, you’ll find a 33-meter-long by 10-meter-wide laboratory further protected by a product sprayed on the walls called Tekflex, which reduces the potential for radon gas to interfere with the rock mass.
All this to house the SABER (sodium iodide with active background rejection) detector. With it, researchers will look for the visible light emitted when dark matter particles collide with a highly sensitive crystal target.
Professor Alan Duffy, Professor Geoffrey Brooks and Dr Shanti Krishnan, all from Swinburne University of Technology, have collaborated with scientists from other universities on the design and construction of the SABER detector, with the lead vessel on campus at Swinburne’s Wantirna. The components are currently being tested at different facilities around the country before being installed underground at Stawell’s Underground Physics Laboratory next year for the first experiment carried out in the laboratory.
“One of the critical elements developed at Swinburne has been the ‘slow control system’ developed by a team led by Shanti Krishnan of our Factory of the Future. It is designed to ensure that all SABER detector conditions are accurately recorded, given that the detector is sensitive to small changes in temperature, humidity and movement,” says Professor Geoffrey Brooks.
“It’s exciting that the cutting edge of physics research is happening right here in Wantirna, just down the road from where I grew up. A childhood dream has come true!”
Five research institutions will use the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory to uncover the secrets of the universe, including Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, the University of Adelaide and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Association (ANSTO).
The Australian and Victorian governments each provided $5 million in funding for the construction of the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory, and this funding was boosted by the Australian Research Council awarding a $35 million grant for the development of a national Center of Excellence for dark matter particle physics. .
What about dark matter?
Dark matter is an invisible and unknown form of mass, which makes up five times more of the universe than all the atoms, or baryons, that we can see. Understanding the nature of this so-called dark matter is one of the greatest challenges in the physical sciences of this century, bringing together astronomers, particle and nuclear physicists in a global hunt.
An animation showing the movement of the galaxy within a vast cloud of dark matter, and the resulting headwind of this material as the Sun passes through it. Earth’s motion aligns with this direction for half of the year, meaning headwinds and resulting collisions increase, while for the next six months the motion is in the opposite direction, from so that the speed of dark matter through the planet and any dark matter detector drops. in a predictable way: a signal known as annual modulation. Credit: CAASTRO
There are many candidates for this collisionless, non-luminous gravitational mass; from ultralight axion particles to weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) to even primordial black holes.
At Swinburne, researchers use supercomputer simulations to better predict the distribution of dark matter around visible tracers such as stars and galaxies, which are then compared with maps of gravitational lensing from the Hubble Space Telescope or high-energy emissions from the possible self-annihilation of dark matter. signatures as revealed by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
Institute of Space Technology and Industry director and dark matter expert Professor Alan Duffy says that answering “what is dark matter?” it has the potential to be one of the most significant discoveries of this century.
“Explaining the nature of dark matter would reveal more of the universe than all our collective efforts so far, the search is a global race that merges supercomputers, vast telescopes and huge underground detectors,” he says.
“What we find will transform our picture of physics in this century, as surely as the splitting of the atom did in the 20th century.”