The Deep Underground Sky

We are pleased to announce that our speaker for the first SME Twin Cities Subsection Luncheon Meeting of 2010 will be University of Minnesota Marvin Marshak.

He will describe how, since the early 1950's, physicists have established laboratories deep underground in mines and tunnels to make measurements about fundamental properties of the Universe. These laboratories use the Earth itself as either a filter or a shield. When used as a filter, the rock overburden limits the cosmic flux underground to weakly-interacting particles known as muons, neutrinos and WIMPS. Experiments such as those that test the ultimate stability of matter by searching for proton decay use the rock overburden as a shield to eliminate background radiation as much as possible. Currently, the only operating deep underground science laboratory in the United States is the University of Minnesota's facility in Soudan MN. The National Science Foundation is now developing a massive new laboratory at the Homestake Mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This talk will review past and future underground science laboratories and their experiments.

Please plan to join us for this lunchtime presentation on Thursday, February 18, 2010.

Click here for Speaker Biography