Chinese state-run media has announced the launch of what it describes as the world’s deepest laboratory. Located in the country’s mountainous Sichuan province, the subterranean facility is more than 2 400 metres underground.
After three years of extensive expansions by Tsinghua University and Yalong River Hydropower Development Company, the China Jinping Underground Laboratory’s remote location and unique conditions make it ideal for research into dark matter, a field of science that still perplexes many of the world’s top minds.
The lab’s location, kilometres beneath the surface of the earth where no sunlight can infiltrate, makes it a perfect ‘cleanroom’ for scientists to study the phenomenon known as dark matter.
Dark matter is a poorly understood theoretical substance that is not affected by light or electromagnetic radiation in the same way matter is.
The new-and-improved China Jinping Underground Laboratory has a total floor volume measuring a reported 300 000 square metres, according to the South China Morning Post.
This is roughly the size of 120 Olympic swimming pools and about twice the size of the previous record-holder, the particle physics research centre at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in the Italian province of L’Aquila.
First described in 1933 by Swiss astrophysicist and California Institute of Technology researcher Fritz Zwicky, dark matter is unique in that it does not absorb, reflect or give off light.
While calculating the mass of the Coma galaxy cluster, Zwicky observed that the perceived mass of the system was at least 400 times larger than expected, concluding that there must be an unknown substance contributing to its mass.
Scientists believe that studying the mysterious subject of dark matter could help us understand the size, shape and nature of the universe.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202312/07/WS65712c17a31090682a5f1ebc.html