Neutrino Lab under Stevens Pass?

Lab buried under ski slope would tackle cosmic puzzles:

seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews...dergroundlab30m.html

Ah, yes, this will give new meaning to dropping in to Tunnel Creek

- Matt

I hope they choose the WA or CO proposal, not Homestake. For purely selfish reasons, of course.

Hey, I ride to work with Wick Haxton every now and then. Sounds like he's on a personal crusade to build the thing here.

Might require a unique skill set, huh, Sky? PhD in physics with backcountry ski experience . . .

What does this proposed lab do differently than SK or the south pole site?

You wonder what kind of environmental impact building a giant tunnel in a granite mountain will have on streams, etc. At least they aren't planning on digging into Mt. Cashmere anymore. Is there any environmental impact reports out on the proposed site?

sb: What do you mean by SK?

The purpose of an underground lab is to shield experiments from natural radiation backgrounds like cosmic rays (high-energy protons and especially muons and the secondary radiation they create). Rock makes a great barrier, especially granite since it is more stable for excavating large volumes. Ive heard of one proposed experiment that would require a larger volume than has previously been excavated so deep underground (or something like that, how's my memory today?), so this type of lab may also go together with tests of the best mining technology.

The precision necessary for experiments to observe very rare processes (such as neutinoless double-beta decay, with half-lives corresponding to one decay every 10^20 years) requires an underground laboratory. Interesting physics to be done at an underground lab: to answer whether the neutrino is its own antiparticle, which would result in the aforementioned neutrinoless double-beta decay; the search for dark matter, which may explain the missing mass of the universe (only ~5% of the matter of the universe is stuff we know and understand), will proceed underground.

There are also geological and biological motivations for such labs. I must be neglecting many aspects; what I've mentioned are research questions that interest me.

There is an underground facility in Gran Sasso, Italy .

If we never build such a facility in the US, maybe I'll hope to study physics somewhere near the Alps.