Searching For Dark Matter In An Underground Science Lab [4K] | Underground Britain | Spark

[Music] there's a way to make an entrance my destiny it was now a conspiracy of witches britain's a small island with an extraordinary past and amazing landscapes but what we see above ground is only half the story i'm traveling the length and breadth of our country to see it from a whole new perspective underground i'm rob bell and i'm on a subterranean mission i'm exploring the mysteries and wonders that lie right under our feet you've got to make yourself as small as possible from man-made to natural wonders it's just so much to take in here [Applause] many are forgotten corners from the darkest points in history there's a real presence down here [Music] this is an adventure of those places beneath the surface a journey through underground britain [Music] this week i'm in northern england i'm uncovering the largest purpose-built airaid shelter in the uk descending into the depths of yorkshire down a waterfall twice the height of niagara and i'll be discovering why one man built a set of mysterious tunnels under liverpool 200 years ago it's actually really impressive but my first port of call is bolby near middlesbrough in the north east i've heard that under this tranquil coastline lies something very deep and very unexpected [Music] and from looking at that you'd have absolutely no idea that right beneath my feet is the deepest mine in britain you can see its works above ground just off behind me here but what you don't see are its tunnels beneath the ground heading off out for as far as the eye can see but it might also surprise you to learn exactly what's being mined here at bolby it's not coal it's not stone it's not any kind of precious metal it's something that most of us have absolutely no idea we rely on every single day i'm going on a journey down the deepest mine it's as low as you can go in the uk my start is in this industrial looking airlock this is not your ordinary elevator system i'm joining some of the 800 miners on their daily commute into the mine it's 1 100 meters beneath us to get to it we've got to plunge down the longest lift shaft in britain [Music] it's like a roller coaster what hits you first is a huge rush of air like you're in a stall assembly the lift shaft doubles up as a massive air vent for the mine they pump in over a hundred tons of air a second to make sure the miners can breathe down there oh wow it's a whole different world down here there's just air flowing past you it's really warm it's almost right moist as well most underground mines and caves are dank and cold but here we're so deep into the earth's crust it's dry hot and the air is thick with salty dust this is like an underground streets you know great big roadways people expect little narrow passages yeah it's far from it we're clear the mine is absolutely vast a huge labyrinth of super highways transports miners to and from the working face and that's where i'm headed this is basically your roadmap and are all these roads as big as this all as big as this it's absolutely amazing this is like an underground city yeah we've got to drive six miles to get to the active part of the mine in order to get there we're going under the north sea do i need to hold my breath or something no way different is it apart from in my head suddenly it feels i don't know it's slightly more risky the further you go in the hotter it becomes at the extremities of the mine it's around 32 degrees centigrade it really feels like a journey to the center of the earth why is why is the rock that warm that's a hot hot summer's day yes the heat of the earth it's like a giant radiator yeah it suddenly makes it very real that i'm right down inside the earth finally we found what we're looking for we've arrived at the working face of the mine it's very hot and incredibly this is what's noisy all the racket okay now i suddenly understand the noise the dust as well there's so much dust down here it's an absolute beast of a machine it may not look like much but this red stuff is what it's all about it's a potassium compound which occurs naturally in dried up ancient seas buried deep underground and it's a powerful agricultural fertilizer it's called potash 70 years ago a huge potash reserve was discovered here and now this is britain's largest it's producer charged we can go get a closer look at the actual digger chances are you've eaten something today fertilized by potash mined right here this is it is it this is the joy continuous miner these vast diggers power their way through a million tonnes of potash every year [Music] how's this thing actually driven there where where's the driver sit well this now is remote we used to have a cab on the other side and we used to are sitting and driving manually so you stand right back there right out of the way safe with the remote and operating really with your thumbs are a making train your thumb so it's a massive great big remote control toy if you like yep that's it yeah good fun these new high-tech diggers enable the miners to stand back from the dangerous rock face i've come this far i've just got to have a go myself start the auger up now we're getting the engine going there we go don't pass it over there whenever you put your finger on the button the whole arm moves down and the destruction that my little thumb here is causing it that end is quite phenomenal so i've just cut out 20 tons i just cut out this this whole load here that's fantastic [Music] small teams of miners work long shifts to keep each digger going 24 hours a day but it's not only this massive effort to extract potash which makes this mine so special down here they're looking for something else too something which could unlock the secrets of the universe [Music] i'm exploring the deepest mine in britain trying my hand at mining potash but now i'm heading through a tiny door tucked away inside the vast mine it's a gateway to the secrets of the universe we've got an ultra clean room in here ultra clean which is a quite difficult thing to run in a dusty mine experience this is the uk's deep underground science facility and i've been granted special access to have a look around inside okay you're all set it might seem a strange decision to build a lab which needs to be dust free in one of the dustiest places on earth but there's a reason they've gone to these extremes there's a number of projects we do down here there's a number of different types of science study that need to be in an underground environment like this including the search for dark matter the search for dark matter yes that sounds quite ominous it sounds quite evil it's not evil so so dark matter is is one of the biggest questions in astronomy and physics at the moment and and it's all about trying to understand what the universe is made of scientists believe that the universe is made up from normal matter which you can see and microscopic so-called dark matter undetectable by telescopes or the naked eye when you look at the night sky now the stuff you can see like the stars and the planets and the galaxies and also the stuff that we're made of the earth is made of yeah we think makes up less than 15 of what's out there we think 85 of the the stuff in the universe you can't see it's out there but it's dark there's a race around the world to try and work out what this dark matter stuff is shawn and his team have built a series of dark matter detecting machines down here in the mine it's this deep underground location which makes their work possible this is a very quiet place in the world i don't mean quite in terms of sound i mean in terms of interference from radiation deep underground here 1.1 kilometers down it's it's actually a million times quieter in terms of radio radio activity than on the surface if dark matter exists it's all around us all the time but up on the earth's surface there's far too much background radiation coming from space to be able to detect it down here the rock above us cuts most of that out making dark matter theoretically easier to find when a particle hits the dark matter detector it creates a small electrical charge or a ping which is immediately logged by the computers it's like on a kind of heart scanner you get a beat of activity these graphs here it shows you the pattern that's formed when a particle hits that detector it's a very different pattern for different particles sean and his team analyze these pings and whilst they've identified plenty of other particles so far they've not seen dark matter how do you think you'll know when it is dark matter one way is that this detector and the other competing ones around the world all make a slightly different ping to dark matter particles than to background radiation this is what a dark matter particle would look like don't get too excited though we think this is a neutron but a neutron isn't dark matter they're looking for a ping which doesn't fit the pattern of any other particle the search has been going on down here for 20 years they haven't found the right ping yet but they're not giving up hope anytime soon let's fast forward to when you see a blip on there and it is dark matter what will that mean for science globally it's one of the biggest questions in science at the moment it seems crazy that we can look at the night sky and have all the technology we have as humans and still say we don't know what's up there that in itself to me seems quite exciting we would be extremely excited if we were the first to find this if we were to prove that it is what we think it is this is truly a mind-blowing underground wonder i'm not sure what i find more amazing about this mine the huge feat of engineering needed to extract the potash or the fact there's a small team of scientists down here getting closer to solving the secrets of the universe [Music] the next leg of my journey through the north of england takes me to stockport near manchester i'm going to explore an underground warren hidden just beneath the city streets which once saved hundreds of lives during world war ii whilst our soldiers were fighting out with the enemy overseas the men women and children left at home faced an equally terrifying ordeal the threat from the skies from 1940 to 1944 german aerial bombing campaigns across britain reduced cities to rubble and decimated populations it's estimated that over 2 million homes were destroyed and over 40 000 people were killed every city in the country took precautions to protect its citizens building big communal air aid shelters as well as encouraging individuals to construct their own more rickety versions in their backyards was all part of it but stockport went the extra mile they began tunneling beneath the streets under threat and under fire stockport went underground in the mid-1930s with war fast approaching stockport council began to plan the largest purpose-built air raid shelter in britain and in april 1939 they started digging in the chestergate area in the heart of the city i want to explore this vast subterranean bunker to find out how it must have felt living under constant threat and having to take refuge underground this is one of the entrances down into the tunnels it's not particularly well signposted or obvious but i guess back then you wouldn't really want to be giving this away as the entrance into your shelters no idea what to expect down here immediately very dark that's a rapid change of temperature as you come down here as well suddenly gets very cool it's just so vast down here like a massive underground labyrinth seems like only a few steps ago is up in the heart of the city and then suddenly boom i'm down in the bowels to help me navigate this labyrinth i've enlisted phil catling the shelter's curator who knows this place like the back of his hand phil this place is absolutely incredible there's nearly a mile of tunnels down here well if you put them all in one lot more than one long line you could see the scale of the work that was done it took six months to dig this what hang on say that again six months six months when they dug a whole mile they had like usually what kind of tools to do using pneumatic drills yeah lit by candles the council employed 36 men to painstakingly dig out these tunnels the marks of their drills can still be seen on the walls but what made a relatively small suburban borough like stockport go to so much effort well stockport's so close to manchester and with the ship canal and everything all the goods from across the north atlantic are coming through this place so they're coming to liverpool they're going to manchester and between manchester and stockport is our viaduct that great big brick structure is the main line between glasgow manchester and london the germans could cut that line they could paralyze the north they could split north from south so strategically strategically it's a real target yeah and there's lots of people here there's 120 000 people living just in this space and within a half mile of this area manchester was the major target for the luftwaffe but stockport's close proximity put it right in the firing line the shelter opened in october 1939 just one month after the war was declared the completed shelter was highly advanced in terms of facilities it was affectionately known as the chestigate hotel there were kitchens a hospital wing and even flushing loose being in the heart of the city and directly beneath the streets meant that the engineers could tap into the sewage system so believe it or not these here would have been state-of-the-art toilets for the time and often better than the inhabitants would have had at home at a push the stockport shelter could house six and a half thousand people but it would have been quite a tight squeeze it's just rows and rows and rows and every single corridor yep every single corridor would have had these bunks in quite often they would have had benches on the other side as well so it had been very cramped in here lots of people packed together [Music] that's like being back on bunk beds any youth hostel you've been in oh does that work that's how i lie down oh oh it's not bad actually quite comfy for the luftwaffe any town within five miles of manchester was a target stockport was only hit 20 times during the war but its citizens lived in constant fear of stray bombs so were people coming down here every single night during the war if there was a chance of a bombing raid you might come down as a precaution you'd bring your stuff with you you'd be tucked up on there and quite often if it was a busy night you'd have more people in what so you didn't have enough beds for everybody didn't have enough beds for everybody with this volume of people panic was one of the biggest dangers if there was an air raider big air raid going on outside what you'd have is airing ones forcing people in trying to get them to come further and further deeper into these tunnels as it filled up once they knew they had bummers were actually coming you'd get people crushing in and people want to be as deep as they possibly could you're crammed in with all the people around you crying children people smoking people singing bright lights on would have been very noisy and this was the daily routine for many stockport families so barbara you were down in the stockport air raid tunnels during the war yes i was as a child then yes i was seven when the war started i only came with my mother okay my father worked on the railway so he often worked nights and she was quite nervous so she used to take me down there we trailed down probably about six o'clock after tea stayed overnight and slept on these lovely bunks and things i still have there were a lot of people down there it may have been crowded down here but as the main target manchester had a much rougher deal the heaviest bombing was at christmas in 1940 in just two days a thousand bombs killed 684 people and injured over 2 000. so doc you were in manchester not here in stockport did you have tunnels to go down to as well no we didn't we had purpose-built shelters in the middle of the street what were facilities like down there basic they were seats something like this all the way around and their little room with a curtain and a bucket so how many people would you have in there then 50 60. it was uncomfortable it was hot the sirens would go then you went in but only when it went very quiet that we thought it's something to be afraid of but stockport's unique position deep underground made it feel much more secure how about you barbara did you remember feeling safe yes it was just a way of life for a while in the event stockport suffered far fewer attacks than manchester and out of a population of over a hundred and thirty thousand only 14 people were killed and 64 injured but without this shelter deep underground the death toll would undoubtedly have been far greater my next stop brings me to an area of exceptional natural beauty both above and below ground i'm here in the yorkshire dales gets its name from the river valleys or dales which criss-cross this whole area and the rivers which flow here have not just defined this landscape but also inspire local place names ribblesdale coverdale swaledale all named after the rivers which flow through them but it's not the effect of these rivers above ground that i'm interested in here today but it's how they've shaped the landscape underground and one particular cave high up on ingleboro hill draws quite a crowd this village of tents you see behind me are only up here for a couple of weeks twice a year every may and august cavers geologists and members of the public meet up here to be winched down into gaping gill and there she is a pothole of quite staggering proportions this is the second deepest natural cavern in the uk every summer for the past 70 years the craven pothole club have been winching people down to get a rare glimpse inside oh i see what happening now isn't it and today it's my turn to descend into the abyss ah there we go it's like getting on a ride at the fairgrounds oh it's much more exciting than that you always go i think i am that's quite special it's been nice knowing you sir thanks very much are we off [Laughter] this is amazing look at this it's almost too fast you can't even stop and take it all in far below lies yorkshire's underworld [Music] i'm exploring the deep dark caverns carved out under the yorkshire dales and right now i'm heading to explore the mysteries inside the deepest one of the lot gaping gill it's been nice knowing you sir thanks very much are we off well here we go that's amazing initially people believed that this was the entrance to the underworld locals thought it was a bottomless hole [Music] and as i descend this black abyss it's not hard to see why ah that is amazing this fast pothole is a hundred and ten meters deep [Music] spectacular it's definitely not bottomless my feet are now firmly on the ground well that is one entrance into a cave you get a sense that this is massive the gargantuan size of this cavern and the mysteries of the depth surrounding it have lured generations of geologists here for the past century that's how you what john it's only now that we've moved back from right underneath the waterfall you get a sheer sense of how big this thing really is yeah it's pretty big it's the biggest single drop waterfall in great britain twice the height of niagara so it's a massive drop twice niagara falls yes that's blowing my mind for a second you know i've seen niagara falls how massive that is but that's twice the drop absolutely but niagara's a lot easier to get to than this one is so who who's the first person to actually get feet on the bottom here the first person to reach the floor of the chamber was i hate to say a frenchman edward martell a frenchman in 1895. it was a bitter pill to taste [Music] edward martell was a world famous cave explorer in 1895 the farrar family who owned inglebro hill invited him to explore gaping gill to try and find out what was down there [Music] he descended the enormous pothole by the very same route i've just come down but by different technique a primitive system of wood and rope ladders today by winch it only takes about 30 seconds back then it took martel 20 minutes to reach the bottom and once here he didn't hang around he only spent about 20 minutes down here but he was able to assess the size of the chamber he was able to establish that there were passages leading off but being on his own down here then he wasn't he he wasn't able to go exploring on his own it would have been very very dangerous but remarkably despite the brevity of his visit martel made some amazingly accurate drawings and descriptions of gaping gill martell was well mesmerized by what he found down here and quite frankly it's not hard to see why and upon seeing this waterfall here behind me he wrote the charm of its ethereal delicacy is utterly unlike anything else upon which the human eye has ever gazed it's one of the most extraordinary spectacles i have ever beheld and his romantic description of what he saw here actually kick-started a movement of official cave exploration across britain [Music] just a year after martell reached the bottom of gaping gill the first prototype winch system was set up here cavers and geologists flocked to explore the main chamber and beyond they discovered a treasure trove of passages leading off and wondered if some of them linked up to other caves in particular an extraordinarily beautiful cave system a mile down the same hill and that's where i'm headed to now just a few steps in from the doorway and already this place is really quite special these are the spectacular inglebro show caves over half a mile long they're some of the most beautiful in britain and very different to the gigantic scale of gaping gill this formation here is called the gothic arch and you can certainly see why almost seems like it's reaching up from the ground you can certainly picture it being part of a grand cathedral somewhere and some have taken on more elaborate names because of what they resemble witch's fingers the beehive even queen victoria's bloomers water comes down through the cracks dissolving the stone as it comes and when it drips into the into the passage it leaves little rings of crystal one below the next to create hollow tiny tubes known as straw stalactites incredibly fragile they're hollow whereas if a flow of water runs out from the cracks we end up with a more substantial carrot stalactites that we see carrots yeah sort of general name for them because they look like carrots does the same go for these shapes on the sides of the wall here as well that's water that's gathered in the horizontal layering in the rock and then trickled out of that layer down the wall of the cave stretching as it goes and leaving behind these incredible shapes almost like waterfalls setting stone that's exactly what it looks like all the formations around us they're all formed using the same mod by the same principle absolutely it's just the way that water is flowing or trickling through that gives you the different shapes so much variety absolutely yeah so wonder world is beautiful and everywhere is different yeah the victorian geologists thought that gaping gill and engelbra caves were probably connected but found the obvious route blocked by rockfall today with advances in technology we're getting a step closer to finding that connection kevin hi hello what are you actually doing down here then this is my cave surveyor how does it actually work because you've got see the laser laser rangefinder yeah with a point at the wall yeah and what that'll do is that will give me an accurate slope distance but it'll also give me a compass bearing kevin's cave surveyor allows him to plot positions with phenomenal accuracy building up all these points that you take yes you can then get a picture of this whole cave system in a way that human eyes necessarily won't see it you don't hear even when it's lit up like this you do not see the full picture kevin's readings go direct to his computer above ground they're giving the first 360 degree view of the cave system this is a 3d model of the gaping guild chamber that we were down in i see what you mean now about this being able to give you views that you just wouldn't get with the eye it's difficult to appreciate because of the sheer size of the place kevin hasn't yet found a link between the two cave systems that ordinary cavers can get through but there do appear to be some water field routes which specialist cavers are starting to explore i've got data from some of the cave divers in terms of what they've been able to do so you could get from gaping guild to inglewood but in order to do that you've got to go cave diving as well as caving you need to be a real serious cave diver so of my realm yeah out of mine as well yeah this map also reveals the cave system is much bigger than the victorians could ever have imagined a vast and intricate network of passages honeycombing the whole hillside kevin's mapped almost six miles of cave passages so far your job's never done basically who knows what you might find next you know maybe you'll find another route round because absolutely because everyone down here yep exploring finding new things almost on every visit and caving is one of those pursuits where even here in the uk you can be a genuine explorer and it's the lure of discovering something for the very first time which still draws geologists and cavers here from all over the world if you find a section of cave passage underground you will be the first person to ever see that uh you know that there's probably more people walked on the summit of everest than have gone to where you are unlike the ground above this place is still unmapped there's a sense of unknown about it all and who knows what might lay ahead and it's kind of tantalizing to think what secrets might still be found down here over the next 100 years the last leg of my journey through northern england brings me to edgehill in the heart of liverpool to a very unusual historical mystery lying just under these residential streets this dilapidated mansion was built 200 years ago it was the home of a rich and mysterious eccentric called joseph williamson but it's not his house i'm interested in but what he built beneath it it's pretty narrow entrance isn't it oh yeah [Music] look at this [Music] that's some entrance this is much more than just the basement of a mansion it's enormous and it's actually really impressive i'm in a huge network of chambers and passages so williamson's house would have been up above [Music] meters of tunnels have been discovered so far it's believed that this is only a small part of the system stretching for almost a mile [Music] this brickwork's beautiful and where it mixes in with the sandstone williamson seems to have deliberately spent time and effort making these tunnels much more impressive than his house above ground but why even at the time williamson kept the purpose of this space a secret now two centuries on i'm here to discover more about the man himself and what these tunnels were really for i even got intricate shakes carved in here these arches wouldn't look out of place in a church or a grand cathedral and that's a clue to one of the theories williamson is known to have been an extremely religious man who believed in a final day of judgment some think he built the tunnels as a shelter to escape the inevitable apocalypse he certainly kept his friends guessing what he was up to [Music] williamson did used to come down into his tunnels and apparently on one occasion he invited his friends and local dignitaries around to his house for a banquet when they arrived they were welcomed with a banquet presented on a rough old table with shoddy cutlery consisting of bacon and beans needless to say some of them weren't too impressed and left immediately legend has it then that those who remained were brought down and presented with a real banquet a banquet fit for a king and that's how williamson found out who his real friends were tal eccentric maybe it sounds like an elaborate parable to teach his friends a lesson in morality but was it religion which led him to build his tunnels or shrewd business sense look at this i'm exploring the mysterious williamsons tunnels under liverpool to try to find out their original purpose there are many theories as to why joseph williamson a wealthy tobacco merchant had them built in the 19th century i've come to another section of the tunnels to see if they offer any clues one theory was that williamson was terrified that an apocalyptic catastrophe was on its way but dave bridson from the williamson tunnels heritage center has other ideas so what we're looking at here if you go back 250 years you've got to imagine we're standing in an open-air trench dave believes this place was a disused quarry when williamson bought it and the brick archways you can see around us were added by him later he basically purchased this land very cheaply he decided that if he'd roofed over the quarries he'd create platforms of level land that he could then build on build these houses build the gardens behind them so by reclaiming this wasteland williamson could afford to build an extravagant home worthy of liverpool's rich elite he was known to have been a very wealthy man who retired at 49 with a fortune worth 50 million pounds in today's money but if he was so rich why not buy a plot of land which was ready to go williamson was a poor boy he was about 11. basically he was forced to leave home and seek his fortune he got a job essentially apprentice to a tobacco merchant in liverpool and worked his way up through the company eventually married the boss's daughter and inherited the company having gone from rags to riches yeah dave also believes that williamson's impoverished roots inspired him to build the tunnels 200 years ago poverty was rife in liverpool hundreds of soldiers returned from the napoleonic wars and work was scarce from contemporary records we believe he was employing at least several hundred people at a time and probably more at the peak because they were building the arches here to create these tunnels and the level and he was then employing other men to build the houses and lay out the gardens on top of them the building work on williamson's house was finished by 1805 but he was still employing people to work on the tunnels right up until his death in 1840 by then he'd spent half his retirement fund on the project for years he provided hundreds of jobs to locals who otherwise would have been unemployed so yes he got his house out of it but there's a philanthropic side to his character as well but it's not just what these tunnels tell us about williamson which is fascinating their position under the city has also filled them with clues about life in victorian liverpool time to get your hands dirty straight in is it straight into it yeah all right what am i doing this just shovel on to that yeah into the bucket and straight out in here let's get into there yep so what is this stuff we're actually digging up here it's all spoiled after williamson died his tunnels fell into disuse this is what we're looking for items like this she's been out here now just found a hearing and over the following two centuries they've become a dumping ground for fly tippers [Applause] down here one man's rubbish is another man's treasure these tunnels are being dug out and the finds discovered here give a rare insight into the area's history over the past 200 years it gives an idea what was what they were using to close some of the wall we found quite a few shoes it gives us a good idea what they were doing and even the technology they had in their houses could have found here feel the weight of the heavy it is heavy oh geez yeah flipping and not only that the fines are starting to build a picture of the shops and businesses which once lay overhead a vast amount of pottery found in one tunnel suggests a pub or a hotel might have existed directly above it over a hundred years ago look at all this it's amazing isn't it it's a real treasure trove one of the nicest things we have is this cup here if i shine my torch into the bottom of it you can see it's actually edward vii that's fantastic unbelievable [Music] it might not seem much like real treasure but the finds discovered here below ground are helping to bring alive the past above ground in a way that records alone simply can't do every day you come down here you never know what you're going to find like small boys and wanting to give a small bite of shovel what did he do he digs a hole looking for treasure and the treasure for us is the archaeology of the structure itself you're giving me this shovel here and i'm pretty happy digging away as well i want to see you back here next week as well may never know what was going on in williamson's head when he built his tunnels an elaborate job creation scheme or safeguarding himself against impending doom but one thing's clear i bet he'd be astonished to see how they've become a mine of information about the generations who lived here after his reign as the king of edgehill next time i'm in wales in search of a natural wonder look at that investigating the site of britain's first funeral and i'll discover how welsh slate mines roofed the world it's absolutely enormous [Music] you

Channel: Spark

Views: 26,298

Keywords: Adventure, Adventure Series, Air Raid Shelter, British Culture, British History, Caves, Exploration Videos, Hidden History, Hidden Places, Historical Architecture, History Channel, Landmark Discoveries, Mysterious Tunnel, Rob Bell Adventures, Science, Science and Technology, Secret Locations, Secret Tunnels, Spark, Subterranean Wonders, Underground Facilities

Id: jAvJ9JSXRxY

Length: 44min 59sec (2699 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 22 2022