SNOLAB: Inside the Dark Matter Lab Buried Over a Mile Underground

[Music] the earth is constantly being bombarded with all sorts of junk coming in from space we come underground because we have two kilometers of solid rock over our head so that filters out all of that stuff that we don't want and leave that's only the stuff that we actually want to be so today we're in this little town in Northern Ontario and it's very early it's still dark and it's snowing it's not even 6:00 a.m. we're going to get in the car and we're going to go to this mine where we're going to actually travel deep underground and visit this lab that's one of the deepest labs in the world and down there they're looking for these little particles these tiny bits of matter that make up the entire universe scientists X no lab are probing the Sun and distant stars for clues about how it all came to be and our cameras were given a rare chance to check it out but getting there takes a while first we dress like miners then we ride with miners on their way to work in the cage an elevator that descends to almost 7,000 feet so right now we're de la meters underground in an active copper and nickel mine we're hiking another 1 or 2 kilometers through the mine to get this no lab which is actually one of the cleanest lab spaces in the world we can't track in any dirt so while our gear gets wiped down we're sent to take a shower and change our clothes now for the science these scientists are being listed out of a massive cavern filled with ultra pure water it's shielding a detector looking for neutrinos also known as the ghost particle okay so we're here is a snowplough experiment this is what's down that hole like what is one of these photos is comparable to these are photos of the detector of our acrylic vessel which is the center of the detector [Music] so why should we be looking for neutrinos one of they matter they're a very good messenger of the reactions that create them we've been studying them for decades and still have more questions about them discoveries made here when the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015 by revealing that neutrinos from the Sun had mass now Erica and her team are expanding their search what are you guys looking for we'll be looking at neutrinos from the Earth's around us geo neutrinos nutrients from reactors and Canada so that can tell us more about what's going on in the Sun send the light which takes millions of years to get out wow so we can actually study the Sun from deep inside of mine two kilometers underground so cool then there's dark matter no one has ever found it but it's the glue holding galaxies together and this device could detect it this is Pico this is what we're using it's the same that's actually inside there what is dark matter right so dark matter is well basically something that we don't know what it is we don't understand about a quarter of the universe so about 27% of the matter that's out there we have no idea what it is but it's down here in this line it's down here in this line it's all the time it's going through us all the time is going through the earth and it'll interact only really rarely which is of course the it's a great thing in that you know it makes it down here we can filter everything else if you think that's someone maybe hopefully you guys will find dark-matter chance I'm really hoping so yeah we're getting to the point now where the limit are being driven down so far that if we don't find it soon we're not going to find it for a while now to think of a new way to detect it that's a lot of pressure and with so much at stake there are plenty of rules at SNOLAB so when 50 people worked in here every day and there's no cell phones allowed there's no Wi-Fi could actually set off that nations afar off in the mines you have to be really careful even opening the wrong door could compromise in experiments and not everyone down here is a scientist I've heard you know that your job is important is the scientists important almost because if it's not clean or goes in their experiment will not work it will fail Wow you know because dirt is the enemy everything that we see in snow lab today has been down that and through this car wash before getting into that lattice right everything in that every stereotype come on yeah yeah beams of steel roll ProTaper doesn't matter blue sticky not prevent shoes from spreading contamination the walls are smooth and shiny his dust can't fix it up away from all the noise of the surface no odds location gives it a unique perspective what are you doing ever our whole project the repair project we looking at what are the effects of sub background radiation exposure so on earth surface were exposed to low levels of radiation from cosmic rays and from terrestrial radiation so what we're interested in is what happens if you remove that radiation in such a pure environment these white fish eggs are being tested for developmental markers so we're looking at growth rate we're looking at survival we're looking at other markers of development see if if they're growing faster slower underground verses on the surface and what Chris thinks is a bit surprising exposure to some radiation could actually be a good thing so what we're thinking is that because we've evolved in that presence of background radiation if we now go underground here and remove it that could actually be harmful to organisms biological I know by studying these fish as I pass by the experiments I realized no lad is a little like Las Vegas its massive and totally disorienting tucked away in the corner of the lunchroom is Thomas Merritt and it's fruit flies how do you feel after being down healthy I mean you come up here a bit exhausted this thing where can be harder to make decisions than is that because you're surrounded by half a billion dollars with equipment you really don't want to grow up or if there's something about being in underground under high pressure in this environment that makes it harder to think so interesting and we can have that slide because flies eluded and surrounded by half a billion dollars worth of quick so what we're going to do with these experiments we're taking squads and it's called a tap down asset and flies have negative G attachment supplies want to climb up what I think go we're going to tap them down and when I say stop you're going to count the number of lines per one or below the finish line and that held it their ability which are 50 that's finished [Music] No all right what have you got I had fiber than 1000 oh the Catholic supraspinatus I had won I won maybe what we're trying to do with this marriage is not in the state an individual but understand how does everybody respond to being deep on the ground and just like the first slides by the end of our tour I'm feeling pretty beat and I need some fresh air okay it's time to head back to the surface after several hours down here SNOLAB feeling kind of tired the pressure down here is really high I'm excited to get back to natural sunlight but we still have a long pipe through to mine ahead of us another teacher I thought the service

Channel: Motherboard

Views: 1,724,020

Rating: 4.8833184 out of 5

Keywords: motherboard, motherboardtv, vice, vice magazine, documentary, science, technology, laboratory, lab, scientist, snolab, Dark Matter, neutrino, supernovas, research, scientific research, exploration, future

Id: kCpVMc1PdhM

Length: 8min 55sec (535 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2017