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Stawell underground physics laboratory top 7 facts
The Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) is a laboratory under construction 1 km deep in the Stawell Goldmine, located in Stawell, Shire of Northern Grampians, Victoria, Australia. Of the two underground particle physics laboratories being proposed in the Southern Hemisphere, it is by far the most advanced. It has close collaboration with the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, the largest such underground laboratory, and shall conduct research into dark matter.
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General information
SUPL is located at a depth of 1,025 metres (3,363 ft), providing approximately 2900 metre water equivalent shielding against cosmic rays.:3 As a decline (ramp) mine, cars and trucks can be driven to the laboratory site. The laboratory will consist of a main tunnel approximately 10 metres high and 10 metres wide (33×33 ft), divided into 25 metres (80 ft) of clean room space for experiments, and 15 metres (50 ft) of "dirty" loading area.:4–5 A side tunnel 5 m wide and 20 m long (15×65 ft) houses physical plant and personnel facilities.:4–5
The first phase of the project received $1.75 million funding in the 2015 Australian federal budget. With matching funding from Victoria, detailed design will proceed and construction will start in early 2016. Drilling commenced 28 April 2016, and construction is expected to be complete in 2017.
Its Southern Hemisphere location has bearing on the possible differential detection of the putative WIMP-wind. Northern Hemisphere instruments are showing hints of a June "bump" of possible dark matter hits, which is expected given the galaxy's rotation, but it is hard to be sure that it is not a false signal due to some subtle seasonal environmental effect. A Southern Hemisphere location, with opposite seasons, would be valuable confirmation. Secondly, the sundry particles (apparently from the constellation Cygnus) would have travelled through the Earth itself before reaching SUPL's instruments. Finally, its Southern Hemisphere location also makes it potentially very sensitive to daily variation effects which would be a smoking-gun for self-interacting dark matter or dark matter with a significant stopping rate.
Neutrino experiments do not benefit in the same way from a Southern Hemisphere location, and what need there is for neutrino astronomy in the Southern Hemisphere is satisfied by IceCube, so it is unlikely that any neutrino detectors will be housed at SUPL.
SABRE
The first experiment planned for SUPL is SABRE (Sodium-iodide with Active Background REjection), based on 50 kg of thallium-doped sodium iodide. An improved version of the DAMA/LIBRA detector already operating at LNGS, two copies will be built: one at LNGS and one at SUPL. Consistent results between the two will be very strong evidence.