Buried in a Gold Mine, a Particle Accelerator Searches for Stellar Secrets
In August 2015, scientists from the University of Notre Dame went west, the disassembled pieces of a particle accelerator secured in the back of their U-haul. Over 1,000 miles later and nearly a mile down, they started installing the machine in a new home: deep within an old mine in the town of Lead, South Dakota.
Miners first excavated the Homestake gold mine in the 1880s. But in 2006, the…