Inside India's 21st century underground lab, hunt is on for dark matter

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The Jaduguda lab is located more than 500 meters underground inside an uranium mine.

JADUGUDA, JHARKHAND: Indian physicists have finally got a laboratory deep underground -- almost half-a-kilometre below the earth's surface - to hunt for "dark matter", the elusive glue that holds galaxies together. A form of energy and matter, it has evaded detection so far. To search for dark matter, scientists need to dive deep underground, so their experiments are shielded from intruders like cosmic rays and other radiations. The rock overhead is expected to absorb these unwelcome rays that interfere with the experiments. Scientists from Kolkata's Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics are spearheading the group manning the new laboratory, which was inaugurated three days ago. The lab, which NDTV visited, is located in an abandoned cavern of a deep underground uranium mine located at Jharkhand's Jadugoda, nearly 260 km from Kolkata and 150 km from state capital Ranchi. This is India's first uranium mine, from which, till recently, around 400 tonnes of uranium was being extracted. Today, the uranium is being extracted from a layer 880 meters below the earth's surface. The laboratory is located 555 meters underground, on a layer above the mine. It was set up at a cost of a mere Rs. 20 lakh.


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Inside India's 21st century underground lab, hunt is on for dark matter
 

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