Publications
Partners
Paarl will soon have its very own underground laboratory off the Huguenot Tunnel, which will study the complex concept of dark matter.
According to Prof Richard Newman, a nuclear physicist from Stellenbosch University’s (SU) physics department, who is managing the project, the laboratory would be the first of its kind in Africa.
In a telephonic conversation Newman explained that the South African National Road Agency (Sanral) is in the process of updating the North Bore tunnel, aimed at lowering traffic volumes in the South Bore tunnel (currently used by motorists).
As a result, this will be the perfect opportunity to establish an underground laboratory in conjunction with the construction that will already be underway in the North Bore tunnel.
The laboratory will be built “off the tunnel” in a separate section that will be used by both professional researchers as well as post-graduate students from South Africa and beyond.
The Paarl Africa Underground Laboratory (Paul) project, as it is called, constitutes a consortium of national and international scientists, specifically from SU, the University of the Western Cape as well as Cape Town and possibly the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
Internationally, researchers from France and Italy are also involved.
So far R5 million in funding has been allocated to the project by the National Department of Science and Innovation, with more needed as the project progresses.
In total the project will cost between R130 million and R150 million to execute, Newman told News24.
“If everything goes according to plan excavation will start at the end of 2025 with the laboratory being finalised mid-2027,” Newman said.
There are about 12 underground laboratories in the world and, other than the Australian facility, the rest are in the Northern Hemisphere, according to a SU press release about the project.
Not much is yet understood by scientists about dark matter, but it seems to be a prevalent phenomenon that makes up 85% of the universe mass, the press release stated.
“Since the 1970s deep underground laboratories have been used to search for the subatomic particles that make up dark matter and to study neutrinos (caused by interactions with dark matter particles) in radioactive-free environments,” according to the press release.
“It is only in these underground laboratories, with a thick layer of rock shielding sensitive detection equipment from unwanted background signals produced by cosmic ray showers, that scientists can differentiate the interaction of these rare particles from the noise above.”
“The physics community in South Africa has been investigating the establishment of such a laboratory since 2011, first considering options in South Africa’s very deep gold mines."
“Back in 1965 the South African physicist Friedel Sellschop and the Nobel Prizewinner-to-be Frederick Reines made the world’s first observation of a naturally occurring neutrino particle in an East Rand mine 3 km below the surface,” it read.
The Paul project will be an attempt by various scientists to record, study and understand the concept of dark matter better.
