Details on the old Homestake gold mine, the site picked for the National Science Foundation’s Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory:
The old Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, 45 miles northwest of Rapid City, would extend to a proposed 7,400 feet underground, roughly 600 feet deeper than a Canadian lab that is now the world’s deepest.
Besides its depth, supporters have said Homestake’s advantages include hundreds of miles of tunnels and shafts, sturdy hard rock and immediate availability.
The state of South Dakota helped encourage research by funding an interim $20 million lab at 4,850 feet, which will make it the deepest in the nation. Total financial support for the project is at $116 million, which includes state and federal funding and a $70 million donation from a philanthropist.
Homestake produced 10 percent of all gold ever found in the United States before closing in 2000 and already holds an important place in the short history of neutrino research, thanks to the work of Ray Davis Jr. The physicist’s work at the mine helped him demonstrate that neutrinos are created in the sun as the result of nuclear fusion, which earned Davis a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize in physics.
