Construction of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, known as Dune, in the former Homestake mine in Lead, South Dakota, is due to start on Monday, according to The Guardian. Engineers will begin assembling four giant detectors inside caverns blasted from rock a mile underground.
Once switched on, the detectors will spark and flicker as ghostly particles called neutrinos hurtle through them. Some will arrive from the sun and distant supernovae, while others will come in an intense beam sent through 800 miles of rock from a government laboratory near Chicago, Illinois.
Observing the neutrinos could uncover entirely new science and shed light on cosmic spectacles such as the death of stars and the birth of black holes. Scientists are particularly hopeful of solving why everything around us is made from matter and not its antimatter counterpart. Dr Kate Shaw, an experimental particle physicist on Dune from the University of Sussex, said neutrinos did not yet make sense and could open a door to new physics.
Neutrinos are the most abundant matter particles in the universe, produced in natural nuclear reactions such as those that power the sun, in radioactive decay and in particle accelerators. The chargeless particles barely interact with other matter, with about a trillion passing unnoticed through the human body each second. The mine closed in 2001 and became the Sanford Underground Research Facility, which already hosts the Lux-Zeplin experiment that last month reported the first potential detection of dark matter.