South Dakota Governor's Office of Economic Development

Dr. Marshak's new idea

By Bill Harlan, Journal staff

MINNEAPOLIS - Physicist Marvin Marshak has added a unique twist to the University of Minnesota's plan for a national underground science laboratory.
"Our proposal would bring together all the sites that exist today in the United States, including Homestake," Marshak said during a recent interview at his office in the Tate physics building at the university's Minneapolis campus.

Marshak's novel idea could be good news, bad news or both for advocates of a lab at the Homestake gold mine in Lead, S.D.

The National Science Foundation is considering four sites for a proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, or DUSEL. Marshak agreed that the two front-runners in the DUSEL competition were Homestake and the Henderson molybdenum mine in Colorado.

But last fall, the NSF re-opened the competition to include proposals from physicists at the University of Washington, who would build a lab in an old railroad tunnel, and to the University of Minnesota, which proposes using its Soudan Underground Laboratory. (See the story on Page A1.)

However, when Marshak re-entered the underground-lab race, it was with a new strategy.

He suggests creating an Institute for Underground Science at the university campus in Minneapolis.

The IUS would oversee research at Soudan, of course, but the institute also could coordinate underground science at a deeper Homestake laboratory, as well as experiments at underground sites in Virginia and New Mexico.

The IUS could even coordinate U.S. experiments at the underground Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada.

"In our view, there are five labs currently available in North America," Marshak said. "We see Homestake as one of the existing labs. Each of them has unique assets and strengths, and all of them, frankly, have some drawbacks."

Homestake's drawback is, the mine is closed, and it's slowly filling with water.

However, Marshak supports the state of South Dakota's plan, which includes reopening Homestake quickly to a depth of 4,850 feet for mid-level experiments. Later, Marshak said, when funding becomes more certain for deeper experiments, Homestake could be reopened to 7,400 feet.

"We think depth is an important criterion, but it's not the only criterion or even an overriding criterion," Marshak said. "There are very few experiments that really need that extreme depth."

In the meantime, Marshak argues, the IUS-Soudan proposal offers a quicker, cheaper, better coordinated path to underground science.

In the Minnesota proposal to the NSF, Marshak wrote: "This proposal sets forth a plan to make the U.S. a leader in underground science over the next decade by gradually building up infrastructure, without sacrificing the current generation of experiments and the training it offers the next generation of physicists."

An IUS, he says, could be set up almost immediately, and the Soudan lab is already doing science. "The advantages of the Soudan laboratory are mainly that it exists," Marshak said. "What we have is an existing site with a staff that's experienced in running an underground laboratory."

His plan also calls for sinking another shaft at Soudan, to about the depth of Homestake's 4,850-foot level.

Marshak also has a vision for Homestake. "There's been some fantastic work done by the state of South Dakota reinventing Homestake as a laboratory," Marshak said. "We would provide technical assistance."

Homestake supporters hope that most of the functions of a Minneapolis IUS would instead be done on a DUSEL campus in Lead - at the surface and at various underground levels.

Similarly, supporters of a laboratory at the Henderson molybdenum mine envision onsite teaching and visitor facilities at the mine, which is at Empire, Colo., about 50 miles west of Denver.

Those campuses could employ hundreds of people, but Marshak has a different idea. His experience at Soudan demonstrates that most experiments can be run remotely. The big MINOS neutrino detector at Soudan, for example, is operated from a control room at Fermi National Laboratory outside Chicago.

"Mostly I just look at data," Marshak said. "You can do that from anywhere."

For a comparison of all four sites being considered, go to www.rapidcityjournal.com/features/snews/mines/.
For continuous updates and reports from reporter Bill Harlan about the selection process and his travels to the four sites, visit The Final Four of Physics blog at http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/blogs/mines/
Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com