It is possible to get to work from the outskirts of Stawell. A portable oxygen source that looks like a cross between a hip flask and a hand grenade is an emergency self- rescuer. Go underground and pass machinery.
The only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere is the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory, where researchers will hunt for dark matter, which is thought to make up 85% of the universe.
The lab is officially open and the director of the centre of excellence for dark matter particle physics was in Australia recently.
It takes half an hour to descend through the bowels of a gold mine. There are pools of grey dripping wastewater, fans that circulate air, and the remains of a historical shaft from the 19th century, with collapsed wooden beams. The town of Stawell was founded in the 19th century. The miners are on lunch break so there isn't as much traffic underground.
The numbers are written on the walls. The mine at Stawell is flooded at the depths beneath the physics lab. The lowest we can work to get gold is 500 metres.
The car is stopped half way to the lab. It is difficult not to think about the hundreds of metres of rock above that separates us from the clear sky as we try to adjust to the darkness.
It's a good place to look for dark matter. We are surrounded by dark matter all the time even though we can't see it.
What is that thing? Some scientists are unsure. Dark matter has mass but does not reflect or emit light. They don't think it interacts with ordinary matter. Barberio and her colleagues are interested in seeing it. Cosmic rays are high-energy particles from outside our solar system that rain down on Earth.
The tunnel opens into a high-ceilinged space when we arrive at the lab. It's a sunny, cloudless winter day and it's 11 degrees. The air is warm and humid. The hotter it gets, the hotter the Earth is.
Our boots kick up dust as we walk outside the lab. There are bright cement floors in the lab. There is a large room with high ceilings. There are gas and electricity lines, a shower, and a drainage area in this lab. On the far side of the room, Barberio shows a crane that will be used to mount the detector.
There will be seven cylinders of the crystal in the detector. They will be encased in 200 tons of steel.
The goal is to detect a weakly interacting massive particle called a wimp. A collision between a wimp and ordinary matter would result in energy being visible as light. If dark matter hits the crystal, it should flash.
The noise from the radiation would drown out any interactions between the detector and dark matter.
When the detector is running, staff will have to remove their safety gear and shower on their way in. Dust will be removed with a vacuum. The walls of the lab are bumpy and soft to the touch and have been sprayed with shotcrete, a sealant which reduces the emission of radon, a radioactive gas. Will anything be barred from entering? There are bananas. The man exclaimed. They are a bit radioactive because they are rich in Potassium.
astrophysicists can calculate how much dark matter should be at large scale, but they aren't sure about the size of individual particles. It's like estimating the number of jelly beans in a jar, but you can't see how big they are, and you don't know how big they are.
Dark matter needs some trial and error to be detected. If one of the billiard balls is too small, you won't be able to move the other, so you won't get a signal.
The Organ experiment is looking for a small theoretical particle of dark matter. The particle, called an axion, is billions of times lighter than a person.
The Stawell underground experiment is trying to observe collision between dark and ordinary matter, while axion detection aims to convert dark matter into light. Organ has been able to rule out the existence of axions of certain sizes.
Dark matter can be seen in the movement of our own galaxies. The theory is that most galaxies are not rotating fast enough for the gravity to come from ordinary matter. There is a dark matter that is similar to a ghost. We can sense that it's there, even though we can't see, touch or feel it.
We built all that stuff understanding just one-sixth of the universe. We don't know what dark matter is and there's five times more of it. It is hard to believe that it is not worth looking for.
The set-up at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory is very similar to the one in Italy. The Italian project claims to have found dark matter.
It is thought that the signal picked up by the Italian detector is related to Earth passing through a theoretical halo of dark matter. It is thought that the more dark matter particles you detect, the faster Earth will move.
Some scientists are not convinced. The Australian effort is attempting to duplicate the results of the Gran Sasso experiment. A preprint released this week suggested that a similar signal could be created through data analysis, as research in South Korea and Spain has failed to corroborate the Italian results.
It's possible that the signal comes from dark matter if it's the same in the southern hemisphere. It would be a big discovery of the century.
Quick GuideShow
We are stuck in the wake of a truck as we leave the lab. Barberio is excited by the months to come. By next year, the team hopes to have the detector operational.
Cameras will be set up in the lab. It will allow Barberio and her colleagues to monitor the experiment without having to commute to work.
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