Physics goes underground at Gran Sasso

23 December 1998

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The snowy mountains of the Gran Sasso Massif in central Italy form a backdrop to the external buildings of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, near the town of town of L'Aquila, about 120 km north-west of Rome. The buildings house the Laboratory's Headquarters, Administrative Offices and Computing Centre, as well as a vistor centre. However, most of the laboratory is found underground in three experimental halls beside the 10.4-km long Gran Sasso Tunnel - a highway tunnel which passes through the Gran Sasso massif and connects Rome to Teramo. The underground site, on average beneath 1400 m of rock, provides a location with low background radiation not only for a wide range of experiments in particle and nuclear astrophysics, but also for experiments in geology and biology that require low background radiation. Some 450 scientists from ten different nations come to Gran Sasso to work on topics that include the study of neutrinos from the Sun and stellar collapses, dark matter, rare kinds of nuclear decay, and high-energy cosmic rays.

Credit: Physics Photographic Unit, University of Oxford / Gran Sasso National Laboratory

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