Speaker 1: Hey there, I'm Scott Mitchell, the editor of Schwartz Media's
Speaker 1: daily news show seven Am. This is the weekend read
Speaker 1: Every fortnight on the show, we feature the best writing
Speaker 1: in Australia, read to you by the people who wrote it.
Speaker 1: Today on the show, the seven Am Podcast's very own
Speaker 1: technical producer Atticus Bastow with his piece from the Saturday Paper.
Speaker 1: Over ninety years ago, a Swiss astrophysicist theorized there was
Speaker 1: an unseen, unobservable force that sits behind the universe we know.
Speaker 1: He called it dark matter, and today we're not much
Speaker 1: closer to understanding it than he was, but that could
Speaker 1: be about to change. As a group of Australian researchers
Speaker 1: a part of our most promising effort yet to uncover
Speaker 1: the nature of this unseen force. And it just so
Speaker 1: happens they're doing it down an old, disused gold mine.
Speaker 1: Atticus will read his piece the Search for Dark Matter.
Speaker 1: After a short conversation Atticus to begin with, we work
Speaker 1: together every day on seven Am, or the show's technical producer.
Speaker 1: But it took me a while to find out that
Speaker 1: you have this love about space, astrophysics, dark matter. Where
Speaker 1: did that love start?
Speaker 2: For you. That's a good question, you know. Funnily enough,
Speaker 2: the first thing that comes to mind is those Richard
Speaker 2: Scary cross Section children's books. I don't know if you'd
Speaker 2: remember them.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: I was absolutely transfixed with those books. I think because
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, I found that idea of kind of
Speaker 2: adomizing and exploding systems and sort of understanding of how
Speaker 2: whole things can function as the sum of their parts.
Speaker 2: I guess that's a better way to say it. Definitely
Speaker 2: broad strokes sci fi lover used to just smash anything
Speaker 2: sci high when I was a kid, and then, I
Speaker 2: don't know, probably just plenty of holiday trips down at
Speaker 2: Wilson's prom, getting some great star gazing in and just
Speaker 2: you know, spending a long time craning my neck and
Speaker 2: wishing that I was up there in the stars. And
Speaker 2: a healthy amount of science interest, I think in our
Speaker 2: In my family. My uncle was a physicist. He used
Speaker 2: to work at the synchotron here in Melbourne, in Monash,
Speaker 2: so I guess it's on the periphery in some ways.
Speaker 1: And so this love for it, you know, brought you
Speaker 1: to report about this lab deep inside an Australian gold mine.
Speaker 1: To begin with can you just put in context for
Speaker 1: us how unique this site is in terms of the
Speaker 1: world of scientific research and how special this research that's
Speaker 1: being done here is sure.
Speaker 2: I guess the first thing that is unique about it
Speaker 2: is that it's the first of its kind in terms
Speaker 2: of deep underground laboratories in the Southern Hemisphere. The counterpart
Speaker 2: of this same research project in Italy was the thing
Speaker 2: that spurred this whole project on. So that's an existing
Speaker 2: one that is in the Eponine air Mountains and the
Speaker 2: Italian Alps. So it's this sort of you know, science laboratory,
Speaker 2: deep underground, and it's shielded by the Earth to sort
Speaker 2: of ward off all the pesky cosmic rays and other
Speaker 2: subatomic particles that are going to be coming through and
Speaker 2: messing up people's research. There's a few others in the world.
Speaker 2: Some of the researchers on this project have spent some
Speaker 2: time in those labs, but yeah, for the Southern Hemisphere,
Speaker 2: this is the first. And for it to be in
Speaker 2: Australia I thought was exciting. And then the fact that
Speaker 2: it's just out in country Victoria, you know, in my
Speaker 2: home state, was even more interesting. Because Stall itself is
Speaker 2: really unassuming it's a very sleepy gold rush town. You know.
Speaker 2: The mine sort of is on the periphery of the town.
Speaker 2: The town itself is sort of classic sandstone brick church
Speaker 2: country Bakery. You'd never expect there to be this multimillion
Speaker 2: dollar physics laboratory buried underground there.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And yeah, like what's it like? You know, you
Speaker 1: mentioned how unassuming the town is. You know, what is
Speaker 1: it like to think that these you know, there's questions
Speaker 1: about the nature of reality and the entire universe being
Speaker 1: being answered in a place that is, you know, a
Speaker 1: short drive away. Is this unassuming Australian town.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I think if I think about that
Speaker 2: too much, I'll absolutely go off the edge of kind
Speaker 2: of you know, self realization and what do they call
Speaker 2: it in Hitchhiker's Guide Total Perspective FOTEX. But yeah, one
Speaker 2: of the professors in the project kind of describes it
Speaker 2: as if we get to, you know, have conclusive evidence
Speaker 2: come out of this project, then it changes the fundamental
Speaker 2: understanding of the universe, which is some pretty weighty language
Speaker 2: to be throwing around, But I think that's a valid
Speaker 2: thing to say. This research comes as more than fifty
Speaker 2: separate research projects. In over one hundred years of studying
Speaker 2: dark matter, not a single one has managed to provide
Speaker 2: any conclusive evidence on a bunch of different theories. So
Speaker 2: this in a way is just the latest in a
Speaker 2: number of research projects, but I think it's the one
Speaker 2: that is at least the most promising so far.
Speaker 1: And so speaking of that, Atticus, just finally, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a little while since you first reported this piece.
Speaker 1: Where's the research up to? Now? What do we know
Speaker 1: about when we're going to maybe get the answers to
Speaker 1: some of these questions?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean when I chatted to the team, they
Speaker 2: were in the process of installing some of the first equipment.
Speaker 2: I selfishly really wanted to go into the mind, put
Speaker 2: a hard hat on, and disappear under the earth, but
Speaker 2: it was so busy with everything going in and out
Speaker 2: that I unfortunately couldn't get in there. But yeah, some
Speaker 2: of the first equipment was going in. Then, with the
Speaker 2: sort of timeline of the piece in relation to present day,
Speaker 2: they should be setting up and receiving some of the
Speaker 2: first data for the project from memory. They said that
Speaker 2: it would be maybe the end of this year that
Speaker 2: they might see some of the big picture stuff start
Speaker 2: to come alive. But the sort of process of putting
Speaker 2: it together, it's like the most complicated Lego project ever
Speaker 2: in that you've got all these systems that then have
Speaker 2: their subsystems, and the subsystems have their own subsystems, so
Speaker 2: these all have to be set up, calibrated, tested, make
Speaker 2: sure that they're not receiving false data. Once they're confirmed,
Speaker 2: do you go onto the next one and the one
Speaker 2: that supports the other one. And so finally this extremely
Speaker 2: complicated thing should come together. Yeah, hopefully at some point
Speaker 2: this year, and then we can find out whether or
Speaker 2: not God exists.
Speaker 1: I guess well, Attachus. We spend a lot of our
Speaker 1: time talking about other people's stories. It's a pleasure to
Speaker 1: get the chance to talk to you about one of yours.
Speaker 1: So I can't wait to read your piece.
Speaker 2: Thanks Scott, It's a pleasure to be on the other side.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, Atticus will read The Search
Speaker 1: for Dark Matter.
Speaker 2: The Search for Dark Matter. Victoria's Stall gold Mine is
Speaker 2: unassuming in its operation. Distant beeps from Earth movers disrupt
Speaker 2: the otherwise constant background drone of the rotating ball mill
Speaker 2: that processes the extracted raw materials. The buildings and mining
Speaker 2: artifices are rich with patternation, a marker of the slow,
Speaker 2: uninterrupted nature of the work. A sign over a small
Speaker 2: ramp reads Magdala Decline in honor of the fault that
Speaker 2: borders the Stall Goldfield load. That's the entrance between the
Speaker 2: gravel car park and the corrogated steel equipment sheds. The
Speaker 2: only other evidence of the multimillion dollar facility, buried more
Speaker 2: than a kilometer below ground, is two weathered information panels
Speaker 2: strung to the security fence. It seems a fitting parallel
Speaker 2: to the hidden nature of the Stall Underground Physics Laboratory's
Speaker 2: primary research focus dark matter. In close to one hundred
Speaker 2: years since Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zvicki made his case for
Speaker 2: the existence of an unseen mass in space Dunkel matterie,
Speaker 2: science is yet to provide a conclusive explanation for what
Speaker 2: is thought to account for a staggering amount of our
Speaker 2: whole picture, about eighty five per cent of the matter
Speaker 2: in the universe. What is understood so far about dark
Speaker 2: matter is observed in the interactions between cosmological bodies in space,
Speaker 2: namely interactions that cannot be explained with what is visible
Speaker 2: using accepted theories of gravity, dark matter's presence is implied
Speaker 2: as the missing piece of these celestial dancers. The first
Speaker 2: potential evidence of dark matter was recorded by the Dama
Speaker 2: Libre experiment at the Laboratory Nazionale del Gran Sasso in Italy,
Speaker 2: situated underneath the Appennina Mountains. Substantial evidence has eluded more
Speaker 2: than fifty major experiments in a century of research. Dama
Speaker 2: Libre's observations note consistent yearly patterns in data, with the
Speaker 2: team believing it could be a marker of the Earth's
Speaker 2: movement through a substrate of dark matter in our galaxy.
Speaker 2: On our yearly orbit around the Sun, we effectively move
Speaker 2: with and against the current. Skeptics have posited that the
Speaker 2: findings could be disproved by seasonal variation, and so the
Speaker 2: experiment is being replicated in the Stall lab, the first
Speaker 2: of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, in order to
Speaker 2: rule this out. If the Italian laboratories data can be
Speaker 2: replicated here, it will herald a new chapter in the
Speaker 2: fundamental understanding of our universe. The resulting joint experience is
Speaker 2: titled Sodium Iodide with Active Background Rejection Experiment or saber
Speaker 2: A fitting title for such cutting edge research. Doctor Terresa
Speaker 2: Fruth is a specialist in astroparticle physics, working closely on
Speaker 2: Saber South, the counterpart to Italy's Saber North. If you
Speaker 2: look at it historically, there might be things out in
Speaker 2: space we cannot see at the moment, she tells me,
Speaker 2: seems kind of reasonable, right, But the more we got
Speaker 2: access to it really clarified over the past hundred years
Speaker 2: that there must be something actually quite new, something which
Speaker 2: does not fit into our current models and understanding. Professor
Speaker 2: Philip Ercio is the technical coordinator of Saber South. Like
Speaker 2: many on the research team, he has an impressive resume
Speaker 2: of particle physics experience, most notably at the Large Hadron
Speaker 2: Collider as part of the Atlas experiment, and more recently
Speaker 2: with the development of the new hyper Cameo Kande Neutrino
Speaker 2: Observatory in Japan. Those experiments are some of the biggest
Speaker 2: in the world. He tells me, I mean the Large
Speaker 2: Hadron Collider is this twenty seven kilometer ring smashing together
Speaker 2: protons at close to the speed of light, recreating the
Speaker 2: conditions of the Big Bang. Stall's lab is small by comparison,
Speaker 2: but the significance of the research is comparable searching for
Speaker 2: the fundamental building blocks of the universe. The problem is
Speaker 2: the building blocks Saber is looking for are invisible. What
Speaker 2: we can see is the visitation of dark matter at
Speaker 2: a sub atomic level. As our planet moves with the
Speaker 2: Sun through the galaxy at seven hundred and ninety two
Speaker 2: thousand kilometers an hour, dark matter flows through us. As such,
Speaker 2: dark matter particles occasionally bump into ordinary mata particles. Doctor
Speaker 2: Fruth uses a sports analogy. Imagine the dark matter particles
Speaker 2: coming in and just like a billiard ball bouncing off
Speaker 2: the nucleus of an atom, and the recoil of this nucleus.
Speaker 2: That's what we're trying to detect. The interactions are so
Speaker 2: rare that she suggests little more than a handful of
Speaker 2: collisions could be detected over the life of the project.
Speaker 2: The collisions give off heat, which in turn is converted
Speaker 2: to light. In an astonishing feat, the apparatus at the
Speaker 2: core of Sabers experiment is able to observe these infantesimally
Speaker 2: small glints. The backdrop large transparent sodium iodide crystals, seemingly
Speaker 2: plucked directly from Superman's fortress of solitude. The extreme precision
Speaker 2: of the experiment's design means that an incredible amount of
Speaker 2: countermeasure is invested in warding off false positives. As Professor
Speaker 2: Okeeo explains, we're looking for such feeble and rare interactions
Speaker 2: that can really easily be mimicked by very tiny amounts
Speaker 2: of radiation in ordinary matter. The layers of earth above
Speaker 2: the lab act as a shield, blocking the unwonted imposition
Speaker 2: of cosmic rays and background radiation, the eternal reverberation of
Speaker 2: our earth primordial universe. Bananas are forbidden in the lab
Speaker 2: due to their high potassium levels, a small amount of
Speaker 2: which is radioactive. Even the steel used for the detector
Speaker 2: is of a bespoke purity, as a majority of steel
Speaker 2: produced from World War II onwards contains remnants of nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons testing fallout. The main detector itself has a strategy
Speaker 2: of mitigation, with discrete ancillary detectors waiting for interactions with
Speaker 2: muons stray subatomic particles that can make their way through
Speaker 2: the one kilometer of earth shielding. It is an arresting
Speaker 2: amount of complication failsafe upon failsafe, subsystem upon subsystem. The
Speaker 2: muon paddles are in the process of being installed, to
Speaker 2: the excitement of the team, with the full system expected
Speaker 2: to be operational this year. SABER represents the flagship project
Speaker 2: for the Stall Underground Physics Laboratory, but the unique nature
Speaker 2: of the lab's design presents an opportunity for other leading
Speaker 2: edge research to be conducted in Australia. Deep underground facilities
Speaker 2: have been used to study quantum computing and astrobiology. The
Speaker 2: extreme nature of these sites provides a way to observe
Speaker 2: how life operates without cosmic radiation. Professor Occhio doesn't rule
Speaker 2: out the possibility of additional discoveries. His face lights up
Speaker 2: as he describes the potential of dark photons and a
Speaker 2: new fundamental force. Above all, the Stall LAD presents the
Speaker 2: potential for Australia to make an enormous contribution to the
Speaker 2: broader scientific canon. As Professor Occhio tells me, it's because
Speaker 2: we're searching so broadly everywhere. If we can finally say
Speaker 2: that dark matter interacts like this, it changes everything. The
Speaker 2: tradition of Australian Sister cities locales bound by cultural exchange
Speaker 2: has nurtured connections with more than fifty countries internationally, so
Speaker 2: now a Sleepy Victorian gold Rush settlement shares bonds with
Speaker 2: the Italian app Anina Mountain Range. At both sites, the
Speaker 2: earth rises to protect the most precious of interactions. Install
Speaker 2: The pursuit of rare materials began one hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: years ago, but the years ahead may be a witness
Speaker 2: to something far rarer.
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