Located 2,400 meters under the Earth’s surface, the Deep Underground and Ultra-low Radiation Background Facility for Frontier Physics Experiments (DURF) is the world’s deepest underground laboratory.

In December 2020, Tsinghua University and Yalong River Hydropower Development Company, Ltd. began work on a daring project under Jinping Mountain in Sichuan’s Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. Designed to facilitate China’s research in relevant frontier fields, such as particle physics, nuclear astrophysics, and life sciences, the DURF reportedly provides the cleanest space on Earth to study the invisible substance known as dark matter, as the extreme depth it is located at (2,400 meters underground) helps block most of the cosmic rays that usually interfere with the observation of dark matter.

Photo: Xinhua News Agency

With a total room capacity of 330,000 cubic meters (about 120 Olympic-sized swimming pools), the Deep Underground and Ultra-low Radiation Background Facility for Frontier Physics Experiments is not only de deepest underground lab, but also the largest. It is almost double the size of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, now the second-largest underground laboratory in the world.

 

Apart from facilitating the study of dark matter, the substance believed to make up approximately 27% of the universe’s mass-energy density, the world’s deepest underground laboratory is also poised to become a hub for cutting-edge scientific research, attracting brilliant minds from around the globe.