Geologist will help convert Homestake into laboratory

By Bill Harlan, Journal staff
Article Source

Physicists get the glory in underground science, but in 2008, a soft-spoken Rapid City geologist will play a major role in converting the Homestake gold mine in Lead into a national laboratory.

"One of the big things we're looking at this year is the meeting in April," Bill Roggenthen said.

Scientists from throughout the world will gather in Lead on April 21 for a weeklong discussion of the future of a proposed lab 7,400 feet underground in Homestake.

Roggenthen is a geologist, a professor and a researcher at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology. He's also has a Princeton Ph.D., and he was a consultant for the nuclear test-ban treaty.

Now, Roggenthen is one of two lead scientists coordinating a team of hundreds of scientists writing a detailed Homestake proposal. Physicist Kevin Lesko of the University of California at Berkeley is the other lead scientist.

The Homestake collaboration will have three years and $15 million to create a preliminary design report for the lab. Roggenthen said the team will likely work from two main offices - one in Berkeley, and one in Lead.

When it's done, the proposal goes to the National Science Board.

Building a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory at Homestake and installing the first experiments there will cost about $500 million. Research at a DUSEL could continue for decades.

Deep labs protect physics experiments from cosmic rays, but geologists go underground too.

For example, South Dakota is opening an interim lab 4,850 feet underground, and Roggenthen already has a $450,000 grant for an experiment there.

He'll install seismometers on the surface and underground. The array will create a three-dimensional seismograph more accurate than surface-bound models.

"My hope is the entire facility, the entire mine itself, will become a scientific instrument," Roggenthen said. "If it works."

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