The Gran Sasso National Laboratory had been said to be more like a villain's lair, like out of a James Bond flick, but it is actually the hub for some world class physics experiments.
The Laboratory is buried under one of Italy’s highest peak in the Gran Sasso mountain range. The entrance is concealed behind a colossal steel door halfway along a tunnel that cuts right through the mountain.
There's a good reason for its subterranean location. The 1,400m of rock above the labratory means that it is shielded from cosmic rays that constantly bombard the surface of our planet.
So the depth provides scientists with the "silence" they need to study some of the strangest phenomena known to physics. Among the experiments is the really cool dark matter look-at-this named DarkSide50.
Everything we know and can be seen or measured in the Universe only makes up about 4% of the stuff that is out there. The rest, scientists believe, comes in two enigmatic forms:
They predict that about 73% of the Universe is made up of dark energy - a pervasive energy field that acts as a sort of anti-gravity to stop the Universe from contracting back in on itself; the other 23%, researchers believe, comes in the form known as dark matter. The challenge here is that until now nobody has seen it, or so the report goes.
As for me, I’ve my reservations about the percentages. Specifically when addressing dark matter. I suspect at least half of that 23% must be ‘you don’t matter’ and we witness that almost daily by our elected officials.
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