This deposit of almost pure argon, left untouched since the formation of the Earth, will helpPhysicists
Argon is going to be extracted, purified and sent to the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS) in Italy. There it will be studied to answer some of the biggest mysteries in the universe.
“Our enterprise will complement KinderMorgan in Dow Canyon, which extracts CO2 (carbon dioxide) from the Earth's mantle as part of natural gas extraction,” said Andrew Renshaw, an associate professor of physics at the University of Houston. “This CO2 stream contains small amounts of low-radioactivity argon, a byproduct of natural gas production, but can be studied and used in a low-background particle detector.”
Argon is separated from carbon dioxide at the siteKinder Morgan is then shipped in high-pressure cylinders to Sardinia, where it will be further processed and sent to LNGS to be installed in an underground detector - DarkSide-20k.
“Once argon is liquefied, it can beuse at the LNGS research site to detect particles that interact with liquid argon,” Renshaw said. Through these studies, the team hopes to gather evidence for the existence of dark matter in the universe, as well as detect neutrinos from astrophysical sources.
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