Seoul: South Korea has built an underground physics research facility, the Yemi Lab, to study the mysteries and secrets of the universe.
The Yemi Lab is located 1,100 metres under Mount Yemi in the eastern Gangwon Province. The $21.8 million project began in 2017 with the goal of carrying out studies on the creation of the universe and its composition by detecting "dark matter" and measuring the mass of "neutrino."
South Korea has now joined the list of advanced nations with subterranean research facilities including the US and Canada.
The facility is spread across a 3,000 square metres area and can house over 10 types of experimental research at a time. It will be officially opened next year, said the state research institute - the Institute of Basic Science (IBS). "The underground facility will help its researchers detect the signals of these little-known materials without interfering with background noise or rays from outside," said the institute.
Dark matter is a component whose presence in the universe is recognised due to gravitational attraction and not luminosity. It is believed to account for 30% of the matter in the universe. More details about it remain unknown due to its elusive nature. Experts haven't been able to figure out what dark matter is made of.
A neutrino is a very small electrically charged particle that is part of the fundamental forces of the universe. The essential nature of these particles also remains unknown.