This article was written by Erin
Lorraine Broberg at the Sanford Underground Research Facility and republished here with permission. Find the original article here.
When first learning about the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), it can help to imagine it as a vast, inverted apartment complex. Experiments move into the large, underground caverns. And SURF provides the usual amenities: electricity, running
water, elevator maintenance, radon mitigation, liquid nitrogen deliveries and, of course, shielding from cosmic rays.
But amidst the facility’s 370 miles of tunnels, shafts and drifts, there is one group of tenants who pay no rent at all. At SURF, billions of microorganisms—known to biologists as “extremophiles” for their ability to carve out a living far from sunlight
and with limited oxygen—live deep underground.
This summer, a research group from South Dakota Mines (Mines) retrieved a core sample—a smooth cylinder of grey rock—from 4,100 feet below of the surface of SURF. Under a microscope, it wriggled with SURF’s hardiest inhabitants.
From this sample, the research group hopes to find a microbe with a distinct set of characteristics that could help store excess greenhouse gases deep underground.
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