Deepest underground laboratory

Opened on 12 December 2010, the China Jinping Underground Laboratory is the deepest laboratory in the world. Sited at a depth of 2,400 m (7,900 ft), the lab is the best-shielded lab for studying high-energy cosmic rays today. At a cosmic ray rate of 0.2 particles per m² per day, there is less background noise for the laboratory instruments to listen for the rarer, more interesting particles. The engineers who built the lab had to bore through solid marble rock, with the excavation taking from May 2009 until inauguration in December 2010. The lab is currently home to the China Dark Matter Experiment (CDEX) and the Particle and Astrophysical Xenon Detector (PandaX), which are both looking for evidence of Dark Matter. The lab is currently being extended to make the underground work space a huge 120,000 m² by the end of 2015.