"Gona Dig a Hole:" The Next Generation
Children are captivated by the excitement of doing science underground.
Source: Fermilab Engineer, Chris Laughton
"It is easy to be complacent about U.S. competitiveness and preeminence in science and technology. We have led the world for decades, and we continue to do so in many research fields today. But the world is changing rapidly, and our advantages are no longer unique. Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we might lose our privileged position. For the first time in generations, the nation's children could face poorer prospects than their parents and grandparents did. We owe our current prosperity, security and good health to the investments of past generations, and we are obliged to renew those commitments in education, research, and innovation policies to ensure that the American people continue to benefit from the remarkable opportunities provided by the rapid development of the global economy."
(Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, 2005, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy [COSEPUP], The National Academies.)
A strong multidisciplinary program of deep science research is an important element of a renewed national commitment to scientific education and leadership in basic science. It promises to advance fundamental science, produce direct benefits for important sectors of the nation's economy, and contribute to educating the next generation of scientists and engineers.
EDUCATING THE NEXT GENERATION OF SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS
Higher education is based on research, and deep underground science and engineering provide essential opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. They also bring a unique sense of adventure. The cross-disciplinary synergy that is starting to appear promises to foster a new breed of scientists and engineers skilled in multiple-science techniques and cross-cutting applications.
Source: Fermilab Engineer, Chris Laughton
The growing demand for underground facilities has spawned a critical need for experts in all aspects of subsurface engineering, including safety. The increasing cost of and world-wide demand for mineral resources is inducing a renewal of the American mining industry. Combined with elimination of mining engineering from the curriculum of many universities over the past several decades, this has produced a critical shortage. Reflecting the supply-demand imbalance, mining engineers are now among the highest-paid engineers. More-over, the never-ending quests for new water resources, waste management facilities and energy storage have created an urgent need for underground environmental engineers to help the nation make good use of the earth's natural reserves. The U.S. is training diminishing numbers of scientists and engineers in these specific areas and yet the need for them grows. Intensifying our effort in deep underground science and engineering would certainly help reverse this trend.
Underground laboratories, such as Soudan, have active outreach programs, which stimulate young minds and create excitement about science. They also integrate postsecondary training with K-12 education through interaction with local schools and internships for nationally recruited K-12 teachers. A national underground initiative would strengthen these programs. The combination of physics, astrophysics, biology, earth sciences and engineering would offer new opportunities to acquaint students with the scientific method applied to a variety of problems and inspire them to ask fundamental questions, cutting across traditional disciplines. A strengthened Deep Science program would contribute to the revitalization of science education both at the K-12 and informal levels, enabling a broader diffusion of standards-based curriculum materials, and close collaboration with science centers across the country.
A particularly important aspect of a national initiative in Deep Science would be to enhance the diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce. Building on existing successful strategies, it would develop innovative programs that create research-experience opportunities for underserved students, involve teachers from minority-serving schools, and engage women and minority scientists as role models.
Source: Elizabeth Arscott
UNDERGROUND FRONTIERS
The exploration of the underground frontier directly addresses the fundamental yearning of humanity to understand its place in the cosmos, the nature of the dark universe, the mechanisms of the ever-changing earth, and the existence of unexplored new forms of life. The public's fascination with the universe, the lure of the subsurface world, and the eagerness to find answers to big questions of 21st-century science offer an exceptional opportunity for public engagement.
The creation of a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory would provide additional opportunities, with infrastructure for education and public involvement incorporated in the laboratory's design from the start, with facilities both on the surface and underground. Tours, interactions between scientists and the local community, a compelling presence on the Web, collaboration with science museums and centers across the nation, and active media involvement would form the core of the laboratory's public-communication plan. An underground laboratory would also provide significant opportunities to work with local residents, community officials and legislators, to help fulfill the community vision of the laboratory as a local employer, an instrument in regional economic growth, an educational resource, and a valued contributor to meeting critical national and international needs.
Source: Jaret Heise
DEEP BENEFITS
Deep science and engineering contribute to U.S. economic competitiveness through research central to effective stewardship of the environment and the mitigation of natural disasters. Investigations of deep subsurface microbial interactions hold the promise of significant practical benefits. Organisms from deep subsurface environments have already yielded biotechnological treasures in the form of highly reactive, thermally stable enzymes and microbially precipitated nanoparticles that can be used in industrial and environmental applications. Subsurface microorganisms probably play key roles in the formation and dissolution of minerals, especially ore minerals, and in the alteration of petroleum. A South African mining company has harnessed heat-tolerant microbes to extract zinc, copper and strategic metals from sulfide ore. Discovering how industry might use subsurface microbes to enhance the recovery of underground reserves may have critical implications for a world of diminishing resources. DUSEL would also contribute to the development of technologies that inhibit biocorrosion of underground infrastructure, the costliest aspect of mining and maintenance of underground structures.
Finally, a fundamental knowledge of subsurface biogeochemical processes and elemental cycling is critical for predicting the long-term stability of underground radioactive waste and carbon dioxide sequestration. The secrets of dark life may prove extremely important to our nation's health, as well as its energy and environmental security and well-being.
Analysis of the behavior of large rock masses at depth is critical to the understanding and predicting of earthquakes. A better understanding of underground water-flow systems may contribute to solutions for the growing shortage of fresh water resources. The development of waste storage is already a central component of underground science and engineering.
By providing long-term experimental access to greater scales of rock mass, a deep underground laboratory would generate fundamental advances in subsurface modeling technologies, advancing the dream of a "transparent earth." The engineering studies for the construction of such a facility and the monitoring of cavities during many decades will certainly yield better and more cost-effective methods of underground construction, benefiting the mining industry and improving design and development of underground facilities for countless purposes. The construction and operation of the laboratory with safe, general access as a major priority offers opportunities to hasten the development of better safety measures for the protection of human life in mining operations and underground construction.
