Gran Sasso D'Italia - Science

Science

In 1984, a 10 km two-lane highway tunnel carrying the A24 autostrade, the Traforo del Gran Sasso, was bored through the Gran Sasso Massif. In 1995, a second parallel tunnel was completed. Construction of the tunnel included an underground particle physics laboratory at Assergi, the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso or Gran Sasso National Laboratory. The first large experiments there started in 1989.

The laboratory is composed of three large underground chambers, sometimes referred to collectively as the third tunnel and lies beneath 1400 meters of rock. Construction of the laboratory and second tunnel faced fierce opposition from Italian and international environmental groups including Pro Natura, LIPU and Club Alpino Italiano as well as the World Wildlife Federation and WWF Italia, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Environmentalists noted that the nuclear physics laboratory would lie on or near two major and highly active seismic faults, that construction of the tunnels would interfere with a major aquifer, and that construction waste would degrade an environmentally sensitive and significant area. The underground laboratory, which opened in 1989, with its low background radiation is used for experiments in particle and nuclear physics,including the study of neutrinos, high-energy cosmic rays, dark matter, nuclear decay, as well as geology, and biology. The laboratory employs over 700 scientists from twenty different countries. Many credit the opposition created by the tunnel and laboratory construction with galvanizing the Italian environmental movement and leading to the very creation of the Parco Nazionale del Gran Sasso in 1991. In recent years, the laboratory has itself begun promoting preservation of the Gran Sasso environment.

The LNGS was the destination of the neutrinos involved in the faster-than-light neutrino anomaly publicly announced in September 2011.