New National Science Lab?

Schwamm writes: "CNN.com has a story about a possible new national science lab that would be built in a soon-to-be abandoned gold mine in South Dakota. The only catch is that the bills need to get through Congress by the end of the year, when the current owner of the mine will abandon it. This would be an awesome lab--the "Cape Canaveral of Physics.""

Comments

Thoughts

[uslinux.net]

Does anyone else READ the science category anymore, except for me!?!?

I'm not sure that any legislation not directed at "terrorist" activities will even be bothered with this session. Now, if someone could find an anti-terrorism use for the facility, it might be snapped up in a heartbeat.

Re:Thoughts

[Debillitatus]

I think it might be just me and you, though...

Can you say pork?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, look, this is in South Dakota, which
is the home state of the Senate Majority Leader,
Tom Daschle.

In return for turning over this property to the
government Homestake Mining gets a waiver for environmental
damage that was almost certainly done, AND gets
paid hundreds of millions for the privilege.

Some (offtopic) History of the Homestake Mine

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember George Armstrong Custer? Got his butt whipped by some Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors at the Little Bighorn in Eastern Montana? The fight was all about the Natives determination to hang onto the Black Hills of South Dakota, a place with some serious religious significance to these people. Seems, however, that there was gold in them thar hills, making it a place of serious religious significance to the white folks as well.

Now remember William Randolf Hearst? You might know him as the publisher of the San Fransisco Examiner during the late 19th century, the father of "Yellow Journalism," and one of the worst rascists in U.S. history. Hearst's father was a millionaire miner and the original owner of the Homestake mine.

So basically Custer died in order to help a bunch of wealthy rascist gold miners steal a sacred site from the natives. The Sioux and other tribes still hold the Black Hills as sacred. They have seen their church desecrated with mines, idiot tourist traps such as Mt Rushmore, beer drinking hog drivers during the annual motorcycle rally, and Army and Air Force bases.

My father was a physicist, so I have a lot of sympathy for the idea of an underground physics lab. But not at the expense of the rightful owners. Clean up the Black Hills and give them back to the rightful owners.

Re:Some (offtopic) History of the Homestake Mine

[quasi_steller]

Yes, giving the Black Hills back to the Native Americans sounds like a nice idea, but people live there (I am one of them), besides who are the rightfull owners anyway? I don't clame to know anything, but every country has a history of one people group taking over another for whatever reasons (usually bad ones like greed, somtimes for better ones like freedom) and settleing there. You might as well ask that everyone leave the U.S. and go back to their country of origin. If you go back far enough people who live in a certian country probably decended from people who conqured that area long ago, and we might as well say they are not the rightfull owners of the land they live in.

Being fair sounds nice, but is too complicated, besides what is fair? Our history (Human history that is) is full of waring and conquring and atrocities, to right one by giving back the Black Hills to the Native Americans may only create another one by making all of the residents of that area leave their homes and find a living somewhere else.

I am not saying that it is right for the U.S. to have broken treaties over and over again, or to have taken land that wasn't theirs, however the only way we can right this wrong is to apologize to our fellow Americans who are of Native American decent. I for one do apologize for the attrocities and wrongs, and hope to never see anything like that done to any people group by another people group again.

Let's talk about the actual _PHYSICS_

[The Iconoclast]

Apart from the trolling about pork barrel politics and which mine is an ancient indian burial ground (no offense), there is a definate need for a national underground physics lab. Many different experiments out there need the low background of deep sites for cutting edge physics. There are neutrino obsrvatories, a la SNO and Super-K, also Dark Matter searches, like CDMS, proton decay experiments, and plenty of other stuff. There is even non-physics related stuff that can be done there like biology and geology.

Sorry to be short on the links to these experiments, but I'm sure you could google for them. just came from a marathon session of class and my brain hurts, so i can't think well. ;-)