Proposed underground lab in South Africa moves into project stage

A proposal to build South Africa’s and Africa’s first underground science laboratory has now moved into the project stage, with the launch of the Paarl Africa Underground Laboratory (PAUL), following a recent science symposium on the concept. Although South African scientists have set up temporary underground labs before, this will be the first permanent such facility in the country and continent, and only the second in the Southern Hemisphere (the first being in Australia). (The symposium was sponsored by the Department of Science and Innovation [DSI] and supported by Stellenbosch University and the University of the Western Cape, as well as by France’s National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics and Italy’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics.)