The Boulby Mine
Boulby Underground Laboratory
The Boulby Underground Laboratory is a multi-disciplinary deep underground science facility operated by the UK’s Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC), working in partnership with ICL Boulby.
Boulby is one of just a handful of facilities world-wide suitable for hosting ultra-low background and deep underground science projects. Boulby is a special place for science. It is ‘a quiet place in the Universe’, where studies can be carried out almost entirely free of interference from natural background radiation, in particular from natural ‘cosmic rays’ which perpetually bombard the Earth’s surface.
With a small onsite-staff, the facility supports the work of over 70 scientists from 20 universities and research institutes in the UK and overseas.
The Boulby underground Lab is the UK’s national deep underground science facility and one of just a few such facilities in the world. The laboratory, hosted at Boulby, has been growing and recently, thanks to £1.8M investment from STFC and ongoing support from ICL Boulby, a new underground laboratory was built to enable Boulby to host current and future science for decades to come.
Like other activities at ICL Boulby, the laboratory sits at an impressive 1,100m under the Earth’s surface and hosts a number of world-leading science projects. Studies underway at Boulby range from the search for Dark Matter in the Universe, to studies of geology and geophysics, climate, the environment, life in extreme environments on Earth and beyond.
