Grinkle Mine - Izeria

Grinkle Mine, was an ironstone mine working the main Cleveland Seam near to Roxby in North Yorkshire, England. Initially, the ironstone was mined specifically for the furnaces at the Palmer Shipbuilders in Jarrow on the River Tyne, but later, the mine became independent of Palmers. To enable the output from the mine to be exported, a 3-mile (4.8 km) narrow-gauge tramway was constructed that ran across three viaducts and through two tunnels to the harbour of Port Mulgrave, where ships would take the ore directly to Tyneside. During the First World War, the threat of wartime action on the harbour at Port Mulgrave led to a connection being built from the mine site direct to the Whitby to Loftus railway line just to the north of the mine head. Whilst this allowed for the closure of the port to shipping in 1917, the tramway stayed open to transport miners from Port Mulgrave to the minesite. The mine first ceased production in 1921, with sporadic years of mining taking place, however the mine closed for good in 1930. Part of the site is now underneath the surface workings of the Boulby Mine complex, though some buildings remain at ground level.

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ZEPLIN-III

The ZEPLIN-III dark matter experiment attempted to detect galactic WIMPs using a 12 kg liquid xenon target. It operated from 2006 to 2011 at the Boulby Underground Laboratory in Loftus, North Yorkshire. This was the last in a series of xenon-based experiments in the ZEPLIN programme pursued originally by the UK Dark Matter Collaboration (UKDMC). The ZEPLIN-III project was led by Imperial College London and also included the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the University of Edinburgh in the UK, as well as LIP-Coimbra in Portugal and ITEP-Moscow in Russia. It ruled out cross-sections for elastic scattering of WIMPs off nucleons above 3.9 × 10−8 pb (3.9 × 10−44 cm2) from the two science runs conducted at Boulby (83 days in 2008 and 319 days in 2010/11). Direct dark matter search experiments look for extremely rare and very weak collisions expected to occur between the cold dark matter particles that are believed to permeate our galaxy and the nuclei of atoms in the active medium of a radiation detector. These hypothetical elementary particles could be Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs, weighing as little as a few protons or as much as several heavy nuclei. Their nature is not yet known, but no sensible candidates remain within the Standard Model of particle physics to explain the dark matter problem.

UK Dark Matter Collaboration

The UK Dark Matter Collaboration (UKDMC) (1987–2007) was an experiment to search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The consortium consisted of astrophysicists and particle physicists from the United Kingdom, who conducted experiments with the ultimate goal of detecting rare scattering events which would occur if galactic dark matter consists largely of a new heavy neutral particle. Detectors were set up 1,100 m (3,600 ft) underground in a halite seam at the Boulby Mine in North Yorkshire.

Boulby Mine

The Boulby Mine is an underground mining operation with surface facilities located just south-east of the village of Boulby, on the north-east coast of the North York Moors, 2.7 miles (4.3 km) east of Loftus, North Yorkshire. It is operated by Cleveland Potash Limited, a subsidiary of Israel Chemicals Ltd., ICL, which acquired the project from Anglo American plc in April 2002. In early 2016, polyhalite mining commenced. Polyhalite is a natural multi-nutrient fertiliser providing a source of potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sulphur. It is marketed as Polysulphate by ICL and is sold in three forms: granular, mini-granular and standard. As well as producing Polysulphate, a granulated blend of potash and Polysulphate is sold as PotashPluS – part of ICL's wider FertiliserPluS product spectrum. Boulby originally produced half of the United Kingdom's output of potash, an agricultural fertiliser. The mined ore consists of 35–45% sylvite ("potash", specifically potassium chloride) and 45–55% halite (rock salt, or sodium chloride). The rock salt is extracted as a by-product and used across the region as a de-icing agent on roads in winter conditions. Other minerals are produced as waste (gangue) to the main effort, but may be sought after by mineral collectors, such as boracite, which occurs just above the beds of potash.

Directional Recoil Identification from Tracks

The Directional Recoil Identification from Tracks (DRIFT) detector is a low pressure negative ion time projection chamber (NITPC) designed to detect weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) - a prime dark matter candidate. There are currently two DRIFT detectors in operation. DRIFT-IId, which is located 1100m underground in the Boulby Underground Laboratory at the Boulby Mine in North Yorkshire, England, and DRIFT-IIe, which is located on the surface at Occidental College in Los Angeles. The DRIFT collaboration ultimately aims to develop and operate an underground array of DRIFT detectors for observing and reconstructing WIMP-induced nuclear recoil tracks with enough precision to provide a signature of the dark matter halo.