How is this for a commute to work: drive 240km north-west of Melbourne to the outskirts of the town of Stawell. Near sheep grazing in unfenced fields, take a left and gear up: hard hat, steel-capped boots, glasses and an emergency self-rescuer – a portable oxygen source that looks like a cross between a hip flask and a hand grenade. Pass rumbling machinery and then descend 1,025 metres underground.
The office in question is the only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere: the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL), where researchers will hunt for dark matter, the invisible substance thought to comprise about 85% of the matter in the universe.
