Word: cavernous
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...salt mine these days, he may not be joking. He could be heading 40 km (25 miles) east of Cleveland, where an 81-ton digging machine is carving a huge cavity in a salt mine 600 meters (2,000 ft.) below the ground. When excavation is completed, the cavern will be lined with synthetic rubber and filled with 10,000 tons of exceptionally pure, filtered water. Then, about two years from now, physicists will begin looking in the pool for flashes of light that could signal the decay of protons, confirm a unifying theory of nature, and end the cherished...
...mile underground at the Homestake mine two men are at work, dim silhouettes beneath bright balloons of light cast by their head lamps. They are standing in a low, dark cavern, about 200 ft. long and 50 ft. wide, which is just now acquiring a festive look. Long blue and yellow streamers trail down out of the darkness from the jagged rocks overhead. Richard Aberle is patiently connecting up the streamers to make an electric circuit: yellow to yellow, blue to blue. They lead to detonator caps and charges buried deep in the rock by Aberle's partner...
Aberle and Burns are about to complete five hours of work. Giving the cavern a last look, they scramble to a steel escape ladder that climbs straight up, 110 ft., through a hole bored in solid schist. Shifting from that ladder to a creaky elevator cage, they hoist themselves higher still. Beside the cage as it moves upward-to a mere 5,600 ft. below the earth's surface-water streams down the timbers used to shore up the shaft, acting as both lubricant and fire preventive. In the hot shaft it sounds, and feels, like a tropical rain...
When the smoke settles, the miners must hustle down to the 5,900-ft. depth, work out under the cavern where the new rock has fallen, and begin hauling out stone, which is then hoisted onto ore carts for the long trip to the mine head. There it is pulverized, milled down as fine as flour, and the gold is chemically extracted as minute particles of dust...
Coming down the ramp, which was overflowing with spectators and fenced in by policemen, the runners entered a cavern filled with the aftermath of a marathon...