Inside Canada’s Subterranean Search for Dark Matter, Physics’ Holy Grail

There is a profound hole in the earth near the northern Ontario town of Sudbury — and it just may hold the answer to the greatest mystery in the universe. Shaft No. 9 in Vale’s still-operating century-old Creighton Mine reaches more than two kilometres below the surface of the Canadian Shield, a depth of about four stacked CN Towers. You reach the bottom via the “cage,” an unlit double-decker iron conveyance that carries employees and equipment down through 2,100 metres