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The Laboratoire Sous-marin Provence Méditerranée (LSPM) located 40 kilometers off the coast of Toulon at a depth of 2,450 meters, where even sunlight is unreachable. Via this national research platform, which is operated by the CNRS in partnership with IFREMER and Aix-Marseille University (AMU), researchers will explore the unknowns of the deep water while searching for neutrinos in the sky. These extraterrestrial origin basic particles encounter minimal impediments and can even travel across our planet without coming into contact with a single atom.
The LSPM’s principal equipment is the enormous neutrino detector KM3NeT, which was created by 250 researchers from 17 different nations. KM3NeT will investigate the bluish light trails that neutrinos leave in the water in the deep, dark abyss. It will assist in illuminating these particles’ quantum features, which as of yet defy explanation and can be detected in hundreds every day.
The scientific community will be able to investigate the chemistry and life at these depths thanks to the additional LSPM instruments. These will let researchers to watch cetacean populations, see bioluminescent species, and provide information into seismicity, marine radioactivity, deep-sea deoxygenation, and ocean acidification. This oceanographic equipment is incorporated into the EMSO European research infrastructure’s subsea observatory network.
The LSPM structure is built around a number of titanium connection points and sophisticated systems that can power a variety of scientific instruments and retrieve their data in real time via a 42-kilometer-long electro-optical cable. There are currently three junction boxes at the base, but adding a second cable in the future might increase it to five.