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Dr Sean Paling from Sheffield University and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory will talk about how UK astrophysicists are searching for the missing mass in the Universe at the bottom of Boulby Mine, Britain's deepest mine - on the North East coast of England.

Astronomers are now convinced there is much more out in space than 'meets the eye'. As well as the stars & galaxies we can see on a clear night, observations show there must also be much more matter out there that we cannot see.  This is known as 'DARK MATTER' and the race is on to find out exactly what it is. The UK team working at Boulby Mine think dark matter may be tiny particles called 'WIMPs' that exist all round us. To try to find these WIMPs, Dr Paling and his colleagues are running a number of dark matter search experiments over 1km underground at Boulby. This talk will give an easy introduction to astronomy and the search for dark matter - followed by a virtual tour of the experiments currently underway.

Sean Paling is Science Co-ordinator and Operations Manager of the Dark Matter Research facility at Boulby Mine. He studied physics and then astrophysics at York, Leeds and Los Alamos National Laboratory before taking up his current position at Boulby. Here he has played a leading role in the development and operation of the UK's world-leading DRIFT and ZEPLIN dark matter search projects, and more recently in the management and development of the deep underground science facility at Boulby itself.