Two Worlds, Large and Small: Earth and Atom

Abstract

As I stood in an unlighted horizontal passageway of the Cashmere Cavern and looked up at the narrow ventilation shaft receding to a small circular opening some twenty meters above me, I felt a shiver of fascination and amusement as I thought of my New Zealand colleagues being raised and lowered by a rope harness. Located under the Cashmere Hills just outside Christchurch on the South Island, the cavern was originally excavated shortly after the start of World War II to serve as a command post in the event of a Japanese invasion. With the passage of time, it had long since faded from public memory until rediscovered by accident. A timely rediscovery, too. With its solid bedrock floor and sheltered environment, the cavern is expected to provide an ideal workplace thirty meters below ground for the University of Canterbury Ring Laser Laboratory. A wide horizontal adit seventy meters in length now gives easy, if less dramatic, access for the construction crew and physicists.