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16 Facts About Secret Underground Labs That'll Blow Your Mind

Actually, we didn't really know ANYTHING about secret underground labs. Until now. To uncover more mysteries, watch Helix on Fridays starting January 10 at 10/9c on Syfy, and you can sample the first 15 minutes before the premiere here.

1. First off, YES, underground labs ARE real.

2. They're used to research subjects like dark matter and neutrinos, which need to be shielded from cosmic rays.

3. The National Ignition Facility (Livermore, CA) houses 192 of the world's most powerful lasers, which sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Maybe that's why it was used as the set for the Starship Enterprise's warp core in the movie Star Trek Into Darkness.

4. During the Cold War, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center (Southold, NY) conducted a secret biological weapons program targeting livestock.

5. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) operates in a circular tunnel 17 miles in circumference.

It also resembles the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver.

6. ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), also located at CERN, produces a quark-gluon plasma with a temperature at around 5.5 trillion degrees.

(And it TOTALLY looks like a gigantic Dalek eyestalk.)

7. CERN's ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) weighs as much as the Eiffel Tower.

And it looks just like a Stargate!

8. CERN is currently hosting a scavenger hunt to find LEGO® figurines hidden throughout their Computing Centre.

9. The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station traditionally screens a triple feature of The Thing at the start of the winter season.

10. SNOLAB (Ontario, Canada), the world's deepest underground lab, is located two kilometers beneath the earth.

11. It has a Twitter account...

DEAP-3600 experiment lookin' spiffy! http://t.co/KxY9oHHtwC

SNOLAB

@SNOLABscience

DEAP-3600 experiment lookin' spiffy! http://t.co/KxY9oHHtwC

/ Via

12. ...and is hiring interns!

13. The Centre for Underground Physics in Pyhäsalmi (Finland) has its own sauna.

14. The Sanford Underground Laboratory (Lead, SD) grows its own copper — the purest copper in the world.

It's also located beneath the Homestake Mine — formerly the largest gold mine in North America.

15. And as for the notorious Area 51 (Groom Lake, NV)...

...2013 is the first time Area 51's existence has been acknowledged by the CIA and the president.

16. Area 51 was established for Project Aquatone, the development of the Lockheed U-2 strategic reconnaissance aircraft.

These (and other) planes might have been mistaken for unidentified flying objects.

For a glimpse into a more insidious laboratory, watch the premiere of Helix, Friday Jan 10 at 10/9c, only on Syfy.

View this video on YouTube