Converting the former Homestake gold mine in Lead into an underground laboratory is often touted as good for the entire Black Hills community.

Next week, the project will deliver on part of that promise. The Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake is sponsoring a series of free public lectures titled "Deep Science for Everyone." The talks are a great opportunity for us non-scientists, who wouldn't know string theory from string cheese, to understand why researchers are so eager to do experiments in an 8,000-foot-deep gold mine.

"Deep Science for Everyone" is for general audiences and especially for high school and college students.

Princeton geoscientist Tullis Onstott will talk about life forms found in extreme environments - as deep as 3 miles underground or as far away as Mars. Onstott speaks at Lead High School auditorium at 7 p.m., Tuesday, April 22.

University of California at Davis physicist Bob Svoboda will talk about a "dark matter" experiment he and his colleagues want to put deep underground at Homestake. Svoboda speaks at the student union at Black Hills State College at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 24.

Physicist Hitoshi Murayama of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will explain how underground experiments can explain the cosmos. Murayama, who once devised a "Physics Barbecue for Kids" speaks at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 25, in the Classroom Building at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in Rapid City.

These three scientists and almost 300 of their colleagues are meeting in Lead next week, Monday through Saturday, to plan the first experiments at the National Science Foundation's proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. They'll also discuss experiments at the Sanford Underground Lab, which the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority will open in advance of DUSEL.

The Sanford Lab's co-sponsors for the lectures are the Homestake Collaboration, Black Hills State University, South Dakota School of Mines, Lead High School and the Homestake Adams Research and Cultural Center. Those organizations promise that the "deep science" being studied in Lead can educate us all.

We invite people to take advantage of this exciting learning opportunity and we hope it will be just the beginning of the lab's community outreach.