All in the family: mining and astrophysics

Nine years ago, Jim Hanhardt was a contract miner at Homestake. His son Mark was a physics student at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. That’s also when physicists began talking about converting the gold mine into a laboratory. Jim and Mark discussed the possibility they might work together – Jim opening the mine and Mark doing the science. “We joked about it,” Mark says.
Now it’s no joke. Jim is shaft lead man for RCS Construction, the contractor re-opening the Yates Shaft. Mark is a graduate student in astrophysics, working with scientists studying phenomena such as neutrinoless double-beta decay. “That’s my dream project,” Mark says.
Earlier this week Mark rode the Yates cage with his father as part of a team measuring magnetic fields.

While their careers might seem light years apart, it’s clear that Jim and Mark Hanhardt do share some traits, including an unusual sense of humor. For example, Mark wears a work shirt with his first name embroidered on it, over the job title “Quantum Mechanic.” Jim is the creator of a notoriously bad neutrino joke. It’s a fake nose nailed to a tree at the Ross Shaft, over the sign “New Tree Nose.”