The Agua Negra Pass (Spanish: Paso de Agua Negra) is a pass over the

Andes mountains The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the List of mountain ranges#Mountain ranges by length, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range i ...

which connects

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

and

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

. The highest point of this pass is at

AMSL Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

Agua Negra Tunnel

To improve trade between Chile and Argentina, a 14 km, three-bore vehicular tunnel (two for traffic and one for ventilation) below the pass is planned, which will allow year-round traffic. (The pass is closed for much of the winter.) In March 2015, Argentina officially approved the project. It is awaiting ratification from Chile. In 2018, the bidding contest for the tunnel project between construction companies took place. The whole project was budgeted at 1.5 billion dollars. Also planned for the deepest part of the tunnel is the

Agua Negra Deep Experiment Site (ANDES) The Agua Negra Deep Experiment Site (ANDES) is a project for the construction and operation of an underground laboratory in the Agua Negra Tunnel, between Argentina and Chile. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico are involved in this project and are al ...

(ANDES): an underground laboratory. Because all currently operating deep underground laboratories are located in the

Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's Nort ...

, a Southern Hemisphere site would have some unique benefits: * Combined with existing

neutrino detector A neutrino detector is a physics apparatus which is designed to study neutrinos. Because neutrinos only Weak interaction, weakly interact with other particles of matter, neutrino detectors must be very large to detect a significant number of neut ...

s, a longer baseline would allow more accurate localization of sources in

neutrino astronomy Neutrino astronomy is the branch of astronomy that observes astronomical objects with neutrino detectors in special observatories. Neutrinos are created as a result of certain types of radioactive decay, nuclear reactions such as those that take ...

, and * When searching for

dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not ab ...

, there is expected to be a seasonal variation due to the Earth's motion around the Sun. But such a signal could also be an error, caused by some subtle seasonal effect. Confirmation from a location with opposite seasons would rule out such an error. ANDES is not expected to be ready before 2027.

Gallery

File:Agua negra argentina.JPG, Paso de Agua Negra, Argentine side File:Agua negra chile.JPG, Paso de Agua Negra, Chilean side File:Penitentes Agua Negra.JPG, Penitentes near the summit

References

Argentina–Chile border crossings Mountain passes of Chile Mountain passes of Argentina Mountain passes of the Andes Landforms of Atacama Region Landforms of Catamarca Province {{Atacama-geo-stub

Agua Negra Tunnel

Gallery

See also

References