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What’s Behind Door #1?

Marine chemist Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink prepares to enter the PicoTrace clean laboratory, which was built to offer scientists a contamination-free environment for analysis of ultra-trace-elements in their samples. The mobile, state-of-the-art, metal-free clean room was lifted by crane onto the roof of the Clark Laboratory in the summer of 2006. The roof has the necessary infrastructure—power, water, emergency systems, and easy access to the scientists’ regular laboratories—and the clean lab can be easily lifted from the roof in order to take it to sea. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)