Off Palm Beach, Miami, marine developer US Submarines is building a six-room habitat 30 m below, complete with cooking facilities, lounges and fish-feeding stations.
The centre in Butterfield Green Road took 22 months to complete and replaces three other facilities in the town which the council said would have required "substantial investment" to bring them up to modern standards.
However, scientists are already discussing the other facilities that will be needed to complete the search for the new physics that must exist beyond the current Standard Model of particles and their interactions.