Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

[Airbrush]

"The device will sit outside the space station, seeking to collect high-energy cosmic rays and space particles that have may have originated with the "big bang," which astrophysicists theorize created the universe. If so, the findings could help them understand the makeup and origins of the universe.

 

Some scientists have expressed strong skepticism that the AMS will work, but others think it might become the greatest astrophysics tool since the shuttle took the Hubble Space Telescope into space. Even if it does not detect its primary goals -- big-bang antimatter and so-called "dark" matter -- the AMS's potential to analyze cosmic rays and particles is unparalleled and its findings likely will be invaluable, said its principal investigator, Nobel Prize laureate Samuel Ting. More than 600 scientists from 16 countries are involved with it.

 

"We want to put a powerful physics detector, a state-of-the-art physics detector, into space," Ting said recently."

 

2 Billion dollars seem like a lot for a device to look for strange matter. Anyone who knows more about this please share.

 

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/os-space-shuttle-launch-20110516,0,7742586.story

Edited May 16, 2011 by Airbrush

[BJC]

The two billion was mostly salaries (grants) to the ~500 scientists for ~2 years - monies that would presumably have been paid anyway. The question should be "Could the resource of ~500 scientists for ~2 years been better spent else where?" Moot point as the monies have been spent.

 

The first results from the AMS-02 have arrived and according to a post on www.space.com

Within hours of being installed, the machine had already detected at least two high-energy particles that have never been observed in nature before, and to date had only been created inside particle accelerators on the ground.

 

 

The best info is on www.ams02.org, the Official site for the AMS-02 mission. Very briefly the AMS-02 tracks paths of cosmic rays collision. The curvature, length, direction of the paths indicate different particles from (hopefully) massive dark particles, super symmetric particles down to electrons, positrons, etc.

 

These results give a good indication of what types of particles exist in nature.

[Airbrush]

Thanks for the info BJC.

 

"Within hours of being installed, the machine had already detected at least two high-energy particles that have never been observed in nature before...."

 

Wow, that was fast. If 500 scientists can agree on something and work together for 2 years on the same project, there must be something interesting in the works.

 

"AMS's potential to analyze cosmic rays and particles is unparalleled and its findings likely will be invaluable...."

 

I'm still waiting for the breakthroughs by the LHC, maybe someone heard something?

 

And Kepler should start giving some definitive results soon, since its' last revelations.

 

"With Obama administration plans to extend International Space Station operations beyond 2015, the decision has been made by AMS management to exchange the original AMS-02 superconducting magnet for the non-superconducting magnet previously flown on AMS-01. Although the non-superconducting magnet has a weaker field strength, its on-orbit operational time at ISS is expected to be 10 to 18 years versus only 3 years for the superconducting version. This additional data gathering time has been deemed more important than higher experiment sensitivity, despite the fact that the abandoned cryogenic system was originally described as critical technology to mission success. Whether the ISS will operate long enough for AMS to take full advantage of its extended lifetime is also unclear."

 

"Six types of quarks (up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top) have been found experimentally; however, the majority of matter on Earth is made up of only up and down quarks. It is a fundamental question whether there exists stable matter made up of strange quarks in combination with up and down quarks. Particles of such matter are known as strangelets. Strangelets might have extremely large mass and very small charge-to-mass ratios. It would be a totally new form of matter. AMS-02 may determine whether this extraordinary matter exists in our local environment."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Magnetic_Spectrometer

Edited May 20, 2011 by Airbrush

[BJC]

The AMS-02 detectors are similar to most detectors in earth based particle accelerators. The average mass/energy of the particles at AMS-02 (10⁹ to 10¹² eV) is lower than the maximum at the LHC (~10¹³ eV) but occasionally cosmic rays can go considerably higher >> 10²⁰ eV.

 

I remember something about these high energy particles reacting with the photons of Cosmic Microwave background to form pions and dissipating so that particles of this energy would probably not be the normal protons, atoms or electrons. Any cosmic rays of >> 10²⁰ eV would have to originate within our galaxy cluster which may have a chance of reaching earth before dissipating -or- some non EM-particle such as a neutron or dark matter.

 

Interesting: a Neutron decays into a proton (+electron+neutrino) with a half-life of ~15 seconds. A "neutron cosmic ray" of that energy would be traveling very close to the speed of light and, from the neutrons frame of reference, would only require 5-6 seconds to traverse the entire universe.

 

 

The charge of a particle is detected by deflection path of the magnet, positive (positron, proton) going one direction, negative (electron, anti-proton the other) - with a clever device, the Transition Radiation Detector , determines whether the particle is a positron or electron. These antimatter particles are probably the result of collisions - what they are looking for is something like an anti-helium atom. The presence of an " anti-helium atom" type cosmic ray could signal the presence of anti-galaxies thus solving the matter/anti-matter balance problem.

 

Dark matter can be detected by missing energy signals. If an input particle of 1 TeV only produces a +/- pair of (say) 200 GeV then this signals the presence of a non EM detectable particle of ~800 GeV. Could also be a super symmetric particle of a neutrino.