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Pt. 4 - STS-134 - All About the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS)

336 views · Published 23 April 2011 · 15:01 · Indexed 2 October 2026

Channel: Matthew Travis · 2011 · Science & Technology

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A presentation at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida given by Nobel Laureate Dr. Samuel Ting, Principal Investigator for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-2) that will be launched to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Endeavour during the STS-134 mission.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is a state-of-the-art particle physics detector constructed, tested and operated by an international team composed of 60 institutes from 16 countries and organized under United States Department of Energy (DOE) sponsorship. The AMS-02 will use the unique environment of space to advance knowledge of the universe and lead to the understanding of the universe's origin by searching for antimatter, dark matter and measuring cosmic rays.

Experimental evidence indicates that our Galaxy is made of matter; however, there are more than 100 hundred million galaxies in the universe and the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe requires equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Theories that explain this apparent asymmetry violate other measurements. Whether or not there is significant antimatter is one of the fundamental questions of the origin and nature of the universe. Any observations of an antihelium nucleus would provide evidence for the existence of antimatter. In 1999, AMS-01 established a new upper limit of 10-6 for the antihelium/helium flux ratio in the universe. AMS-02 will search with a sensitivity of 10-9, an improvement of three orders of magnitude, sufficient to reach the edge of the expanding universe and resolve the issue definitively.

AMS-02 will collect data 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. As long as the experiment has power provided by the ISS, the detectors will be on and measuring data at a rate of 7 Gigabits per seconds. This is equivalent to filling a 1 Gigabyte USB memory stick every second! Using sophisticated filtration and compression techniques, the advanced 600 computer processors located on AMS-02 are able to reduce the amount of data down by a factor of 3000. This data is sent from the ISS to the ground where researchers around the globe will compile and analyze data.

Samuel Ting, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

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