KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--The Endeavour astronauts installed a $2 billion cosmic ray detector on the International Space Station at the moment, a powerful lure surrounded by a composite array of sensors with the aim of will study high-energy particles from the depths of hole and schedule to look in place of clues not far off from the formation and evolution of the universe.
"Thank you very much in place of the lofty ride and safe escape of AMS to the station," radioed Sam Ting, the Nobel laureate who has managed the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer project in place of more than 15 years. "Your support and fantastic toil maintain taken us single step closer to realizing the science would-be of AMS. With your help, in place of the subsequently 20 years, AMS on the station will provide us a better understanding of the origin of the universe."
"Thank you, Sam," Endeavour commander indication Kelly replied from the International Space Station. "I was immediately looking barred the window of the orbiter and AMS looks categorically fantastic on the truss. I know you guys are really excited and you're probably getting data and looking by the side of it already."
Within two or three hours of installation and inauguration, the AMS was transport down a torrent of data, recording the passage of thousands of cosmic ray particles.
"The detector has 300,000 channels in the electronics, 650 microprocessors, and the detectors are aligned to (an accuracy of) single tenth of a soul mustache," Ting told reporters by the side of a mission status briefing. "We just now checked all the detectors, everything functioned suitably. Not a single single was destroyed, not a single electronic channel was malfunctioning. Right away, we began to find out an gigantic amount of data imminent down."
Ting showed inedible two sample graphs marking the passage of an electron with an energy of 20 billion electron volts and a carbon center with an energy of 42 billion electron volts.
"This shows the detector functioned suitably not including some noticeable twist at all," he thought. "We're very delighted. It took us 17 years to build this gadget and (for the) duration of the hole station we will be near, expectantly 10 to 20 years, and we hope...We will be able to kind an of great consequence contribution to our understanding of the origin of the universe."
Astronauts Andrew Feustel and Roberto Vittori, working on the shuttle's aft air travel deck, on track the installation act immediately by 3 a.M. ET, using Endeavour's 50-foot-long arm to leisurely power the 7.5-ton Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer from its roost by the side of the back of the orbiter's shipment bay.
After poignant it to a central theme on the appropriate piece of the take, pilot Gregory Johnson and Gregory "Taz" Chamitoff, operating the station's robot arm from a central processing unit console inside the lab's multi-window cupola module, took on to move AMS into perception in place of attachment on the better appropriate piece of the station's power truss. A motorized claw method in the truss after that sheltered the detector in place on three tour guide pins immediately similar to 5:45 a.M.
A a small number of minutes soon,an umbilical meeting in place of power and data was mated by remote control. No other crew interaction was requisite and data collection began almost just now.
"And Houston, from the cupola, I've got selected lofty news," Chamitoff radioed immediately by 6 a.M. "The UMA mate is complete, AMS is in a jiffy successfully installed. So colossal congratulations to everybody on the AMS team. I'm really Professor Ting and his set maintain been holding their breath. You guys can all start breathing again in a jiffy."
How it workings
AMS is roughly cube shaped, measuring 15 feet broad, 11 feet tall and 10 feet deep, tipping the scales by the side of 15,251 pounds. Using a powerful lure to bend the trajectories of high-energy cosmic rays--charged particles from supernovas, neutron stars, black holes and other cosmic enigmas--scientists will look in place of evidence of antimatter and as-yet-undetected dark carry some weight, held to kind up a quarter of the the universe.
AMS may well even unearth evidence of foreign particles made up of quarks in diverse arrangements than folks found on Earth. Or something completely unexpected.
The AMS "really probes the foundations of contemporary physics," Ting thought by launch. "But to my collaborators and I, the nearly everyone exciting objective of AMS is to look into the unknown, to search in place of phenomena which exist in nature but yet we maintain not the tools or the imagination to unearth."
Built by the side of CERN, the European Organization in place of Nuclear Research, and managed by the U.S. Department of Energy, the $2 billion AMS is an international collaboration sandwiched between 16 nations, 60 institutes and selected 600 physicists. Ting, a soft-spoken Chinese-American physicist who shared the 1976 Nobel Prize in physics, is a untiring advocate.
One of the many mysteries AMS was designed to explore is pardon? Happened to the anti-matter with the aim of ought to maintain been formed in the great big bang. Scientists believe equal amounts of carry some weight and anti-matter were produced, but in place of selected goal the universe seen by humans is dominated by regular carry some weight. Or by the side of smallest amount the nearby universe.
"If the universe comes from a great big bang, by the great big bang it is vacuum," Ting told reporters recently. "Nothing exists in vacuum. So in the introduction, you maintain (negatively charged) electron, you ought to maintain a (positively charged) positron so the charge is balanced. So you maintain carry some weight, you ought to maintain antimatter, otherwise we would not maintain approach from the vacuum.
"So in a jiffy the universe is 14 billion years old, you maintain all of us, made barred of carry some weight. The question is, someplace is the universe made barred of antimatter?"
Dark carry some weight, the weird, as-yet-undetected material held to provide the glue--gravity--needed to last galaxies and clusters of galaxies mutually, is held to kind up a quarter of the universe compared to the 4 percent made up of the regular carry some weight familiar to soul senses. The have a break is held to be in the form of dark energy, a repulsive force with the aim of appears to be speeding up the spreading out of the universe.
While AMS cannot precisely detect dark carry some weight, it can detect the particles with the aim of would be produced in dark carry some weight collisions.
Whatever AMS discovers, scientists will maintain sufficiently of data to toil with. Some 25,000 particle detections apiece flash are likely throughout regular operations
"Thank you, Sam," Endeavour commander indication Kelly replied from the International Space Station. "I was immediately looking barred the window of the orbiter and AMS looks categorically fantastic on the truss. I know you guys are really excited and you're probably getting data and looking by the side of it already."
Within two or three hours of installation and inauguration, the AMS was transport down a torrent of data, recording the passage of thousands of cosmic ray particles.
"The detector has 300,000 channels in the electronics, 650 microprocessors, and the detectors are aligned to (an accuracy of) single tenth of a soul mustache," Ting told reporters by the side of a mission status briefing. "We just now checked all the detectors, everything functioned suitably. Not a single single was destroyed, not a single electronic channel was malfunctioning. Right away, we began to find out an gigantic amount of data imminent down."
Ting showed inedible two sample graphs marking the passage of an electron with an energy of 20 billion electron volts and a carbon center with an energy of 42 billion electron volts.
"This shows the detector functioned suitably not including some noticeable twist at all," he thought. "We're very delighted. It took us 17 years to build this gadget and (for the) duration of the hole station we will be near, expectantly 10 to 20 years, and we hope...We will be able to kind an of great consequence contribution to our understanding of the origin of the universe."
Astronauts Andrew Feustel and Roberto Vittori, working on the shuttle's aft air travel deck, on track the installation act immediately by 3 a.M. ET, using Endeavour's 50-foot-long arm to leisurely power the 7.5-ton Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer from its roost by the side of the back of the orbiter's shipment bay.
After poignant it to a central theme on the appropriate piece of the take, pilot Gregory Johnson and Gregory "Taz" Chamitoff, operating the station's robot arm from a central processing unit console inside the lab's multi-window cupola module, took on to move AMS into perception in place of attachment on the better appropriate piece of the station's power truss. A motorized claw method in the truss after that sheltered the detector in place on three tour guide pins immediately similar to 5:45 a.M.
A a small number of minutes soon,an umbilical meeting in place of power and data was mated by remote control. No other crew interaction was requisite and data collection began almost just now.
"And Houston, from the cupola, I've got selected lofty news," Chamitoff radioed immediately by 6 a.M. "The UMA mate is complete, AMS is in a jiffy successfully installed. So colossal congratulations to everybody on the AMS team. I'm really Professor Ting and his set maintain been holding their breath. You guys can all start breathing again in a jiffy."
How it workings
AMS is roughly cube shaped, measuring 15 feet broad, 11 feet tall and 10 feet deep, tipping the scales by the side of 15,251 pounds. Using a powerful lure to bend the trajectories of high-energy cosmic rays--charged particles from supernovas, neutron stars, black holes and other cosmic enigmas--scientists will look in place of evidence of antimatter and as-yet-undetected dark carry some weight, held to kind up a quarter of the the universe.
AMS may well even unearth evidence of foreign particles made up of quarks in diverse arrangements than folks found on Earth. Or something completely unexpected.
The AMS "really probes the foundations of contemporary physics," Ting thought by launch. "But to my collaborators and I, the nearly everyone exciting objective of AMS is to look into the unknown, to search in place of phenomena which exist in nature but yet we maintain not the tools or the imagination to unearth."
Built by the side of CERN, the European Organization in place of Nuclear Research, and managed by the U.S. Department of Energy, the $2 billion AMS is an international collaboration sandwiched between 16 nations, 60 institutes and selected 600 physicists. Ting, a soft-spoken Chinese-American physicist who shared the 1976 Nobel Prize in physics, is a untiring advocate.
One of the many mysteries AMS was designed to explore is pardon? Happened to the anti-matter with the aim of ought to maintain been formed in the great big bang. Scientists believe equal amounts of carry some weight and anti-matter were produced, but in place of selected goal the universe seen by humans is dominated by regular carry some weight. Or by the side of smallest amount the nearby universe.
"If the universe comes from a great big bang, by the great big bang it is vacuum," Ting told reporters recently. "Nothing exists in vacuum. So in the introduction, you maintain (negatively charged) electron, you ought to maintain a (positively charged) positron so the charge is balanced. So you maintain carry some weight, you ought to maintain antimatter, otherwise we would not maintain approach from the vacuum.
"So in a jiffy the universe is 14 billion years old, you maintain all of us, made barred of carry some weight. The question is, someplace is the universe made barred of antimatter?"
Dark carry some weight, the weird, as-yet-undetected material held to provide the glue--gravity--needed to last galaxies and clusters of galaxies mutually, is held to kind up a quarter of the universe compared to the 4 percent made up of the regular carry some weight familiar to soul senses. The have a break is held to be in the form of dark energy, a repulsive force with the aim of appears to be speeding up the spreading out of the universe.
While AMS cannot precisely detect dark carry some weight, it can detect the particles with the aim of would be produced in dark carry some weight collisions.
Whatever AMS discovers, scientists will maintain sufficiently of data to toil with. Some 25,000 particle detections apiece flash are likely throughout regular operations