In Search of Antimatter Galaxies August 14, 2009: NASA's space
shuttle program is winding down. With only a few more flights,
shuttle crews will put the finishing touches on the
International Space Station (ISS), bringing to an end twelve
years of unprecedented orbital construction. The icon and
workhorse of the American space program will have finished its
Great Task. But, as Apple's CEO Steve Jobs might say, there is
one more thing... An act of Congress in 2008 added another
flight to the schedule near the end of the program. Currently
scheduled for May 16, 2011, this extra flight of the shuttle is
going to launch a hunt for antimatter galaxies. Right: The Alpha
Magnetic Spectrometer. Image courtesy MIT. [larger image] In
addition to sensing distant galaxies made entirely of
antimatter, the AMS will also test leading theories of dark
matter, an invisible and mysterious substance that comprises 83
percent of the matter in the universe. And it will search for
strangelets, a theoretical form of matter that's u