A new tool to look at the universe debuted Thursday, with the
installation of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, nicknamed AMS,
on the International Space Station. With a large powerful
magnet, AMS samples from the stream of cosmic rays flying
through space and processes them through a series of detectors
to determine particle energy, electrical charge and position.
Over time, physicists expect the mountain of data to shed light
on dark matter, antimatter and other phenomena that are
impervious to traditional telescopes. The 600-member science
team, headed by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting with the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, plans to take things
slow. With a pricetag of about $2 billion and a multinational
team from 60 research organizations, AMS took 17 years to come
together. The effort was nearly derailed after the 2003 Columbia
accident when NASA took away its ride on the shuttle. “This
isn’t going to happen again, so it’s important to do this very,
very systematically,” Ting said Thursday. With a f