Particle counting machine on the International Space Station

On April 29, the AMS physical particle detector, also known as a particle counter, will follow the last flight of the space shuttle Endeavor to the International Space Station. The European Atomic Research Organization (CERN) has stated that.

AMS will be installed at the International Space Station for 10 years in search of antimatter and dark matter in space, one of the most interesting mysteries of modern physics, the phenomenon that scientists still not caught yet.

AMS detector. (Source: Internet )

At CERN , physicists observed that matter and antimatter act almost exactly the same. Each matter particle has an antiparticle equivalent, very similar but opposite. When particles of matter and antimatter meet, they destroy each other.

Material and antimatter may have been created in equal numbers in the Big Bang, but today we live in a universe that seems to be purely physical. Does nature have a preference for matter over antimatter?

The great challenge of AMS is to find the only nucleus of antimatter that can signal the existence of a large amount of antimatter elsewhere in the universe. To achieve this, AMS will track cosmic rays from outer space with unprecedented sensitivity.

AMS detectors will track particles such as protons, electrons and atomic nuclei that constantly bombard our planet . By studying the flux of cosmic rays with very high precision, AMS will be able to identify a single antimatter among one billion other particles.

" This is a very interesting time for basic science ," said Rolf Heuer, CERN Director General. " We hope to have an interesting addition between the AMS and the active LHC particle accelerator at CERN. These two machines will explore a problem from different perspectives, giving us a parallel approach. to some mysteries of the universe. "

AMS has the participation of 600 researchers from CERN member countries (Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland) as well as from China and Korea. National.