AMS-02 set to fly in 2010

[bystander]

The long delayed (2002) Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is scheduled to fly on STS-134 in July 2010. The AMS is to fly on the ISS for three years and search for heavy anti-particles (anti-helium) and dark matter.

HEAPOW: What's the Matter with the Big Bang? (2009 August 17)

NASA Science: In Search of Antimatter Galaxies (2009 August 14)

[neufer]

The AMS is to fly on the ISS for three years and search for heavy anti-particles (anti-helium).

• A search for antebellum? _____ "Look for it only in books,
  for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind..."

[apodman]

I'm not THAT old!

A search for antebellum?

I'll stick with antediluvian.

[neufer]

I'm not THAT old!

A search for antebellum?

I'll stick with antediluvian.

You are delusional then

I was only two years ahead of Frank Tipler III (of Andalusia, Alabama)
at both MIT & the University of Maryland, College Park.

<<Frank Jennings Tipler III (born February 1, 1947 in Andalusia, Alabama) is a mathematical physicist and cosmologist, holding a joint appointment in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane University.

Tipler received his Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (attending from 1965-1969). In 1976, Tipler obtained his PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park in the field of global general relativity for his proof that if a time machine could be created its use would necessarily result in the formation of singularities, using the techniques of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose. Tipler went on to be hired as a postdoctoral researcher by physicists John A. Wheeler, Abraham Taub, Rainer Sachs and Dennis Sciama. He eventually became a professor of mathematical physics in 1981 at Tulane University, where he has taught since.

. The Omega Point

<<In his controversial 1994 book The Physics of Immortality, Tipler claims to provide a mechanism for immortality and the resurrection of the dead consistent with the known laws of physics, provided by a computer intelligence he terms the Omega Point and which he identifies with God. The line of argument is that the evolution of intelligent species will enable scientific progress to grow exponentially, eventually enabling control over the universe even on the largest possible scale. Tipler predicts that this process will culminate with an all-powerful intelligence whose computing speed and information storage will grow exponentially at a rate exceeding the collapse of the universe, thus providing infinite "experiential time" which will be used to run computer simulations of all intelligent life that has ever lived in the history of our universe. This virtual reality emulation is what Tipler means by "the resurrection of the dead." In more recent works, Tipler says that the existence of the Omega Point is required to avoid the violation of the known laws of physics.

According to George Ellis's review of Tipler's book in the journal Nature, Tipler's book on the Omega Point is "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline", and Michael Shermer devoted a chapter of Why People Believe Weird Things to enumerating flaws in Tipler's thesis. On the other hand, David Deutsch (who pioneered the field of quantum computers), confirms that Tipler's basic concept of the physics of an Omega Point is correct.[citation needed] However, while in his 1997 book The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch incorporates the concept of Tipler's Omega Point as a central feature of the fourth strand of his "four strands" Theory of Everything, he doesn't therein support Tipler's identification of the Omega Point with God. However, Deutsch does agree that the society near the Omega Point would have unlimited computational resources available to them (i.e., finite at any given time, with additional resources continuously coming online) and would hence be able to perfectly emulate any environment, including the ability to resurrect life.

His 1986 book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (with John D. Barrow) reviews the intellectual history of teleology, the large number of physical coincidences which allow sapient life to exist (see anthropic principle), and then investigates the ultimate fate of the universe. This was the first book to describe the Omega Point Theory.

Tipler's 2007 book The Physics of Christianity analyzes the Omega Point Theory's pertinence to Christian theology. In the book, Tipler identifies the Omega Point as being the Judeo-Christian God, particularly as described by Christian theological tradition. In this book Tipler also analyzes how Jesus Christ could have performed the miracles attributed to him in the New Testament without violating any known laws of physics, even if one were to assume that we currently don't exist on a level of implementation in a computer simulation (in the case that we did, then according to Tipler such miracles would be trivially easy to perform for the society which was running the simulation, even though it would seem amazing from our perspective).

Tipler's writings on scientific peer review have been cited by William A. Dembski as forming the basis of the process for review in the intelligent design journal Progress in Complexity, Information and Design of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, where both Tipler and Dembski serve as fellows.

In his 2005 paper in the journal Reports on Progress in Physics, Tipler maintains that the correct quantum gravity theory has existed since 1962, first discovered by Richard Feynman in that year, and independently discovered by Steven Weinberg and Bryce DeWitt, among others. But, according to Tipler, because these physicists were looking for equations with a finite number of terms (i.e., derivatives no higher than second order), they abandoned this qualitatively unique quantum gravity theory since in order for it to be consistent it requires an arbitrarily higher number of terms. Tipler writes "They also did not realize that the correct quantum gravity theory is consistent only if a certain set of boundary conditions are imposed ...", which includes the initial Big Bang, and the final Omega Point, cosmological singularities. Tipler says that the equations for this theory of quantum gravity are term-by-term finite, but the same mechanism that forces each term in the series to be finite also forces the entire series to be infinite (i.e., infinities that would otherwise occur in spacetime, consequently destabilizing it, are transferred to the cosmological singularities, thereby preventing the universe from immediately collapsing into nonexistence). Tipler writes that "It is a fundamental mathematical fact that this [infinite series] is the best that we can do. ... This is somewhat analogous to Liouville's theorem in complex analysis, which says that all analytic functions other than constants have singularities either a finite distance from the origin of coordinates or at infinity."

In the same aforestated journal article, Tipler combines the above theory of quantum gravity with an extended Standard Model in order to form what he maintains is the correct Theory of Everything (TOE) describing and unifying all the forces in physics.

Out of 50 articles, Tipler's said paper was selected as "[one of] the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005. Articles were selected [...] for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website.">>

[bystander]

I was only two years ahead of Frank Tipler III (of Andalusia, Alabama)
at both MIT & the University of Maryland, College Park.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with AMS-02, but does your connection with Tipler have anything at all to do with the strangeness of your posts?

[neufer]

I was only two years ahead of Frank Tipler III (of Andalusia, Alabama)
at both MIT & the University of Maryland, College Park.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with AMS-02, but does your connection with Tipler have anything at all to do with the strangeness of your posts?

If you mean to suggest that I have "blown my [T]ipler [O]mega [P]oint" in that my posts are "the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline" .... probably.

[harry]

G'day from the land of ozzzzzzzz

On the subject of antimatter CERN has builting a detector to be fitted on the International space station.


The AMS-02 experiment on the ISS
Jun-09
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009JPhCS.171a2045C

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) on the International Space Station (ISS) is a large acceptance magnetic spectrometer aiming for high precision studies of cosmic rays in space. The experiment will address fundamental questions regarding primary antimatter and dark matter contents of the universe. In addition, the precise measurements of cosmic rays in a wide energy range will result in a greatly improved understanding of the cosmic ray propagation in the Galaxy. The detector is now in its final assembly stage at CERN (Geneva) and it will be shipped to KSC (Florida) for integration with the space shuttle Discovery before the end of 2009. The STS-134 mission, currently scheduled for launch in September 2010 will transport the experiment to the ISS where it will operate for a period of 3 to 5 years.

[canuck100]

G'day from the land of ozzzzzzzz

On the subject of antimatter CERN has builting a detector to be fitted on the International space station.


The AMS-02 experiment on the ISS
Jun-09
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009JPhCS.171a2045C

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) on the International Space Station (ISS) is a large acceptance magnetic spectrometer aiming for high precision studies of cosmic rays in space. The experiment will address fundamental questions regarding primary antimatter and dark matter contents of the universe. In addition, the precise measurements of cosmic rays in a wide energy range will result in a greatly improved understanding of the cosmic ray propagation in the Galaxy. The detector is now in its final assembly stage at CERN (Geneva) and it will be shipped to KSC (Florida) for integration with the space shuttle Discovery before the end of 2009. The STS-134 mission, currently scheduled for launch in September 2010 will transport the experiment to the ISS where it will operate for a period of 3 to 5 years.

Interesting but not particularly relevant to supernovae. Heaven help anyone who wants to use this forum to research a topic!! Perhaps a moderator will move this to a new thread.

[bystander]

Dark matter detective arrives at ESTEC
ESA - 16 February 2010

One of the most exciting scientific instruments ever built, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), arrived at ESA’s Test Centre in the Netherlands for testing before being launched on the Space Shuttle to the ISS this July.
...
AMS will help scientists to understand better the fundamental issues on the origin and structure of the Universe by observing 'antimatter' and 'dark matter'. As a byproduct, AMS will gather a lot of other information from cosmic radiation sources such as stars and galaxies millions of light years from our home galaxy. Not only astronomers, but also particle physicists are waiting for AMS data.

[bystander]

Urgent refit for space magnet
Nature News - 22 April 2010

A seven-tonne particle detector due to fly to the International Space Station in July will spend the summer on the ground owing to a technical fault in the superconducting magnet at its core. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) will be refitted with a conventional permanent magnet, a change that could mean the detector is less likely to make the breakthrough that would seal its place in scientific history — the discovery of dark matter.

The AMS is designed to measure the properties of cosmic rays, high-energy particles reaching Earth from space, perhaps including particles produced by the annihilation of dark matter. From a perch on the space station, the detector would be able to study these particles before they are absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, determining their charge, momentum and trajectory, and so their source.
...
Having been given a berth on the space shuttle under former US president George W. Bush, the AMS is now in trouble once again. This time, the problem concerns the nearly 0.9-tesla doughnut-shaped superconducting magnet that was to have formed the heart of the device, its field designed to bend the trajectories of incoming charged particles according to their charge and momentum.

About two months ago, while testing the detector with particle beams at CERN, physicists noticed the magnet warming up unexpectedly during operation, a potentially major problem given that it is designed to run at just 1.8 degrees above absolute zero. The problem was confirmed by tests to establish the AMS's space-worthiness at ESTEC, the European Space Agency's research and technology centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. The tests showed that the magnet would consume some 30–40% more liquid-helium coolant than had been calculated in theory, shortening the lifetime of the experiment from between three and four years to less than two.

Advised by engineers that the problem would take some time to solve, the AMS researchers decided to play safe and reinstall the permanent magnet that formed part of the detector when it underwent a ten-day test run on the space shuttle in 1998.

[bystander]

NASA Invites Media to Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Arrival
NASA Media Advisory | M10-111 | 10 Aug 2010

NASA will host a media event at 10:30 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Aug. 26, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the arrival of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). The state-of-the-art device to further our understanding of the universe will launch to the International Space Station during the last scheduled space shuttle flight next year.

The AMS will arrive for processing at Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility at 11 a.m. aboard an Air Force C-5 aircraft. The instrument, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is a particle physics detector constructed, tested and operated by an international team representing 16 countries.
...
The AMS will fly aboard shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission, targeted to launch Feb. 26, 2011. The device will be mounted and operated on the space station. It will use the unique environment of space to advance knowledge of the universe, leading to a better understanding of the universe's origin by searching for antimatter, dark matter, strange matter and measuring cosmic rays. AMS will attempt to answer such fundamental questions of the origin and nature of the universe as, is there antimatter in the universe; what is the exact nature of dark matter; and does strange matter exist. The experiment is expected to remain active for the duration of the station's life.

AMS-02 Mission Home
STS-134 Mission Home
NASA ISS Mission Home

[bystander]

AMS experiment takes off for Kennedy Space Center
CERN Press Release | 19 Aug 2010

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), an experiment that will search for antimatter and dark matter in space, leaves CERN next Tuesday on the next leg of its journey to the International Space Station. The AMS detector is being transported from CERN to Geneva International Airport in preparation for its planned departure from Switzerland on 26 August, when it will be flown to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on board a US Air Force Galaxy transport aircraft.

[neufer]

AMS experiment takes off for Kennedy Space Center
CERN Press Release | 19 Aug 2010

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), an experiment that will search for antimatter and dark matter in space, leaves CERN next Tuesday on the next leg of its journey to the International Space Station. The AMS detector is being transported from CERN to Geneva International Airport in preparation for its planned departure from Switzerland on 26 August, when it will be flown to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on board a US Air Force Galaxy transport aircraft.

• AMS experiment takes off for KFC
  Cosmic Rays produced by the annihilation of dark matter
  .................................
  so ISS will eat them in a box.
  and ISS will eat them with a fox.
  and ISS will eat them in a house.
  and ISS will eat them with a mouse.
  and ISS will eat them here and there.
  say! ISS will eat them ANYWHERE!
  ISS does so like green egg and hams!
  thank you! thank you, sam-i-AMS!

[Beyond]

AMS experiment takes off for Kennedy Space Center
CERN Press Release | 19 Aug 2010

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), an experiment that will search for antimatter and dark matter in space, leaves CERN next Tuesday on the next leg of its journey to the International Space Station. The AMS detector is being transported from CERN to Geneva International Airport in preparation for its planned departure from Switzerland on 26 August, when it will be flown to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on board a US Air Force Galaxy transport aircraft.

• AMS experiment takes off for KFC
  Cosmic Rays produced by the annihilation of dark matter
  .................................
  so ISS will eat them in a box.
  and ISS will eat them with a fox.
  and ISS will eat them in a house.
  and ISS will eat them with a mouse.
  and ISS will eat them here and there.
  say! ISS will eat them ANYWHERE!
  ISS does so like green egg and hams!
  thank you! thank you, sam-i-AMS!

NO-NO, Thats KSC. However, you do wax Strangely Eloquent, as in strange quark and a ferengi named Quark.

[bystander]

Good thing they didn't name it the Kennedy Flight Center.

[bystander]

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer arrives at launch site
European Space Agency | 26 Aug 2010

One of the most complex space scientific instruments ever built, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, escorted by astronauts who will fly with it on the Space Shuttle in February 2011.

The antimatter hunter AMS-02 began the first stage of its voyage to the International Space Station (ISS) from Geneva international airport, in Switzerland. During a ceremony organised by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the experiment was loaded onto the US Air Force Galaxy transport aircraft that carried it to Cape Canaveral. AMS-02 will not only be the largest scientific instrument to be installed on the ISS, but it could also be considered the result of the largest international collaboration for a single experiment in space.

Even before its launch, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has already been hailed as a success with more than a decade of work and cooperation between 56 institutes from 16 different countries. The AMS-02 experiment is led by Nobel Prize Laureate Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Searching for the ‘missing Universe’

AMS-02 will help scientists to understand better the fundamental issues on the origin and structure of the Universe by observing antimatter and ‘dark’ matter. With a magnetic field 4000 times stronger than the magnetic field of Earth, this state-of-the-art particle physics detector will examine directly from space each particle passing through it in a programme that is complementary to that of the Large Hadron Collider.

As a by-product, AMS-02 will gather a lot of other information from cosmic radiation sources on stars and galaxies millions of light years from our home galaxy. Not only astronomers, but also particle physicists, are eagerly waiting for its data.

[bystander]

The AMS detector heads for the International Space Station
CERN | 2011 Apr 27

The AMS particle detector will take off on 29 April 2011 at 21.47 CEST onboard the very last mission of the space Shuttle Endeavour. AMS, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, will then be installed on the International Space Station from where it will explore the Universe for a period of over 10 years. AMS will address some of the most exciting mysteries of modern physics, looking for antimatter and dark matter in space, phenomena that have remained elusive up to now.

In laboratories like CERN1, physicists observe matter and antimatter behaving in an almost identical way. Each matter particle has an equivalent antiparticle, very similar but with opposite charge. When particles of matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate. Matter and antimatter would have been created in equal amounts at the Big Bang, yet today we live in a Universe apparently made entirely of matter. Does nature have a preference for matter over antimatter? One of the main challenges of AMS will be to address this question by searching for single nuclei of antimatter that would signal the existence of large amounts of antimatter elsewhere in the Universe. To achieve this, AMS will track cosmic rays from outer space with unprecedented sensitivity.

“The cosmos is the ultimate laboratory,” said Nobel laureate and AMS Spokesperson Samuel Ting. “From its vantage point in space, AMS will explore such issues as Antimatter, Dark Matter and the origin of Cosmic Rays. However, its most exciting objective is to probe the unknown because whenever new levels of sensitivities are reached in exploring an unchartered realm, exciting and unimagined discoveries may be expected. “

In the same way that telescopes catch the light from the stars to better understand the Universe, AMS is a particle detector that will track incoming charged particles such as protons, electrons and atomic nuclei that constantly bombard our planet. By studying the flux of these cosmic rays with very high precision, AMS will have the sensitivity to identify a single antinucleus among a billion other particles.

“This is a very exciting moment for basic science,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “We expect interesting complementarities between AMS and the LHC. They look at similar questions from different angles, giving us parallel ways of addressing some of the Universe’s mysteries.”

AMS may also bring an important contribution to the search for the mysterious dark matter that would account for about 25% of the total mass-energy balance of the Universe. In particular, if dark matter is composed of supersymmetric particles, AMS could detect it indirectly by recording an anomaly in the flux of cosmic rays.

“Never in the history of science have we been so aware of our ignorance,” said AMS Deputy Spokesperson Roberto Battiston. “Today we know that we do not know anything about what makes up 95% of our Universe”.

Antimatter detector ready for launch
Nature News | Eugenie Samuel Reich | 2011 Apr 28

A heavyweight, and controversial, cosmic-ray detector is set to head for the International Space Station.

A couple of days before lift-off, Mark Sistilli went down to the space-shuttle launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to meet researchers working on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and to sneak a last nervy glimpse of their 7-tonne cosmic-ray detector before the shuttle's cargo doors closed.

"The AMS was tucked in and ready to go," says Sistilli, NASA programme manager for the mission. On Friday 29 April, if all goes to plan, the AMS will leave on board the Endeavour shuttle, bound for the International Space Station (ISS). It is arguably the station's most important scientific payload so far.

The AMS is a cylindrical magnet, which has already flown on a 1998 shuttle flight, surrounded by a suite of new instruments for detecting cosmic rays. It is the result of former NASA administrator Dan Goldin's quest to find meaningful science projects for the ISS, and of Nobel-prize-winning physicist Samuel Ting's unorthodox ideas about antimatter.

The US$2-billion experiment has been sold partly as a search for regions of the Universe containing gas, stars and planets made exclusively of antimatter. This has raised eyebrows among those high-energy and particle physicists who doubt that such regions exist.

Ting, the mission's spokesman, acknowledges the scepticism, but says that there's no such thing as mainstream in physics. "Science doesn't depend on a vote," he says. Leading up to the launch, he and other scientists have also emphasized the unprecedented sensitivity of the AMS to the cosmic rays that rain down on Earth, which should yield more dependable science than the mission's headline might suggest.

Detecting cosmic rays

Alongside detecting any heavy antimatter nuclei — which would be a smoking gun for regions of antimatter in the Universe — the AMS will produce definitive data on the energy, charge and composition of cosmic rays from the Sun and from astrophysical sources such as supernovae and gamma-ray bursts.

"We'll be able to measure cosmic-ray fluxes very precisely," says AMS team member Fernando Barao, at the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics in Lisbon. "The best place to be is space because you don't have Earth's atmosphere that destroys cosmic rays."

Theoretical physicist John Ellis at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, who is not working on the mission, agrees, adding that AMS will be a big advance over previous space-based cosmic-ray detectors, such as the Russian–Italian Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics (PAMELA), launched in 2006.

PAMELA detected positrons from the halo of the Milky Way that may have been a signal of dark-matter particles annihilating there. With 200 times the collecting area of PAMELA, the AMS should be vastly more sensitive to the same signal, if it's real. "It'll be far and away the most detailed measurement of cosmic-ray flux we've been able to get," Ellis says, "it has way more scientific interest than any other experiment on the space station."

That is a crucial part of the experiment's politics. Astronauts' role in scientific discovery helps to maintain public support for the US space programme, says NASA astronaut Michael Massimino. He points to the Hubble Space Telescope, serviced five times by astronauts on shuttles, as a prime example. "The AMS has that potential as well," he says.

Fast-track into space

Astronauts on Endeavour, which will be captained by Mark Kelly — husband of Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman shot in the head at a constituency event in January — will use robotic arms on the shuttle and the ISS to ease the AMS into position. Once operational, the AMS will be controlled from Earth.

Compared to an independent instrument, being on board the space station will increase the AMS's power and data-transfer rates. It will also be easier to fix if something goes wrong. "NASA is very proud that this is on the International Space Station," says Sistilli. "We always hoped we would have science payloads."

Apart from its mission, AMS is also controversial for bypassing the peer review that NASA normally requires of science missions. But Sistilli emphasizes that the project was endorsed by committees convened by the US Department of Energy, which is supplying $50 million of the funding. NASA is providing $85 million, and the remainder comes from a consortium of 16 countries including France, Portugal, China, Taiwan and Spain.

[bystander]

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Additional Resources
Scientific American | George Musser | 2011 Apr 29

[neufer]

[b][i][color=#0000FF][size=150]'We believe this will be the decade of the wimp.'[/size][/color][/i][/b]

---

Has dark matter finally been found? Big news coming
By Clara Moskowitz, Fox News, February 18, 2013

<<BOSTON – Big news in the search for dark matter may be coming in about two weeks, the leader of a space-based particle physics experiment said Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That's when the first paper of results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle collector mounted on the outside of the International Space Station, will be submitted to a scientific journal, said MIT physicist Samuel Ting, AMS principle investigator. Though Ting was coy about just what, exactly, the experiment has found, he said the results bear on the mystery of dark matter, the invisible stuff thought to outnumber regular matter in the universe by a factor of about six to one. "It will not be a minor paper," Ting said, hinting that the findings were important enough that the scientists rewrote the paper 30 times before they were satisfied with it. Still, he said, it represents a "small step" in figuring out what dark matter is, and perhaps not the final answer.

Some physics theories suggest that dark matter is made of WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles), a class of particles that are their own antimatter partner particles. When matter and antimatter partners meet, they annihilate each other, so if two WIMPs collided, they would be destroyed, releasing a pair of daughter particles — an electron and its antimatter counterpart, the positron, in the process.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has the potential to detect the positrons and electrons produced by dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way. The $2 billion machine was installed on the International Space Station in May 2011, and so far, it has detected 25 billion particle events, including about 8 billion electrons and positrons. This first science paper will report how many of each were found, and what their energies are, Ting said. If the experiment detected an abundance of positrons peaking at a certain energy, that could indicate a detection of dark matter, because while electrons are abundant in the universe around us, there are fewer known processes that could give rise to positrons. "The smoking gun signature is a rise and then a dramatic fall" in the number of positrons with respect to energy, because the positrons produced by dark matter annihilation would have a very specific energy, depending on the mass of the WIMPs making up dark matter, said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago who is not involved in the AMS project. "That's the key signature that would arise."

Another telling sign will be the question of whether positrons appear to be coming from one direction in space, or from all around. If they're from dark matter, scientists expect them to be spread evenly through space, but if they're created by some normal astrophysical process, such as a star explosion, then they would originate in a single direction. "There is a lot of stuff that can mimic dark matter," said theoretical physicist Lisa Randall of Harvard University, who is also not involved in the project but said she's eagerly awaiting the AMS results. "In these experiments the question is when do you have antimatter that could be explained by astrophysical sources, and when do you have something that really could be an indication that you have something new?"

Regardless of whether AMS has found dark matter yet, the scientists said they expected the question of dark matter's origin to become clearer soon. In addition to AMS, other experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, and underground dark matter detectors buried around the world, could also make a discovery in the near future. "We believe we're on the threshold of discovery," Turner said. "We believe this will be the decade of the wimp.">>

[neufer]

Space Station Detector Finds Extra Antimatter in Space, Maybe Dark Matter
by Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today, April 3, 2013

[b][color=#0000FF][size=120]From its vantage point about 400 km above Earth on the International Space Station, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer collects data from primordial cosmic rays from space. Credit: NASA[/size][/color][/b]

---

[b][color=#0000FF][size=120]A screenshot from Ting’s presentation at CERN on April 3, 2013. [i]‘It took us 18 years to complete this result,’[/i] Ting said.[/size][/color][/b]

---

<<The first results from the largest and most complex scientific instrument on board the International Space Station has provided tantalizing hints of nature’s best-kept particle secrets, but a definitive signal for dark matter remains elusive. While the AMS has spotted millions of particles of antimatter – with an anomalous spike in positrons — the researchers can’t yet rule out other explanations, such as nearby pulsars.

“These observations show the existence of new physical phenomena,” said AMS principal investigator Samuel Ting,” and whether from a particle physics or astrophysical origin requires more data. Over the coming months, AMS will be able to tell us conclusively whether these positrons are a signal for dark matter, or whether they have some other origin.”

The AMS was brought to the ISS in 2011 during the final flight of space shuttle Endeavour, the penultimate shuttle flight. The $2 billion experiment examines ten thousand cosmic-ray hits every minute, searching for clues into the fundamental nature of matter. During the first 18 months of operation, the AMS collected of 25 billion events. It found an anomalous excess of positrons in the cosmic ray flux — 6.8 million are electrons or their antimatter counterpart, positrons.

The AMS found the ratio of positrons to electrons goes up at energies between 10 and 350 gigaelectronvolts, but Ting and his team said the rise is not sharp enough to conclusively attribute it to dark matter collisions. But they also found that the signal looks the same across all space, which would be expected if the signal was due to dark matter – the mysterious stuff that is thought to hold galaxies together and give the Universe its structure. Additionally, the energies of these positrons suggest they might have been created when particles of dark matter collided and destroyed each other.

The AMS results are consistent with the findings of previous telescopes, like the Fermi and PAMELA gamma-ray instruments, which also saw a similar rise, but Ting said the AMS results are more precise. The results released today do not include the last 3 months of data, which have not yet been processed. “As the most precise measurement of the cosmic ray positron flux to date, these results show clearly the power and capabilities of the AMS detector,” Ting said.

Cosmic rays are charged high-energy particles that permeate space. An excess of antimatter within the cosmic ray flux was first observed around two decades ago. The origin of the excess, however, remains unexplained. One possibility, predicted by a theory known as supersymmetry, is that positrons could be produced when two particles of dark matter collide and annihilate. Ting said that over the coming years, AMS will further refine the measurement’s precision, and clarify the behavior of the positron fraction at energies above 250 GeV.

Despite recording over 30 billion cosmic rays since AMS-2 was installed on the International Space Station in 2011, the findings released today are based on only 10% of the readings the instrument will deliver over its lifetime. Asked how much time he needs to explore the anomalous readings, Ting just said, “Slowly.” However, Ting will reportedly provide an update in July at the International Cosmic Ray Conference.>>

[bystander]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Space Station Detector Finds Extra Antimatter in Space, Maybe Dark Matter
by Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today, April 3, 2013

Two Billion Dollar Cosmic Ray Detector Confirms Possible Signs of Dark Matter
Science NOW | Adrian Cho | 2013 Apr 03

Shining light on elusive dark matter
ESA | Human Spaceflight | DAMA Mission | 2013 Apr 03

Tantalizing Hints of WIMPy Dark Matter
Slate Blogs | Bad Astronomy | 2013 Apr 03

Dark Matter Found? Orbital Experiment Detects Hints
Discovery News | Ian O'Neill | 2013 Apr 03

Spaceborne dark matter hunter sees telltale antimatter
New Scientist | Lisa Grossman | 2013 Apr 03

AMS experiment measures antimatter excess in space
CERN | 2013 Apr 03

First result from the AMS experiment
CERN | 2013 Mar 30