Largest particle physics detector heads to space to study universe and its origin

It is physics and not God that’s responsible for the creation of the universe, said Stephen Hawking. Now, to discover this, and unravel other great mysteries of the universe, largest space-based particle physics detector has been created. Dubbed the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02), the detector slated to fly to the International Space Station in February is being built by 56 institutions in 16 countries and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer once up there will study the universe and its origins by looking in for dark matter and antimatter and also measure the composition of cosmic rays. The detector which gathers roughly seven gigabytes of data per second would be attached to the outside of the space station.

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The Spectrometer with eight individual detectors is doughnut-shaped magnet in the core which measure about a meter diameter. The magnet is used to attract particles, which are the read for their trajectory, mass, velocity, speed, and energy. The Spectrometer fitted with GPS for accurate position and orientation uses over 650 microprocessors to transform the signals from the detector to the computers on the ground for analysis.

Via: TechnologyReview