Having effortlessly transitioned into acting, Fouzia's debut film swiftly captured global acclaim, earning accolades at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival
Speaking as the 8.5-tonne Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) machine was being loaded into a huge U.S. Air Force cargo plane at Geneva airport, they said the 20-year research programme would bring a huge step forward in understanding the cosmos.
“If there is an anti-universe, perhaps out there beyond the edge of our universe, our space-based detector may well be able to bring us signs of its existence,” U.S. scientist and Nobel laureate Samuel Ting told a news conference.
“The cosmos is the ultimate laboratory.”
Ting, a 73-year-old professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is principal investigator for the project, which involves some 500 scientists and technicians round the globe.
Cosmologists say matter and anti-matter — which annihilate each other on contact, releasing energy — must have been made in equal quantities by the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. But the universe that emerged is overwhelmingly made up of matter.
Scientists hope the AMS will find clues to what happened to anti-matter, and whether there are other places that are almost entirely anti-matter, existing on the edge of the known universe and a mirror image of it and everything in it, including life.
The primary purpose of the detector, which has a super-powered magnet at its core, is to hunt another quarry — the mysterious “dark”, or invisible, matter that alongside dark energy makes up nearly 95 per cent of the known universe.
Scientists also hope the AMS will provide detailed knowledge of energy-charged cosmic rays — an unexplored realm of research that can only be carried out in space.
But it may also answer questions not yet asked.
“It could turn up many surprises,” said Roberto Battiston, an Italian physicist on the team. “Never have we been so aware of our ignorance — we know that we know nothing about what makes up all but 5 per cent of our universe.”
John Ellis, a British theoretical physicist described by Ting as the intellectual godfather of the project, said his aim had always been “to think of things for the experimenters to look for and hope they find something else”.
The U.S. Super Galaxy aircraft is transporting the AMS to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida for further tests.
In February it will be loaded onto a space shuttle and delivered to the space station on a flight specially approved by the U.S. Congress after heavy lobbying by Ting and colleagues.
The AMS has been developed by an international team working at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research near Geneva, whose Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator is also aiming to solve mysteries of the cosmos.
The AMS project’s costs, currently estimated at around $2 billion, are being covered by 16 countries, mostly in Europe but also including the United States and China.
Having effortlessly transitioned into acting, Fouzia's debut film swiftly captured global acclaim, earning accolades at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival
Parag, who reached his 50 off 34 balls, cracked 25 runs with three fours and two sixes off the final over bowled by star South Africa paceman Anrich Nortje
Fans were left scratching their heads when Mumbai opted to take Bumrah out of the attack after he bowled the fourth over
With the help of modern equipment, manicured golf courses and elite athletes the scores are getting lower and the game becoming even more captivating
With 10 matches remaining Arsenal lead a three-way title race having won eight successive games
Three separate Israeli strikes on Wednesday, including on a health centre in the border village of Habariyeh, killed 11 civilians
Netanyahu tries to soothe a rift with Biden as he plans to send a government delegation to Washington after earlier cancelling the trip
Among the 24 horses Japan has sent to Dubai is impressive Riyadh Dirt Sprint winner Remake who eyes a Middle East double