Space shuttle Endeavor blasted off this morning on its last mission, and the second to last mission of the space shuttle program. Over the last thirty years there have been 133 launches using five different shuttles, and, as we all know, two of them ended in tragedy.
On this journey, Endeavor is delivering equipment to the International Space Station for a particle physics experiment known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer - a $2 billion project designed to spend the next decade or so searching the universe for antimatter and dark matter. If successful, it will resolve two of the biggest outstanding questions of the Big Bang theory: 1) whether the universe consists of equal parts matter and antimatter, and 2) whether the predicted invisible dark matter does exist.
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| The AMS being loaded onto Endeavor |
The principal investigator (lead scientist for the experiment) is MIT professor Samuel C. C. Ting, who shared the Nobel physics prize in 1976 for his discovery of a particle containing the "charm quark", solidifying the theory that particles like protons and neutrons consist of even smaller particles called quarks.
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| Samuel C. C. Ting and two astronauts (Commander Mark Kelly, husband of Gabrielle Gifford, on the right) |
During my freshman year at MIT, I got a job doing research at the cyclotron lab (basically a giant magnet used to accelerate particles.) I mostly assisted one of the Ph.D. students, Bryan, in the experiments for his thesis but also got the chance to build and run a couple of my own. Bryan and I worked for professor Ulrich Becker, but the head of the lab was Samuel C. C. Ting.
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| Professor Becker showing the MIT cyclotron |
A few months into the job, I was invited to a meeting that professor Ting would also attend. The meeting consisted of different groups within the lab presenting the progress they had made, and I wouldn't need to say anything, but being a young physics geek, I was very excited and a bit nervous to meet a Nobel prize winner in person and was hoping to at least be able to introduce myself.
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| The cyclotron building with a J denoting the J-particle which led to Ting's Nobel prize |
I sat through the whole meeting not able to understand a thing, partly because much of it was over my head but mainly because I kept repeating a single line in my head: "Professor Ting, it's a pleasure meeting you." After the meeting I carefully approached professor Ting, but before I could blurt out my line Bryan introduced me as one of the new undergraduate students in the lab. Professor Ting turned around with a big smile and said "Nice to meet you - please call me Sammy!"
