The AMS particle detector on the Worldwide Area Station
NASA
An 11-year-long survey of the particles and antiparticles close to our solar is unlocking our photo voltaic system’s historical past – and elevating new mysteries in regards to the particles themselves.
“It’s like when you walk into a dark room and see many, many new things,” says Samuel Ting on the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how.
Area is stuffed with energetic particles, which journey in bursts referred to as cosmic rays. When a cosmic ray enters the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) detector on the Worldwide Area Station (ISS), magnetic fields separate its particles primarily based on their electrical cost, after which the detector measures their plenty and energies. This separation is essential as a result of it helps determine variations within the behaviour of a particle and its antiparticle, which is equivalent besides with an reverse cost, says Ting.
He and his colleagues on the AMS Collaboration analysed greater than 11 years of AMS information and located, surprisingly, that we don’t know as a lot about particle behaviour as we thought. As an illustration, the survey revealed traits within the variety of particles over time, and within the methods several types of particles interacted with one another. There are greater than 600 theoretical fashions that would probably clarify every of those traits – however none concurrently clarify each findings, says Ting.
And the survey’s outcomes might matter for greater than single particles. Researchers have been capturing cosmic rays with completely different detectors for greater than a century as a result of their altering properties might function information of the photo voltaic system’s historical past, says Jamie Rankin at Princeton College. However we by no means earlier than had such an in depth understanding of how the photo voltaic cycle impacts the rays, she says.
That’s as a result of 11 years is the size of 1 photo voltaic cycle, so gathering information for that entire interval captures all of the repeating variations within the magnetic subject of the solar, which change the behaviour of cosmic rays. Such an in depth survey might grow to be a key that unlocks a approach to make use of cosmic rays for “solar system archaeology”, she says.
However the place cosmic rays themselves come from remains to be mysterious, says Gavin Rowell on the College of Adelaide in Australia. “The particles AMS measures are essentially coming from outside the solar system,” he says. The quantity of element current within the new evaluation, together with how completely different particle nuclei inside cosmic rays behave, might assist researchers zero in on a extra definitive idea of cosmic rays’ origin.
And there are different unanswered cosmic questions. “We don’t see antimatter in our world, so the fact that the AMS can observe antiprotons, to me, that’s a great mystery,” says Ian Low at Northwestern College in Illinois. The origin of these antiparticles could also be related to mysterious darkish matter or in any other case transcend our present greatest understanding of the cosmos, he says.
Ting and his colleagues at the moment are engaged on upgrading the AMS detector to have the ability to detect much more particles – and coordinating with the astronauts who will assist set up it.
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