Posted on Jun 07, 2011 09:59:48 AM | John Entwistle | 1 Comments
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On day 4 of the STS-134 mission, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, or AMS, was installed successfully on the outside of the International Space Station. Mission Specialists Andrew Feustel and Roberto Vittori used the space shuttle’s robotic arm to extract it from Endeavour's payload bay. The AMS will search for clues about the origin of dark matter and the existence of antimatter and other unusual matter.
This story is an exciting update directly relating to NASA Now: Search for Antimatter. In this program, Trent Martin, project manager for the AMS experiment at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, explains how NASA is trying to answer one of the fundamental questions in modern physics: "What happened to the primordial antimatter?"
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On Sep 14, 2011 10:38:12 AM
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Dark matter and dark energy are really more easily understood if you go back to relativity. Space-time is elastic. When objects get relatively shorter in the direction of motion they do not lose the infinite set of mathematical points from end to end. Rather, as hard to grasp as this is those "singularities" are compressed. They can stretch as well. Once the event at T=0 referred to as the big bang occurs space expands. Distances change relative to a given frame of reference but the absolute distance between any two points is the same. The absolute distance can be thought of as the cardinality of the infinite set of points between those to points. As they recede from each other they stretch the entire set of points between them. Space eventually wants to return to its zero state where it is neither compressed or stretched. This is how you get both dark matter and dark energy and why you don't detect WIMPS or need MACHOs to affect spacial curvature on a universal scale. Rotate an individual singularity (point) and it stretches to a dipole string. Add enough rotation and it becomes stable and does not snap back. Add rotation on other axis and this string looks like a particle. From there you get spacial curvature. When two of these dipoles rotate sufficiently close you get a force (electromagnetic). The rotation also creates curvature in space-time that results in what we know as gravity.
Dark matter and dark energy are really more easily understood if you go back to relativity. Space-time is elastic. When objects get relatively shorter in the direction of motion they do not lose the infinite set of mathematical points from end to end. Rather, as hard to grasp as this is those "singularities" are compressed. They can stretch as well. Once the event at T=0 referred to as the big bang occurs space expands. Distances change relative to a given frame of reference but the absolute distance between any two points is the same. The absolute distance can be thought of as the cardinality of the infinite set of points between those to points. As they recede from each other they stretch the entire set of points between them. Space eventually wants to return to its zero state where it is neither compressed or stretched. This is how you get both dark matter and dark energy and why you don't detect WIMPS or need MACHOs to affect spacial curvature on a universal scale.
Rotate an individual singularity (point) and it stretches to a dipole string. Add enough rotation and it becomes stable and does not snap back. Add rotation on other axis and this string looks like a particle.
From there you get spacial curvature. When two of these dipoles rotate sufficiently close you get a force (electromagnetic).
The rotation also creates curvature in space-time that results in what we know as gravity.