Reported by: LAN Zilong
Photographed by: FENG Jian
Translated by: REN Shuman
Edited by: Jennifer Taylor
October 13, Professor Samuel Ting, the 1976 Noble Laureate in Physics, Chairman of the Science and Technology Advisory Committee of the Major National Science and Technology Infrastructure Project—HIT “Space Environment Simulation Facilities” visited HIT again, and made an academic presentation entitled “The Latest Scientific Research of AMS-02 on the International Space Station”.
HIT Vice President HAN Jiecai presided over the presentation and delivered a speech welcoming Samuel Ting and his delegation to HIT. Visiting HIT for the second time, Professor Ting expressed his happiness and hoped that he would have more opportunities to visit HIT in order to communicate with HIT faculty and students.
Since the 1990s, Professor Ting has lead and developed the AMS Experiment, which is the first and hitherto the only authorized large-scale experiment on the International Space Station. AMS (The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) was launched on the Space Shuttle Endeavour on May 16, 2011, and the AMS was installed on May 19, 2011, early in the morning. 4 minutes later, it began working to search for antimatter and dark matter.
In the presentation, Professor Ting vividly described the main assumptions, composition of the experimental apparatus, and participating countries and research institutions of the AMS. He also mentioned the meaning and purpose, the launch and operation of the detector of AMS. Hundreds of scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the European Organization for Nuclear Research Centre and other world famous universities and research institutions worked together to make the AMS a reality. The collaboration includes China, the U.S., Russia, Finland, France, Germany and many other countries. Such a large experimental group is not only for researching and developing AMS, which is accurate to one trillion electron volts, but also for completing up to 10 years’ of data analysis. To this end, in 2008, the US Senate and House of Representatives passed a law for the experiment, and previous US President George W. Bush signed to add a flight to send AMS to the International Space Station to conduct the experiment.
Professor Ting said: During the first 16 months, the AMS-02 collected 25 billion particles on the ISS. Laboratory personnel found more strong evidence of the existence of antimatter and dark matter in the universe, and they thought that the antimatter universe might be discovered by humans through analysis of these particles. He also mentioned that after 2 years’ study, he recently published some research results of the AMS-02, such as the electron energy spectrum in the cosmic rays. He said: “The most important goal of AMS is to explore the unknown, naturally existing, but the beyond imagination, never discovered phenomenon.” So, his last slide of his presentation read: “Science is what the majority is subordinate to the minority. Only when the minority overturns the majority’s concept can science move forward. Thus, expert review is not absolutely useful. Because experts rely on the existing knowledge, but the development of science is to overthrow the existing knowledge.”
In the Question and Answer session, a student asked: “Besides finding the dark matter and antimatter, can AMS project provides us more information about the origin of the universe?” Professor Ting replied: “Finding the dark matter is to know the invisible 99% of the mass of the universe, and finding the antimatter is to verify if the Big Bang happened. Because according to the Big Bang Theory, after the Big Bang, matter and antimatter have the same amount. All of these can be used to verify the Big Bang Theory, to deepen our understanding of the universe and the origin of the universe. Because the AMS is quite advanced, another student asked: “Does AMS has practical applications in other fields?” Regarding this, Professor Ting took the X-ray as an example. The time between the discovery of X-rays and application in practice had an interval of 30 years. There is a large gap between theory and practice, and it takes years to find practical applications.
When asked if the AMS experiment will overturn existing theories in physics, Professor Ting answered: “It might happen, and the observed phenomena have already overturned some of the existing theories in physics. Experiments can overturn theories, but theories can’t overthrow experiments. You should remember that you can’t study in order to overthrow a theory. We can’t be biased.”
The students in attendance also asked about methods of learning physics. Professor Ting affectionately talked about the first time when he saw Newton's second law equation "F = ma". He spent the whole week thinking about the meaning of “m” and the connection between the equation and the natural phenomena. He said that if you can research thoroughly the “quality” which “m” stands for, then you will win this year’s Noble Prize. The Nobel laureate in physics this year won the prize owing to breakthrough research results of the “quality”. In this way, he told the students that the learning of physics can’t be just the reciting of the formulas and solving examination questions to pass the tests. It is a must to think carefully and find the link between formulas and natural phenomena.
During the Q & A session, a student mentioned that he had seen a newspaper which said that Professor Ting had found 400,000 electrons in the collected particles, Professor Ting interrupted him immediately: “I never said 400,000, I just said 6.8 million.” He also showed the slide with the number on it. “I am responsible for my words.” It clearly revealed the rigor of the scholar.
Professor Samuel Ting making the presentation
The presentation
The Question and Answer session
