Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Experiment a Triumph of International Cooperation

If all goes as planned, the American space shuttle Endeavour will lift off within the next few months in what will possibly be the final flight of the space shuttle program. Fittingly, this last mission will carry one of the most important scientific experiments in the history of the space program: the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS).

Except for the Large Hadron Collider, the AMS is probably the greatest physics experiment in human history. After being flown into orbit by Endeavour and attached to the International Space Station, it will spend years gathering data on cosmic rays, antimatter, and the mysterious "dark matter" which makes up the majority of mass in the universe and about which we know next to nothing. The AMS will help answer fundamental questions about theoretical physics, and will hopefully shed light on the nature of dark matter and what happened to the primordial antimatter which, according to our current theoretical models, should have been created at the moment of the Big Bang.

The AMS is not only an amazing scientific experiment that could revolutionize our understanding of the universe and its origin, but it also represents a great achievement in international cooperation. Scientists from sixteen different nations worked together to devise and construct the experiment: China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United States. Such international cooperation is a testament to the way in which the scientific enterprise can unite the human family. It is especially nice to see scientists from China and Taiwan, so often divided by politics, working together on such a glorious project. The overall head of the project is Chinese-American physicist Dr. Samuel Ting, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Physics.

The project has been in the works since 1995, and has cost well over a billion dollars. But for a time after the 2003 Columbia disaster, it appeared for a time as though all the money and effort had been in vain, as NASA decided against flying an "unnecessary" shuttle mission to transport the AMS to the International Space Station (ISS). Luckily, in a rare example of politicians placing a proper value on scientific enterprises, wiser heads prevailed in Congress and NASA was directed to send the AMS to the ISS.

Both the Space Shuttle Program and the ISS have been expensive distractions from what should be the process course of long-term human space exploration. The shuttle program, lest we forget, has also cost the lives of fourteen brave men and women. But by making the AMS experiment possible, and therefore helping to advance the collective knowledge of humanity, both programs go a significant way towards redeeming themselves.

The AMS represents much of what is good in the human spirit, and is a project in the best traditions of Global Citizenship. Is it not better for us to use our intellectual powers and financial resources to solve fundamental questions about the nature of the universe and our place in it, rather than turning them towards developing ever more powerful nuclear weapons? Is it not better for our most brilliant scientific minds to work together on collective scientific enterprises, rather than devising means to destroy one another's countries?

Best wishes to the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour as they embark on their final mission, and to the men and women behind the AMS experiment as they strive to advance the knowledge of humanity.