Brandon Nelson’s Comps Presentation

After the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were made in equal amounts, but today only regular matter is seen. Where did all the antimatter go? Estimates of the measured mass in our galaxy and others suggest that there is not enough mass to hold the fast spinning galaxy together, thus there must be more matter in the galaxy that we cannot see. This unseeable ”dark” matter must be massive and more abundant than regular matter to explain the observed structure of galaxies and the universe, but what exactly is this dark matter? These are the two central questions that the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) has set out to find answers to by measuring energetic cosmic rays coming from deep in space. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a multibillion dollar international collaboration with several cosmic-ray detector systems that precisely extract information on the identity and energies from the thousands of cosmic rays that impact every square meter of the Earth every second.  Cosmic rays are the most energetic particles found in the universe.  Studying their characteristics allows scientists to better understand both the exotic and fundamental phenomena that produce them and in doing so come to a better understanding of the universe itself. This report summarizes the necessary physics and theoretical background for the study of cosmic rays and then dives into the details behind how the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer detects and extracts information from cosmic rays.  Finally, the published results from the AMS project are presented and analyzed with respect to the original scientific questions of “Where is the antimatter and what exactly is dark matter?”