What is the universe made of?

Ever wonder what exactly the universe is made out of? Well in February of next year NASA is going to launch an experiment to try and answer this question. The article "A Costly Quest for the Dark Heart of the Cosmos" talks about NASA's new experiment 16 years in the making. According to astronomers there is more to the composition of the universe than just atoms and molecules,protons and electrons, stars and galaxies. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment costs 1.5 billion dollars and is suppose to discover what this "Dark Matter" is made up of. Scientists believe "knowing this information could be useful in ways nobody could dream". According to physics, anti-matter which annihilates ordinary matter upon contact, should have been created during the Big Bang. Discovering this antimatter could mean discovering an anti-star or anti-galaxy. The Spectrometer is an eight ton device made up of magnets, wires iron, aluminum silicon and electronics, and will be sent to the space station on the space shuttle Endeavour. This project is funded and spearheaded by Dr. Ting and his army of 600 scientists from 16 countries. This article caught my attention because I think anything about space is really interesting. If a break-through such as this is successful, it could effect the technology we use day in and day out. Because of the mysteriousness of the universe, I think it is important for mankind to know exactly what the universe involves. To think that there are millions of starts and other galaxies blows my mind in that anything could be out there. What I do wonder about though is how long it will take before we know the results and whether or not anything was found. I remember when NASA sent a robot to Mars it took years before anyone really heard about what was found. I feel like the government hides discoveries such as these from the public until they are "ready" to tell everyone. Besides that I think it is really interesting that there could be undiscovered particles out there that we could possibly use.

Mike Allen

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/science/space/17dark.html?pagewanted=1&ref=science