One morning I was leaving the office of the director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), then Carlos Rubbia when I realized that the person waiting to be attended to was Samuel Chao Chung Ting luminary of physical science, Nobel Prize winner in 1976 for having discovered the J/Psi particle, key to understanding the subatomic mosaic that is part of the ladder of the universe, whose rungs link the infinitely small with the vastness of the cosmos.
His look gave rise to greet him. I asked him if we could chat later about his most expensive toy, AMS, a fine particle detector in outer space. He kindly referred me to his secretary, who had remained in the waiting room. The etiquette indicates to communicate, first, in French; failing that, in English.
“Professor Ting can meet you in Boston…in two weeks.”
He is the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor at Massachusetts Tech, so the appointment had to take place on the other side of the Atlantic. It’s worth remembering that the label also means that one should not refer to a Nobel laureate as “doctor” or “sir,” but as “professor,” the highest distinction for those who generate genuine, useful knowledge. There are those who receive honorary degrees and still prefer to continue being called professors.
“I will hardly be able to go,” I replied, “I don’t have the means…”.
She looked at me understandingly; she should check with Professor Ting. In the afternoon I received the call from her.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “Professor Ting’s jet will take you from Cointrin airport to Logan.”
“Superb!” I replied.
Samuel Ting was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his Chinese parents attended college. “When I was very young, they took me to his homeland,” he told me, “during the war years I grew up in Chongqing, Nanjing, and Taipei. For a moment I thought we would end up in Mao’s prisons.”
He returned to Michigan, graduated with a degree in physics-mathematics, and immediately completed a Ph.D. in physics. His talent, particularly for mathematics, coupled with his gentle, dour way of presenting his arguments, have enabled him to carry out far-reaching experiments and discoveries. However, he has sometimes had to do things that border on the extravagant and yet are far from futile.
Thus, in order to put a subatomic particle detector into orbit for the first time, the construction of which had suffered delays due to its technological complexity, Samuel Ting got NASA to delay the launch of the shuttle until AMS-2 was ready to be taken to orbit. the International Space Station.
“This is a device whose purpose is to carry out precise measurements of the cosmic rays that travel through the universe, learn more about antimatter and tear the veil of dark matter,” he said.
The initials mean, in Spanish, Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. The technological challenge, as I said, was extreme, since it involved designing, among other things, a superconducting magnet that would work in space, bringing it back to Earth, improving it, and sending the new prototype into space. Since 1998, the two versions of AMS have captured and studied about 200 billion cosmic events, including various families of electrons and positrons, as well as neutrinos that accompany the lightning strikes Samuel Ting mentioned; likewise, they have recognized and examined very high energy isotopes of Helium, primary rays of Neon, Magnesium, Silicon, and other exotic entities. Undoubtedly, the work led by Samuel Ting has decisively modified what we knew about the universe.
I asked him to tell me about the antimatter detected by him and his group.
“We found a considerable number of positrons,” he replied, “which aroused enormous interest and speculation in the scientific community. Three models were proposed for his study: one assumes that they are the product of the annihilation of dark matter; the second one reconstructs the acceleration phenomenon of this class of particles that reach very high energies in astrophysical objects. A third model looks at the production of such antiparticles when cosmic ray nuclei interact with interstellar gas.”
His contributions have been transcendental, both for high energy physics and for understanding the nature and functioning of the universe. One example is the enormous international collaboration (55 institutions from 16 countries involved) that come together in AMS, whose headquarters are located inside the Johnson Space Center, in the Houston, Texas area.
What consequences did the discovery of the J/Psi particle entail?
“It seems to me that, above all, having consolidated the quark concept as something belonging to experimental reality, not only to the field of theory”, he asserted.
The predictions indicated that, if they exist, quarks should naturally occur in pairs. In the early 1970s the three pairs in the case of luminous matter were not known, but discovering J/Psi increased confidence in finding the full picture, as it did years later.
“Its peculiarity lies in the fact that it unites two elementary particles, that is, a charm quark and its antiparticle. And since we are talking about quarks, it is a hadron, although it is not completely so, rather it belongs to the family of mesons, in its case formed, as I have said, by a quark and an antiquark in equal parts.” he said, and then added:
“Another characteristic that draws attention due to its usefulness in scientific experimentation is that very few ways have been found in which J/Psi decays (it transforms spontaneously), which is why it is used in large-scale experiments, among them ATLAS and CMS, at CERN, as a kind of reliable calibrator”.
Giovanni Lamann, leader of the Italian group on this experiment, showed me AMS-1 a few days after Houston-based NASA returned it to CERN in Geneva. We couldn’t get very close, because the electromagnetic radiation that he brought from space was still very strong and would have been able to stop our hearts.
Today’s particle hunters, like Lamanna, speak with enormous gratitude about how much they have learned from Professor Samuel Ting. Undoubtedly, the deep space travelers will do the same tomorrow, because, as the Nobel winner stated, “it is essential to know what the bowels of the cosmos are made of in order to make accurate navigation charts if we want to penetrate the deep universe.” ”.
