The establishment of a Taiwan-based ground control center for an advanced particle physics detector in space is a win-win development, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday at the formal opening of the facility. A new generation of researchers can be trained, while Taiwanese scientists continue to contribute to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-02 (AMS-02) project that is key to the future of the human race, Ma said.
The Payload Operations Control Center located in Taiwan, one of only two in the world, began operations on Sunday to help monitor the particle physics detector in space. The device is designed to detect charged particles in cosmic rays to find anti-matter and dark matter in the hope of answering questions about the “big bang” and the formation of the universe.
The military-run Chung-shan Institute of Science and Technology in Taoyuan County, where the center is located, has sent six experts to the US and Switzerland for training, while the Ministry of National Defense has also trained a batch of servicemen to participate in the program, the president said. In the future, other young scientists who are interested in the field would be recruited to the project, Ma said.
Photo: AFP
The AMS project, headquartered at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, cost about US$100 billion. Ma said no single country can afford to shoulder that kind of price tag, but the research could become the basis for many fields of applied sciences in a few decades.
“It’s not being done for immediate benefit, but for future generations,” Ma said.
In order for the human race to advance, these types of scientific achievements must be passed on to coming generations, he said.
The AMS-02 project was launched by the US Department of Energy in 1999 in collaboration with 15 other countries, including Taiwan. It is scheduled to run for 15 years.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
Prosecutors today declined to say who was questioned regarding alleged forgery on petitions to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, after Chinese-language media earlier reported that members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Youth League were brought in for questioning. The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau confirmed that two people had been questioned, but did not disclose any further information about the ongoing investigation. KMT Youth League members Lee Hsiao-liang (李孝亮) and Liu Szu-yin (劉思吟) — who are leading the effort to recall DPP caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and Legislator Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) — both posted on Facebook saying: “I
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), who led efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), was released on bail of NT$80,000 today amid outcry over his decision to wear a Nazi armband to questioning the night before. Sung arrived at the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning in a recall petition forgery case last night wearing a red armband bearing a swastika, carrying a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and giving a Nazi salute. Sung left the building at 1:15am without the armband and covering the book with his coat. Lee said today that this is a serious
A mountain blaze that broke out yesterday morning in Yangmingshan National Park was put out after five hours, following multi agency efforts involving dozens of fire trucks and helicopter water drops. The fire might have been sparked by an air quality sensor operated by the National Center for High-Performance Computing, one of the national-level laboratories under the National Applied Research Laboratories, Yangmingshan National Park Headquarters said. The Taipei City Fire Department said the fire, which broke out at about 11am yesterday near the mountainous Xiaoyoukeng (小油坑) Recreation Area was extinguished at 4:32pm. It had initially dispatched 72 personnel in four command vehicles, 16
RSS