Antimatter detector heads off

A £1.3 BILLION machine that will jump-start the search for antimatter and other phenomena was loaded onto a US air rorce plane yesterday for the final leg of its journey on Earth before it catches the last scheduled shuttle flight into space today.

The 7.5 tonne Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is too big to fit into a 747 jumbo jet, so was squeezed on board a C-5M Super Galaxy for its trip from Geneva to Florida.

Professor Sam Ting, said the detector would be docked to the International Space Station to collect evidence of antimatter, dark matter and other elusive elements over the next 20 years.