Where do cosmic elements come from? A team of young Chinese researchers has helped provide an answer – by sifting through 250 billion particles from space. A team from the Shandong Institute of Advanced Technology, part of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) experiment on the International Space Station led by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Samuel C.C. Ting, has helped deliver unprecedented precise measurements of energy spectra for five cosmic-ray nuclei: phosphorus, chlorine, argon, potassium, and calcium.

The results were recently published in the leading physics journal Physical Review Letters, established in 1958 in the United States. The achievement was made possible through the Shandong team's analysis of massive amounts of cosmic-ray data. Over the past six years, the researchers screened about 250 billion cosmic ray data entries and identified one million target nuclei.

The findings provide important data support for exploring the origins and evolution of cosmic elements. With upgrades to the AMS detector underway, researchers will continue studying rarer elements in the future.

Researchers from the Shandong Institute of Advanced Technology discuss with international partners. [Photo/Dazhong News]

As a key participant, the Shandong Institute of Advanced Technology operates the AMS Global Data Center, which stores all data collected by the detector since it was sent into space in 2011. The institute's AMS team is also one of the youngest research teams in the collaboration, with an average age of less than 35.