Jinan, July 7 (Xinhua) -- Scientists are expected to have a "decisive outcome" on search for the source of dark matter by 2024 after analyzing the huge amount of data on cosmic particles, said Nobel Prize winner Samuel Ting Saturday.

Ting, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976 for discovering the J meson nuclear particle, made the remarks at a press conference held in Shandong University in east China.

Ting leads the team that gathers particle data from Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) which was installed in international space station in 2011.

AMS, which can help probe antimatter and dark matter, is composed of a magnet and eight detectors that collect information about the particles that travel through the magnet in the fraction of a second, according to NASA website.

So far, AMS has gathered more than 120 billion cosmic particles, with energy reaching a trillion electron volt, Ting said at the press conference.

The growing data should give a "decisive outcome" to questions around antimatter, and the source of dark matter, he said.

Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that is thought to account for around 80 percent of the matter in the universe and about a quarter of its total energy density. It has not been observed directly.

"For now, the most important is to steadily collect more information," Ting said.

Source: Xinhuanet

Edited by: Xie Tingting