In 1994 Dan Goldin, then the administrator of NASA, was on the look out for sexy scientific ideas. In particular, he needed something that would endear the International Space Station - a merger of America's earlier space station plans with those of Russia - to scientific sceptics unimpressed by the experimental opportunities it offered. Roald Sagdeev, the former director of a major Soviet space research institute, mentioned to Goldin that Samuel Ting, a Nobel prizewinning particle physicist, was toying with ideas for a space-borne magnet that would sift antimatter from the stream of particles from beyond the stars. "He said, 'Okay, where is this guy? I want to see him immediately'," recalls Sagdeev.
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