EAST LANSING, Mich. — Elusive in nature but the power behind many a science fiction plot, antimatter materializes again in the motion picture adaptation of Dan Brown’s novel “Angels and Demons,” opening in theaters Friday.
Antimatter isn’t fiction. Nor is the place from where the Tom Hanks/Ron Howard movie’s conspirators steal the stuff, to settle an ancient grudge against the Vatican. One might forgive the casual viewer for believing it a danger to humanity.
Not so, says Michigan State University physicist Raymond Brock. Brock is an experimental high-energy physicist who studies the properties of fundamental matter and energy. Noted for his captivating science lectures, Brock will treat the public to a discussion of antimatter following a showing of the movie May 20 in Lansing.
"The line between reality and fiction in Dan Brown's books and films is blurry, yet the locations and concepts are sometimes close enough to real life to require his readers to work hard in order to isolate the factual," Brock said. "Antimatter and the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, are very real, but the collection and manipulation of antimatter, while a great story, falls on the fiction side of that line."
All good trekkies know that antimatter reaction powers interstellar vessels, most famously the starship Enterprise – itself featured in a current blockbuster film. Antimatter also is the unspeakably powerful substance behind the apparent bomb plot in “Angels and Demons.” It’s a compelling device for fiction, but the reality is very different – and equally as interesting, Brock said.
But first, some myth busting is in order. Brock has led and participated in particle physics experiments at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and at CERN, for decades.
"The Large Hadron Collider, the CERN particle accelerator in the story, is not really a factory for producing antimatter, although it will inefficiently do so,” he said. “Even so, while the quarter-gram of antimatter in “Angels and Demons” would have the energy content of a battlefield nuclear weapon – the factual part – it would take 200 million years or so to accumulate that much even from Fermilab, near Chicago, which is much more efficient for that purpose.
“Incidentally,” Brock said, “there is no conceivable way to store this many antiprotons, much less make that storage portable or to weaponize it."
Brock’s presentation, “Antimatter: Angel or Demon?” is set for 8:45 p.m. May 20 at the NCG Cinema in Lansing. It will follow the 6:20 p.m. showing of “Angels and Demons.”
From the story of the prediction and discovery of antimatter, to the continuing mysteries of physics, Brock will speak on those and the research that MSU’s physicists and engineers are conducting at CERN and elsewhere.
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