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Truth and Contradiction in Angels & Demons

Added by viorel on May 29, 2009 | Visited by 8703 | Voted by 54 persons

Those who saw the latest Hollywood thriller based on the best seller of Dan Brown entitled \"Angels and Demons\" probably asked themselves the question whether Vatican can really be annihilated by antimatter that was stolen from a secret laboratory, being produced by the Large Hadron Collider. In reality, throughout the movie, the physicists try to tell us about the existence of antimatter in real life. It is worth mentioning that scientists consider antimatter as something that can be used for other purposes than just massive destruction of things. After the release of the blockbuster, researchers from over 30 colleges, universities and national labs located throughout the United States and Canada are leading public lectures on the topic about antimatter. They communicated about what antimatter represents, what is the Large Hidron Collider and what is interesting about the particle physics.







At the same time researchers tell about the truth behind the movie and the fact that it features quite a few controversial statements from the field of science. Angels and Demons is a movie that highlights the long-lasting disagreements that take place among religion and science. For those who still haven\'t seen the movie it would be interesting to know that there is an ancient secret brotherhood that calls itself Illuminati, which existed for many years but disappeared several centuries ago, reappeared once again and its members decided to kidnap four priests (one of whom is to be elected the next pope) and most importantly they had stolen 0.25 grams of antimatter that was obtained with the help of LHC. The latter was turned on at CERN - the abbreviation stands for the European Organization for Nuclear Research.







Then the stolen antimatter was hidden somewhere in Vatican, world\'s smallest but powerful country. Only Robert Langdon can save Rome, finding the antimatter and stopping it from colliding with matter, which would lead to a catastrophic explosion that could erase, according to the movie, the entire Vatican and a part of Rome. The truth is that 0.25 grams of antimatter is really more than enough to erase from the globe the whole city of Rome. There is a part in the movie where Robert Langdon says that Vatican City could be \"destroyed by light\". In this case the main character of the movie is somewhat correct in his affirmation: there is a distinction between a particle and its antiparticle and that is that the two feature opposite electric charges. When they collide, these opposite electric charges annihilate into 2 photons. Taking into consideration the formula e=mc^2, 0.25 grams of antimatter includes 45 trillion joules, which has the energy of not less than 10 kilotons of TNT, which in its turn is about 14 kilotons of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.







It seems that the energy from normal matter was not taken into consideration, since in reality 1/4 of antimatter has twice the amount of 5 kilotons that were mentioned in \"Angels and Demons\". Another truth is that such a small amount of antimatter requires an enormous task. At present there\'s just one single producer of antimatter, Fermilab, which generates about 2 nanograms of antiprotons per year. Taking into consideration such a speed, scientists would need 100 million years to create 1/4 gram of antimatter. In order to create antimatter, particles should be accelerated at a speed close to the speed of light and then they need to smash into each other. Such a difficult process needs a huge amount of energy.







Due to the fact that to create antimatter requires much more energy than it actually unleashes during annihilation, it poses no real threat, thus it can\'t be used as a source of energy. Besides, in the movie the antimatter is stolen, being placed in a canister, and transported in another location, which is actually not possible. The truth is that antimatter cannot be transported real life.







There\'s more truth and fiction in Angels and Demons.



The movie shows CERN as some kind of secret science laboratory. In reality it is a well-known scientific organization with 9,000 scientists from 20 countries. In addition, the CERN laboratory in the movie is found 100 meters underground, in the same high-radiation tunnel where the Large Hidron Collider is located. The real offices are located in safe buildings, constructed above the ground.







Here are a few other discrepancies: in the book the director the CERN is a bald scientist in a wheelchair. In reality the director is an ordinary German, who can walk and has hair. In addition, the book describes scientists working at CERN flying to their workplace in a futuristic X-33 plane, while real scientists go to work by coach.



It is obvious that people who worked on Angels and Demons wanted to make a science-fiction movie that would be in Hollywood tradition. Despite the discrepancies and myths mentioned in the book and the movie, the story might still wake up the interest to physics (especially in particle physics) among a lot of people, who will probably try to find the truth about antimatter after watching the movie.