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Faculty of Science
University of Alberta

Angels & Demons: The science revealed by U of A physicist

May 14, 2009

by Brian Murphy

Angels & Demons: The science revealed by U of A physicist

Roger Moore

Edmonton-Roger Moore says Tom Hanks needn't have worried. "The antimatter bomb plot in Angels and Demons is pure science fiction."

Moore, the University of Alberta physicist (not the actor), has some issues with Hanks' new Hollywood film, Angels and Demons. Moore has a personal connection with the movie that includes a plot by bad guys to break into CERN and steal half a gram of antimatter to blow up Rome.

Moore also works at CERN, the huge, underground atom smashing complex in Switzerland, and admits there is some truth to the Angels and Demons script: Moore says, yes, antimatter, the elusive, volatile energy source, exists at CERN. He also says that if evildoers produced a half a gram of antimatter and mixed it with the same amount of matter, the explosion would equal kilotons of TNT.

Big ifs

But Moore wants to separate Hollywood fiction from physics facts because, he says, there are lots of "big ifs" in the movie. One of the "ifs" concerns the amount of antimatter the movie bad guys snatch from CERN.

Matter and antimatter have been around since the Big Bang, the surge of energy that created the universe. So it's plain to see, antimatter can pack a punch. But it's not easy to create antimatter. You need a particle accelerator like CERN's that can send electrons crashing into atoms at near the speed of light.

Physicists at CERN can do that, but does anyone have the time to make the half gram of antimatter the thieves make off with in the movie? "It would take roughly 10 million years to make 0.5 grams of antimatter," said Moore.

Time is definitely a problem and so is storage. How would the forces of evil get the antimatter from CERN to Rome? "You just can't keep antimatter in a bottle," said Moore. "A bottle is made of matter - matter and antimatter, together they go boom!"

Moore certainly isn't worried that the exciting storytelling in Angels & Demons could ever become reality. "CERN is an international organization, all the research is published in open science journals," said Moore. "Even if somebody there wanted to make an antimatter bomb, it's just not practical."

Presenting the facts

Moore and three colleagues from the U of A make up an international team of physicists who want to inform people, not frighten them. Moore says the scientists at CERN want to learn how the universe was created. They want to know what there was before the big bang, before there was a universe.

"Last fall, it was the black hole scare. People worried our particle accelerator would swallow the world," said Moore. "Now we've got Angels & Demons and an antimatter bomb. We just want people to know it's not a real concern."

On Saturday, May 16 at 2 p.m. Moore will deliver a public talk, The Facts and Fiction of Antimatter in Edmonton at the Telus World of Science.

This article originally appeared in the University of Alberta's ExpressNews

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