William Atkins
Thursday, 12 February 2009 19:41
Science -
Energy
Page 2 of 3
The CERN press release further stated,
“Understanding why nature prefers matter to antimatter is the main thrust of CERN’s antimatter research. When our Universe was born some 13.7 billion years ago in the Big Bang, matter and antimatter would have been created in equal quantities, and as Dan Brown correctly points out, when matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate, leaving only energy behind."
"One of the great mysteries of the Universe today is how enough matter has survived to provide the building blocks for stars, planets, and even us.”
And,
“Antimatter has practical uses too. The medical imaging technique of PET scanning uses antimatter to help doctors visualize the functioning of the human body. The scanners used owe much to techniques developed for particle physics research."
"In the future, antimatter might also be used to treat cancer. Preliminary experiments carried out at CERN have shown that antimatter particle beams could be very effective at destroying cancer cells.”
In the movie
Angels & Demons, Tom Hanks returns in his role as Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon. He
“once again finds that forces with ancient roots are willing to stop at nothing, even murder, to advance their goals.”
The suspense-thriller novel
Angels & Demons, based on the book by U.S. author Dan Brown, involves the search by Robert Langdon to discover the mysteries surrounding a secret society called the Illuminati.
In the movie Langdon has uncovered a plot to destroy the Catholic Church’s Vatican City using destructive antimatter (which is where CERN enters the plot of the movie).
For more information on the Sony movie "Angels & Demons", check out page three.
