… takes all the fun out of Angels and Demons:
In this followup movie to The Da Vinci Code, Hanks hears a dire warning that the half-gram of stolen antimatter will cause “a cataclysmic event” if it comes into contact with matter. “They take this in a special canister off to Rome with the intent of blowing up Vatican city,” [Roger] Moore said.
“To put it a little bit into perspective, if we took all the antimatter that we make in one hour at CERN and we dumped it into this cup of tea here, the result would be an increase of about 1 C. So we don’t even make enough antimatter to make a good cup of tea, so you really shouldn’t be worried about anybody blowing anything up with this.”
The movie’s premise makes for exciting science fiction, but fiction it certainly is, Moore said. Scientists are nowhere near capable of making that much antimatter. “It would take us about 10 million years to make half a gram of antimatter, so unless you are planning to live this long, you don’t have to worry just yet,” he said. “The other problem is, even if you could … grab all this antimatter that we’re making, we can’t store it.”
June 14th, 2009 at 12:43PM
Associate U of A science professor Roger Moore gives a talk on Saturday tied to the new movie Angels and Demons, lending insight into the "strange and exciting world of particle physics."
It’s cool that this guy is named after the James Bond actor.
It sucks that he has to piss on everybody’s parade.
June 14th, 2009 at 2:23PM
> "even if you could … grab all this antimatter that we’re making, we can’t store it."
Of course you can store it. Just put it in a magnetic containment field. They do it on Star Trek all the time.