Review: Angels and Demons

18 May 2009


Entertaining. Definitely entertaining.

On Tuesday May 5th, I found myself doing something I have not done for years: playing hooky from work to watch a movie at the local cinema. And, yup, it was fun.

I was one of the lucky few from CERN, chosen to see the Swiss avant-premiere of "Angels & Demons" alongside a group of curious and inquisitive journalists. Well, it wasn't all luck. I had to earn my ticket by helping out with the visit of Ron Howard (producer), Tom Hanks and Ayalet Zurer (actors) last month to ATLAS. Having spent a full day explaining to journalists why it would take more than a billion years to accumulate a gram of anti-matter (and why ATLAS is not the place to do it), it was perhaps a suiting reward.

The event started at 11 a.m. with a screening of the movie. ATLAS members will be happy to see our detector in its full glory featured in the early minutes of the film. And perhaps amused to find out that our control room has been moved down next to the detector, with only a glass window separating the two. I hope our shifts will be short!

I certainly do not want to spoil anything for the readers by revealing the plot. Suffice it to say that the film is exciting and very well done. The science is exaggerated, as we all expected, but it is not necessarily false, and that is nice to see. And us physicists don't come out looking too bad. How could we, when represented by the lovely, bright, and energetic Dr. Vittoria Vetra?

In the end, of course, the scientists save the world, well at least the Vatican, but we do not know if they found the Higgs. I guess that is left as an exercise for us. We just have to hope that "those Heavy Ion guys don't mess up."

A Q&A session was held at the Globe, following the screening, so that journalists could ask us when and why we want to blow up the Vatican. Rolf Landua and other expert anti-matter and LHC physicists were on hand to reassure them that our intentions are honorable (and that we couldn't even blow up a Communion wafer with our current stock of anti-matter).

One journalist had noted the laughter from the CERN physicists at the line quoted above on the "Heavy Ion guys." More importantly, there were some very pertinent questions and subsequent discussion concerning our work at CERN. Is the physics of the movie possible? Why not? Could the LHC produce anti-matter? How is anti-matter related to the Higgs? What about black holes? But, the topic that received perhaps the most interest was that of the "God Particle." I guess we all owe Leon Lederman for creating that somewhat controversial phrase; it certainly spurs discussion.

Following the Q&A, the journalists were given much appreciated tours of the LHC detectors, as well as a good supply of literature, to help spread the good word of our work here at CERN.

ATLAS physicists should note that a lot of information has been made available on the CERN Public web site:

http://cern.ch/public/en/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

Even a well-educated physicist can benefit from preparing for the types of questions that will be coming not only from the media, but also from our friends and family when they see the film.

Angels & Demons is not only a very entertaining film, but it promises once more to put a spotlight on the physics of the LHC. I would encourage everyone to take advantage of this opportunity to grab the attention of young people and to generate interest in our field. If you have the time and a target audience (school, club, etc.), images, videos, and a PowerPoint template have been made available at:

http://atlas.ch/angels

Give a talk. Opportunities like this do not happen often!

It has been more than 20 years since Ghostbusters gave us the line "Back off, I'm a scientist". Now, we have "Get back to work and change the world". I suggest we do just that.

 

 

 

Steve Goldfarb

University of Michigan