Last week, Sony Pictures Entertainment released Angels & Demons, a major motion picture based on Dan Brown’s best-selling novel. Starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard, the film focuses on an apparent plot to destroy the Vatican using antimatter made at the Large Hadron Collider and stolen from the European particle physics laboratory CERN.
Through a series of public lectures, scientists are using this opportunity to tell the world about the real science of antimatter, the Large Hadron Collider and the excitement of particle physics research. Across the United States and Canada, scientists from more than 30 colleges, universities and national laboratories will host public lectures as part of the “Angels & Demons Lecture Nights: The Science Revealed” event.
The Universities of Manitoba and Winnipeg are sponsoring a free, public lecture that explores the science behind the movie. How much is real and how much is artistic license? The lecture will take place on Saturday, May 23, 2009, at 2:00 pm, in the Manitoba Museum Auditorium, 190 Rupert Avenue. Dr. Jeff Martin of the University of Winnipeg and Drs. Gerald Gwinner and Kumar Sharma of the University of Manitoba will talk about the reality of antimatter and the physics behind the blockbuster movie.
Canadian participation in the Large Hadron Collider project is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the National Research Council of Canada. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics.
More information about the lecture series, including a list of lectures and local contacts, is available at: www.uslhc.us/Angels_Demons.
For more information on the LHC, visit CERN’s Web site at: www.cern.ch