Thursday, April 9, 2009

Angels & Demons

In the novel “Angels & Demons” by Dan Brown, he discusses many technologies produced or created by CERN. These include the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and an in depth discussion on antimatter and its uses in modern society. CERN posted a page clarifying many of the practicalities that were used in the novel. It was stated that the energy efficiency of antimatter was entirely impractical “It depends on what you mean by efficient. If you start from two equal quantities m/2 of matter and m/2 of antimatter, then the energy output is, of course, exactly E=mc2. Mass is converted into energy with 100% efficiency. But that is not the point: how much effort do you have to put in to get m/2 grams of antimatter? Well, theoretically E=mc2 because half of the energy will become normal matter. So you gain nothing. “ proving that the idea that Vittoria came up with was complete hog-wash. Another thing proved incorrect was the amount that was created, it was stated in the book that a quarter of a gram was created, CERN dictates that to create anything even remotely that size would take billions of years. The relative size and description, minus the fact you cannot walk beside it, was indeed correct. The idea behind anitmatter is indeed the complete oposite of regular matter, it dose produce a “poof” of light when it touches matter, but the idea that you could capture the energy and use it for a practical use is inaccurate.






The web page for Q&A on the tecnologies of Angels & Demons posted by CERN- http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

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