<p>When Tom Hanks’ character, Robert Langdon, hunts down the secret Illuminati brotherhood in the film of Dan Brown’s bestseller Angels & Demons, the cameras follow him tracking down stolen antimatter in a secret laboratory at Cern, the home of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research and the infamous Large Hadron Collider. <br /><br />But for Swansea University professor Mike Charlton, the techy setting of Angels & Demons is just his own office. Every few weeks, Charlton, a senior research fellow in physics, heads to Cern to carry out experiments and develop his research into the complex world of particle theory. <br /><br />It’s a massive collaboration, Charlton says, of around 40 scientists from institutions ranging from the University of California, Berkeley to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil – but antimatter? I’m already a little lost. Luckily, he provides a potted physics lesson. Antimatter, I’m told, was formed in the Big Bang, when for every particle of matter created, a matching “antiparticle” was born, identical in mass but with the opposite electric charge. For the first few moments of its life the universe was balanced, but just a short time later the antimatter disappeared.<br /><br />When Brown’s plot arrives at Cern, a stolen gram of antimatter is sneaked out of the Geneva science base with the aim of being used as a devastating weapon. In reality, Charlton explains, that’s impossible. The Alpha research project is currently working on finding a way to collect and then retain antimatter – moving it around just isn’t possible right now.<br /><br />“We’re currently researching how to make and then store antimatter in order to research and study its properties,” he says. “That means making a very special bottle for it – since antimatter will annihilate on contact with matter – and it’s hardly portable. It is connected to a huge power supply, because we need an enormous magnetic field to make and hold the antimatter, for one thing. Even if you could move that, our storage bottle is huge – about the size of five filing cabinets, and 10 times as heavy – so it would take a day to move it only 10 yards. Plus, the contents are incredibly fragile.”<br /><br />Charlton also takes issue with the way Brown’s novel suggests that physicists can create antimatter in amounts that could cause a destructive explosion. It’s impossible, says Charlton. “If you wanted to make an explosion, you’d use materials that are ready at hand – which antimatter really isn’t,” he explains. “We’re working on it, but the process means producing each atom individually, using an expensive machine which, every minute or so, can only make a few million anti-nuclei – the heavy parts we need to create the atoms of antimatter.”<br /><br />“To make an explosion, you’d need a massive amount more than that. And it would require so much power that it's well beyond the realms of reality.”<br /></p>
<p>When Tom Hanks’ character, Robert Langdon, hunts down the secret Illuminati brotherhood in the film of Dan Brown’s bestseller Angels & Demons, the cameras follow him tracking down stolen antimatter in a secret laboratory at Cern, the home of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research and the infamous Large Hadron Collider. <br /><br />But for Swansea University professor Mike Charlton, the techy setting of Angels & Demons is just his own office. Every few weeks, Charlton, a senior research fellow in physics, heads to Cern to carry out experiments and develop his research into the complex world of particle theory. <br /><br />It’s a massive collaboration, Charlton says, of around 40 scientists from institutions ranging from the University of California, Berkeley to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil – but antimatter? I’m already a little lost. Luckily, he provides a potted physics lesson. Antimatter, I’m told, was formed in the Big Bang, when for every particle of matter created, a matching “antiparticle” was born, identical in mass but with the opposite electric charge. For the first few moments of its life the universe was balanced, but just a short time later the antimatter disappeared.<br /><br />When Brown’s plot arrives at Cern, a stolen gram of antimatter is sneaked out of the Geneva science base with the aim of being used as a devastating weapon. In reality, Charlton explains, that’s impossible. The Alpha research project is currently working on finding a way to collect and then retain antimatter – moving it around just isn’t possible right now.<br /><br />“We’re currently researching how to make and then store antimatter in order to research and study its properties,” he says. “That means making a very special bottle for it – since antimatter will annihilate on contact with matter – and it’s hardly portable. It is connected to a huge power supply, because we need an enormous magnetic field to make and hold the antimatter, for one thing. Even if you could move that, our storage bottle is huge – about the size of five filing cabinets, and 10 times as heavy – so it would take a day to move it only 10 yards. Plus, the contents are incredibly fragile.”<br /><br />Charlton also takes issue with the way Brown’s novel suggests that physicists can create antimatter in amounts that could cause a destructive explosion. It’s impossible, says Charlton. “If you wanted to make an explosion, you’d use materials that are ready at hand – which antimatter really isn’t,” he explains. “We’re working on it, but the process means producing each atom individually, using an expensive machine which, every minute or so, can only make a few million anti-nuclei – the heavy parts we need to create the atoms of antimatter.”<br /><br />“To make an explosion, you’d need a massive amount more than that. And it would require so much power that it's well beyond the realms of reality.”<br /></p>
