USA Today has a nice article pointing out that the MacGuffin driving the plot of ANGELS & DEMONS – an anti-matter bomb in – exists only in science fiction. Rather than simply deriding Hollywood for its fiction, the article uses the film as an opportunity to interview an expert from CERN, the real-life lab that plays a fictionalized role in the movie (and in the book on whic the film is based).
Rolf Landua, a CERT scientist who served as an advisor for ANGELS & DEMONS, says there is no danger of reality imitating art:
Even if […] scientists crossed over to the dark side and decided to make a bomb, “it would take billions of years to accumulate enough anti-matter for an explosion,” says Landua, who led a 10-year experiment that trapped a billionth of a gram’s worth of antimatter hydrogen atoms.
The folks at CERN actually seem more concerned about how they and their facility, located on the border between France and Switzerland, will come across on film.
For its part, CERN embraced the wacky science fiction of Angels & Demons when it was first published, carefully explaining on its website that it lacks a fleet of private jets or antimatter bombs.
[…]
“It’s entertainment, but we’re all tantalized,” Landua says. “A lot of physicists will be pleased to see the lab in the movie.”