The Physics of Angels & Demons and Beyond...

The Physics of Angels & Demons and Beyond... Antimatter Bombs, Mini Black Holes, and Extra Dimensions Presented by Experimental Particle Physicist Michael Tuts Tuesday, May 26, 7-8 p.m. PicNic Market & Café 2665 Broadway (between 101st and 102nd Street) New York Special Prix Fixe Dinner offered for Café Science attendees. Call for dinner reservations: PicNic Café 212-222-8222 The recent movie Angels & Demons, based on the novel by Dan Brown, features an antimatter-matter bomb made from antimatter produced and stolen from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. Is that science fact or fiction? We will use that as a jumping off point to talk about what really goes on at CERN. Parts of the movie were actually filmed at CERN and later this year the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will start colliding protons at the highest energies ever produced in the laboratory. Antimatter will certainly be created in those collisions, as well as many other possible exciting phenomena such as mini black holes, or evidence for the existence of extra space dimensions (beyond the three we are all familiar with), or the discovery of new particles that may form the dark matter of the universe. We will talk about it in the context of one of the large experiments called ATLAS, which incidentally can be seen in the movie, of which I am a member (together with 2500 physicists from over 35 countries). The ATLAS and other detectors, together with LHC accelerator, is one of the largest scientific experiments ever undertaken, and the results may change our view of the universe we live in. http://alumni.columbia.edu/learn/s3_6a.html#angels_demons