Answer: It is common to ask what benefit can be drawn from science. In general, one can only state that there is nothing like ''useless'' science. Whether it is history, biology or medicine - our society does benefit from all of them and trying to comparing the value of one field of science against another is not useful. We discuss the question "Why Fundamental Research?" in a dedicated section.

To be more specific: What about particle physics? What is its use, not in the distant future, but today? Please look at the section "What's in there for me?" for the answers.

Answer: In the movie, a quarter gram of antimatter is stolen from CERN and used as a bomb to threaten Vatican. Even though it does not look like very much, antimatter annihilates when it gets into contact with matte (e.g. air) according to Einstein's famous equation, E=mc², and consequently releases a large amount of energy. If one could really produce a quater gram of antimmater and store it in a suitable container, it would truely be a very powerful explosive, approximately comparable to the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

CERN does produce antimatter, but in very tiny amounts - roughly one billionth of a gram per year. Storing antimatter is extremely complicated and requires huge apparatus and large amounts of energy for very little amounts. Hence, in the real world there is no way to either produce substantial amounts of antimatter to be used for a bomb or to to store it in a container.

Book and movie describe several aspects of CERN - some of them are true, others are a result of the imagination of author Dan Brown and entirely fiction. CERN informs on the website angelsanddemons.cern.ch

Answer: CERN uses huge technical apparatuses to discover the smallest particles of matter. To some people, this appears to be very complex and occasionally causes fear beyond reason.

Moreover, CERN is sometimes found in literature or movies (e.g. Angels & Demons), enriched by fictive aspects, which imply a threat that does not exist in reality.

CERN takes these issues very seriously and deals in detail with topics like antimatter or black holes. There is a huge number of arguments which can be produced telling that there is no serious danger arising from CERN.

But even without going into technical details, we can look at this simple argument: Numerous CERN scientists live, together with their families, close to the laboratory, many of them within the LHC accelerator ring. One might argue that scientists can be cranky, but nobody would risk the lives of his kids for work.