Sorry for the delay, I was busy with a move (literal, not computer lingo for changing some website server or something, I'm really hauling my $#!+ across the country to *DUH DUH DUUUUH!* New Jersey, home of the shark attack.
Texas to Jersey is a bit of a press on the nerves, so please excuse my absence. Finally, it is time to write up part two.
Chemistry does not work that way. Physics does not work that way, and all of SCIENCE does not work that way! E(=mc^2 all times gamma and friends) gads! ... give it a minute, you'll get it, and think I'm really dumb for making that joke... This is like hearing about how a subatomic particle could make a black hole (see below), it is the worst kind of bad science.
*sigh* okay. So I'm going overboard maybe? maybe not.
My copy of the book is still in shipping to my new home, so bear with me. As I recall, after doing as much tampering as possible with crime scenes (no wonders Interpol is happy to go after the man in Davinci Code! He's already been an international criminal!), the wheel chair guy, who is done up like a super villain by the author in a manner so obvious that you know right from the start that it would be too cliche for him to be a villain, brings Langdon down to the underground lab of a scientist-cum-priest. The stiff they met in the Eureka-esque place in part one of this review.
Oh, and on the way (or was it afterwards? I forget, and don't have my copy in front of me... [yes, I did buy it. I don't think it is fair to judge a book I didn't buy. The author deserves the money for getting published, I will still grant that that is a major feat {and yes, I stack brackets.}]) the dead guy's daughter, another scientist, is shown. She has all the hallmarks of the token hottie.
So they get to the basement-cum-accelerator, there is a short bit of dialogue that shows that somehow, Langdon is a genius in like 20 fields of literature, history and culture, and yet never learned the first thing about science. Apparently he didn't take his required science classes in High School of Undergrad. Then comes the worst part:
SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN'T FIGURED THAT OUT ALREADY.
Antimatter.
Really? The big breakthrough is antimatter?
I mean, sure, there is a hell of a lot in the containers (which have an amazing power system that allows their batteries to last EXACTLY 24 hours), for subatomic matter, but still. It seems rather scifi-inspired. Then again, Star Trek used "red matter" so I will support the book first and scifi second for now.
...More to come...
....Black holes used to be called black stars. If you watch the original Star Trek, they actually call them that. this is because that is exactly what they are, stars. They just happen to be giant balls of fire heavy enough to suck in photon emissions. They are not the kind of quantum singularity thought up for media hype in loosely circular equations every time they turn a supercollider on. That is all media bull. No legitimate physicist gives such things credence. The equations don't go to infinity and zero for a quantum singularity, they do that because they are ignoring one or more rules of physics needed to keep our equations on the right track.
"...in a quantum finish" - race results announcement
"No Fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Proffessor H. J. Farnsworth
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Arg, you can tell how sleepy I was writing this review segment.
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