E is for energy

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

E is for energy

""Within a matter of years, modern man will be forced to accept what is now unthinkable: our minds can generate energy capable of transforming physical matter . . . Particles react to our thoughts . . . which means our thoughts have the power to change the world."

Langdon smiled softly.

"What my research has brought me to believe is this," Katherine said. "God is very real - a mental energy that pervades everything. And we, as human beings, have been created in that image -"

"I'm sorry?" Langdon interrupted. "Created in the image of . . . mental energy?"

"Exactly. Our physical bodies have evolved over the ages, but it was our minds that were created in the image of God. We've been reading the Bible too literally. We learn that God created us in his image, but it's not our physical bodies that resemble God, it's our minds.""

- from The Lost Symbol, chapter 133

D for Delta-One and Delta-Two

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

D is for Delta-One and Delta-Two

"Delta-One reentered the tent and addressed his two fellow soldiers. "Time for a flyby." 

Both men nodded. The taller of them, Delta-Two, opened a laptop computer and turned it on. Positioning himself in front of the screen, Delta-Two placed his hand a mechanical joystick and gave it a short jerk. A thousand meters away, hidden deep within the building, a surveillance robot the size of a mosquito received his transmission and sprang into life."

- from Deception Point, chapter 2

A small surveillance robot which can be used for espionage, as Dan Brown mentions in Deception Point

C for CERN

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

C is for CERN

The CERN building

"The world's largest scientific research facility - Switzerland's Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN) - recently succeeded in producing the first particles of antimatter. Antimatter is identical to physical matter except that it is composed of particles whose electric charges are opposite to those found in normal matter.

Antimatter is the most powerful energy source known to man. It releases energy with 100 per cent efficiency (nuclear fission is 1.5 per cent efficient). Antimatter creates no pollution or radiation, and a droplet could power New York City for a full day.

There is, however, one catch . . .

Antimatter is highly unstable. It ignites when it comes in contact with absolutely anything . . . even air. A single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb - the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Until now, antimatter has been created only in very small amounts (a few atoms at a time). But CERN has now broken ground on its new Antiproton Decelerator - an advanced antimatter production facility that promises to create antimatter in much larger quantities."

- from Angels and Demons, FACT page

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN

Atoms are sent whizzing around underground tubes like this in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

The tubes comprising the Large Hadron Collider lie 175 metres under the ground and have a circumference of 27km. It is located near Geneva under the Swiss-French border

B for Bernini

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

B is for Bernini

"The note indicated that the famous Bernini sculpture, The Ecstasy of St Teresa, shortly after its unveiling, had been moved from its original location inside the Vatican . . . Pope Urban VIII had rejected The Ecstasy of St Teresa as too sexually explicit for the Vatican. He had banished it to some obscure chapel across town."

- from Angels and Demons, chapter 84

Bernini's The Ecstasy of St Teresa

A for Ambigram

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

A is for Ambigram

The word 'Illuminati' in this ambigram can be read right-side up as well as upside down

"Although accounts of the Illuminati emblem were legendary in modern symbology, no academic had ever actually seen it. Ancient documents described the symbol as an ambigram - ambi meaning 'both' - signifying it was legible both ways. And although ambigrams were common in symbology - swastikas, yin yang, Jewish stars, simple crosses - the idea that a word could be crafted into an ambigram seemed utterly impossible. Modern symbologists had tried for years to forge the word 'Illuminati' into a perfectly symmetrical style, but they had failed miserably. Most academics had now decided the symbol's existence was a myth."

- from Angels and Demons, chapter 9

Another ambigram featuring the words 'earth', 'air', 'fire' and 'water'