When Dan Brown’s hero arrives in Switzerland, he goes straight to the laboratories of CERN.  Robert Langdon is escorted into the giant facility that houses some of the brightest physicists in the world, as well as experiments creating something incredible called antimatter.  This seems on par with the bat-cave, where unbelievable gadgets are created for fighting super villains. 

Antimatter soon becomes the main focus of Robert Langdon’s adventure; it’s described as an amazingly powerful explosive which must be kept isolated from all forms of matter (including air!) lest it explode like a nuclear bomb. 

Yet because of antimatter’s amazing energy properties, this same substance could also be used for good, replacing all polluting sources of energy.

Surely something so helpful yet volatile could not be based on fact?  Could such a place as CERN really exist, with world-renown physicists all working on projects of which few of us are aware?