Culture
“Particle Fever” Returns to Athena Cinema
< < Back to particle-fever-returns-athena-cinemaThe Athena Cinema will offer an encore screening of Particle Fever on Tuesday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m.
Nuclear physicists David Ingram and Justin Frantz will introduce the film and provide a short question and answer period following the screening.
“After we sold out the event at the 41st Annual Film Fest and had to turn dozens of patrons away, we decided to bring the speakers and movie back by demand for a special one night only encore,” said Athens Cinema Operations Director Alexandra Kamody.
Ingram is a nuclear experimentalist whose research includes growing new electronic and optical materials and studying their properties. He is the past director of the John E. Edwards Accelerator Lab, which is part of the Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics.
Before the film, Ingram will talk about the basic science of the “smallest” particles, as well as the scales by which energy and matter are studied at many levels by physicists.
“One thing I find fascinating about the movie Particle Fever is the theme of what has transpired during the 50 years since Peter Higgs made a prediction. What we’re seeing here is history in the making and how real research is being done,” Ingram said. “I’m delighted that we can bring the movie back a second time to the big screen.”
Particle Fever is a documentary by physicist-turned-filmmaker, Mark Levinson. With the help of film editor, Walter Murch, Levinson follows six brilliant scientists during the launch of the Large Hadron Collider, marking the start of the biggest experiment in the history of the planet.
As they seek the keys to unlocking the very building blocks of physics, the six protagonists join more than 10,000 other scientists in pursuit of a single goal — to recreate conditions that existed just moments after the Big Bang and find the Higgs boson, the particle that would explain the origins of all matter.
The Athena Cinema is one of 20 nonprofit cinemas nationwide selected for the Science on Screen program, in which movies are paired with a short discussion with a scientist or technology expert. Turnout was so strong during last April’s Particle Fever, planning for an encore one-time only screening began, Kamody said.
The event is free and open to the public. Admission is sponsored by Arts for Ohio and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ohio University. For information, visit www.athenacinema.com.