Sanford Underground Laboratory director Dr. Jose Alonso and the particle physics community worldwide will be taking a walk down the red carpet - figuratively, at least.

At 7 p.m. Tuesday, the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and the Sanford Underground Laboratory will sponsor a lecture at the Elks Theatre, one in a series to tell the world about the real science of antimatter, the Large Hadron Collider and particle physics research.

The event is free and open to the public. A second lecture will be held Thursday at 7 p.m. at Meier Hall on the Black Hills State University campus in Spearfish.

In the new movie "Angels & Demons," part of the film focuses on an apparent plot to destroy the Vatican using antimatter made at the Large Hadron Collider and stolen from the European particle physics laboratory CERN.

Through a series of public lectures - such as the one at the Elks - scientists are using the opportunity to tell the world about the real science of antimatter, the Large Hadron Collider and the excitement of particle physics research.

Alonso promises a unique, personal lecture. After he retired from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Alonso helped assemble the ATLAS Detector, one of four large experiments set to start up with the Large Hadron Collider.

Nationwide and in Canada, scientists from more than 30 colleges, universities and national laboratories will host public lectures as part of the "Angels & Demons Lecture Nights: The Science Revealed" event.

On the Web: www.uslhc.us/Angels_Demons