The science behind FlashForward
September 18, 2009 | 11:17 am
Jack Davenport stars as Lloyd Simcoe in ABC's FlashForward. In the novel, Canadian particle physicist Simcoe is the head of the ALICE experiment at CERN. (ABC/Bob D'Amico)
Particle physics might make an appearance in one of this fall’s most-talked-about new television shows.
On the surface, ABC Studios’ FlashForward seems to have little to do with physics. It’s main characters are FBI agents investigating a mysterious global event that causes everyone on the planet to black out for just over two minutes, simultaneously getting a glimpse of their lives six months into the future. But physics and physicists are at the heart of Robert J. Sawyer’s science fiction novel Flashforward, on which the show is based.
In the novel, the ALICE experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider provides the setting for the event that triggers the worldwide “flash forward.” The main characters are scientists and engineers working on the experiment at CERN, including Canadian-born physicist Lloyd Simcoe. The story—written by Sawyer in 1999 but set in 2009—touches on several of today’s hot topics in particle physics, including the search for the Higgs boson, neutrino physics, and an LHC startup.
For more on the science behind the novel, check out this video interview with Berkeley Lab physicist Peter Jacobs, Simcoe’s real-life counterpart. Jacobs separates some of the Flashforward science fiction from science fact, explaining what the ALICE experiment will really study, what life is like on a large international physics experiment and why the Higgs boson won’t be found instantly once the real-life LHC is switched on later this year.
Will particle physics end up starring in the television adaptation of Flashforward? ABC is closely guarding its secrets, but a character named Lloyd Simcoe, played by actor Jack Davenport, will appear in the first season. Tune in to ABC next Thursday, September 24 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern to watch the first episode, or check out the first 15 minutes now at ABC.com.
Tune in to symmetry next week for an interview with author Robert J. Sawyer, and more on the science behind FlashForward.
Katie Yurkewicz
Posted in Uncategorized |
4 Comments »
September 18th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Thanks for the comments in the video, Peter Jacobs. However, the title of the book is FLASHFORWARD, not FAST FORWARD, and despite what you say about “in the novel working with ALICE is depicted as a few people sitting around …,” that’s just not true.
The novel says, “Lloyd was director of the collaborative group of almost a thousand physicists using the ALICE (‘A Large Ion Collider Experiment’) detector” [Tor paperback, p. 13, i.e., the third page of the first chapter], and the book vividly shows the large, international, collaborative nature of those working on projects at CERN, as well as making quite clear that it took more than a decade to build the LHC and years to plan each experiment.
September 18th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Thanks for the comment, Robert. We’ll send it on to Peter and the people who did the video. By the way, I think the description you have of SNO at the beginning of Hominids is one of the most evocative and interesting literary descriptions of a large science experiment that I have read.
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:18 am
[...] a drama series based on Robert J. Sawyer’s science-fiction novel of the same name. While the details of the television series are being closely guarded, nuclear and particle physics is at the heart of the novel. Sawyer’s novel kicks off at CERN, [...]
October 9th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
While the book looks incredibly interesting , the TV series is just vacuous and boring … as of episode 2 I really don’t care the whys and wherefores … it just reminds me of Lost, which is also very very boring.
Succinct script writng and filming seems to have gone out the window lately as the Channel owners need to extract every last coin out of we who watch so …stretch it out …then repeat it again and again and again…
regards
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