Plot summary
Lloyd Simcoe, a 45-year-old Canadian particle physicist, oversees a run of the Large Hadron Collider. He works with his fiancée Michiko Kamura, who has a daughter, Tamiko. The experiment unexpectedly brings about a vision of a plausible future in which the characters are twenty years older. The consequences include the death of Tamiko as an out-of-control vehicle plows into her school. No recording devices in the world function in the present during the event. Citing the absence of any human awareness during that time, this is interpreted as evidence of the observer effect in quantum theory.
The deaths of several characters (the ones who see nothing) are forecast by the flashforward. This includes Lloyd's friend and fellow researcher Theo Procopides, who learns of a prediction that he will be killed. The story begins to take on the features of a murder mystery, as Theo attempts to prevent his own murder. As time goes by it becomes clear that the events of the future are not predestined. Some people, including Theo's brother Dimitrios, commit suicide after becoming depressed by visions of their own dismal futures. Other characters rush to make these futures a reality. Jake Horowitz from CERN sees himself participating in his first sexual relationship.
At CERN, less than two months after the original flashforward, the scientists plan a repeat of the run, but this time warning the world of the exact time, so that preparations can be made. However, no flashforward occurs, and the LHC instead finds the Higgs boson - the intended result of the first experiment. Soon after, the flashforward is found to be the result of neutrino pulses coincident with events at the collider. With the quark star remnant of supernova 1987A randomly emitting neutrinos when it experiences a starquake, an early warning system is set up on a satellite to ascertain the time of the next possible flashforward. Unbeknownst to him, Lloyd is put on a list by a billionaire interested in immortality.
The next flashforward is engineered for the same date experienced in the characters' visions. By this time, Theo has evaded his murderer, Lloyd has broken up with Michiko and Jake is happily married to a woman named Carly Tompkins as predicted by the flashforward. All the people in the world sit / lie down but most of them do not see anything. Lloyd becomes one of the few people to experience another flashforward and sees himself travelling through the galaxy billions of years in the future, using an artificial body supplied by immortality researchers. The philanthropist approaches Lloyd and offers to prolong his life but Lloyd does not wish to accept this without his current wife Doreen. When he changes the future by refusing, it is implied that the treatment will be offered to Theo. Meanwhile, Theo contacts Michiko, acting on romantic feelings he has had for twenty years.
TV adaptation
The FlashForward television series based loosely on the novel aired on ABC between September 24, 2009, and May 27, 2010. It differs from the novel by following non-scientists, including lead characters FBI Special Agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), Special Agent Demetri Noh (John Cho), and an FBI team investigating the Flashforward. The adaptation also changes the blackout time from under two minutes to two minutes and seventeen seconds, as well as the flashforward moving consciousness six months forward, not twenty-one years; time progresses normally during the event, and security cameras capture footage of people blacked out for the full-time period. A character named Lloyd Simcoe does appear. However, he only partly resembles the character in the novel.
The story was also changed from taking place primarily in Geneva, Switzerland, (at and around the CERN facility), to the United States, primarily Los Angeles, California. Also, the flashforward event was portrayed as a terrorist attack, as opposed to the result of unforeseen circumstances.
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions and bosons. There are three generations of fermions, although ordinary matter is made only from the first fermion generation. The first generation consists of up and down quarks which form protons and neutrons, and electrons and electron neutrinos. The three fundamental interactions known to be mediated by bosons are electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and the strong interaction.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a suburb of Geneva, on the France–Switzerland border. It comprises 23 member states. Israel, admitted in 2013, is the only non-European full member. CERN is an official United Nations General Assembly observer.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories, as well as more than 100 countries. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.
In particle physics, the W and Z bosons are vector bosons that are together known as the weak bosons or more generally as the intermediate vector bosons. These elementary particles mediate the weak interaction; the respective symbols are
W+
,
W−
, and
Z0
. The
W±
bosons have either a positive or negative electric charge of 1 elementary charge and are each other's antiparticles. The
Z0
boson is electrically neutral and is its own antiparticle. The three particles each have a spin of 1. The
W±
bosons have a magnetic moment, but the
Z0
has none. All three of these particles are very short-lived, with a half-life of about 3×10−25 s. Their experimental discovery was pivotal in establishing what is now called the Standard Model of particle physics.
ATLAS is the largest general-purpose particle detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of the unprecedented energy available at the LHC and observe phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not observable using earlier lower-energy accelerators. ATLAS was one of the two LHC experiments involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012. It was also designed to search for evidence of theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model.
The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed. It was built at CERN, a multi-national centre for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland.
The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider is an upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider, operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), located at the French-Swiss border near Geneva. From 2011 to 2020, the project was led by Lucio Rossi. In 2020, the lead role was taken up by Oliver Brüning.
The timeline of particle physics lists the sequence of particle physics theories and discoveries in chronological order. The most modern developments follow the scientific development of the discipline of particle physics.
ZZ dibosons are rare pairs of Z bosons. They were first observed by the experiments at the Large Electron–Positron Collider. The first observation in a hadron collider was made by the scientists of DØ collaboration at Fermilab.
Particle accelerators in popular culture appear in popular science books, fictional literature, feature films, TV series and other media which include particle accelerators as part of their content. Particle physics, fictional or scientific, is an inherent part of this topic.
Joseph Incandela is an American particle physicist, a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and currently based at CERN, where he spent two years as the spokesperson for the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.
Guido Tonelli is an Italian particle physicist who was involved with the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. He is a professor of General Physics at the University of Pisa (Italy) and a CERN visiting scientist.
Sir Tejinder Singh Virdee,, is a Kenyan-born British experimental particle physicist and Professor of Physics at Imperial College London. He is best known for originating the concept of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) with a few other colleagues and has been referred to as one of the 'founding fathers' of the project. CMS is a world-wide collaboration which started in 1991 and now has over 3500 participants from 45 countries.
Peter Jenni, is an experimental particle physicist working at CERN. He is best known as one of the "founding fathers" of the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider together with a few other colleagues. He acted as spokesperson of the ATLAS Collaboration until 2009. ATLAS is a world-wide collaboration which started in 1992 involving roughly 3,000 physicists at 183 institutions in 38 countries. Jenni was directly involved in the experimental work leading to the discoveries of the W and Z bosons in the 1980s and the Higgs boson in 2012. He is (co-)author of about 1000 publications in scientific journals.
The idea that matter consists of smaller particles and that there exists a limited number of sorts of primary, smallest particles in nature has existed in natural philosophy at least since the 6th century BC. Such ideas gained physical credibility beginning in the 19th century, but the concept of "elementary particle" underwent some changes in its meaning: notably, modern physics no longer deems elementary particles indestructible. Even elementary particles can decay or collide destructively; they can cease to exist and create (other) particles in result.
The Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) is a proposed Chinese electron positron collider for experimenting on the Higgs boson. It would be the world's largest particle accelerator with a circumference of 100 kilometres (62 mi).
The Future Circular Collider (FCC) is a proposed particle accelerator with an energy significantly above that of previous circular colliders, such as the Super Proton Synchrotron, the Tevatron, and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The FCC project is considering three scenarios for collision types: FCC-hh, for hadron-hadron collisions, including proton-proton and heavy ion collisions, FCC-ee, for electron-positron collisions, and FCC-eh, for electron-hadron collisions.
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Kamal Benslama is a Moroccan-Swiss experimental particle physicist. He is a professor of physics at Drew University, a visiting experimental scientist at Fermilab, and a guest scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He worked on the ATLAS experiment, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland, which is considered the largest experiment in the history of physical science. At present, he is doing research at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago. Fermilab is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.
