当今的科幻剧中我只追这部和"Fringe(中译迷离档案)"，不过后者是一集一个(扯淡的)科幻故事，相比之下我更关心整季只讲一个故事的Flashforward如何解释清楚剧情的核心--2分17秒的blackout的发生原因. 第十集终于透露了本剧的科学背景--粒子加速器：科学家Simcoe“承认”了他们的NLAP(National Linear Accelerator Project，国家直线加速器项目)造成了全球人类的昏迷。
第十集Simcoe在发布会的发言我听写了一段在下面
" ...our speciality is proton-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration. What we are trying to do at this facility is to reproduce the kind of energy levels that exists just after the big bang with a much more controllable scale."
诞生在现实生活中的LHC启动后不久的本剧，也和LHC的批评者一样，把灾难的根源推给了加速器(及粒子对撞实验)。但这里编剧与时俱进了一把，我搜索了proton-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration(质子诱导等离子激活场加速)的资料，这种加速器的设想刚刚在09年4月份发表在nature physics上(doi:10.1038/nphys1248)，我在本文简单总结一下它的原理：
First, plasma is a well-known state: heating or otherwise treating an object in its normal state turns it into a plasma state of a mixture of positively and negatively charged ions. Although the particles that make up the plasma are charged, even under the action of an external electric field, the positive and negative charged particles of the plasma are symmetrically distributed, and other charged particles passing through the plasma will not be accelerated.
But plasma-wakefields can be used as an option for accelerating charged particles: when an excitation source (such as a laser, or electron beam, etc.) passes through a normal gas, the path it travels produces plasma. But the mass of negatively charged electrons in the plasma is much smaller than that of positively charged ions, and the electrons travel much farther under the electric field generated by the excitation source. After that, the electrons are subjected to the Coulomb attraction of the positively charged nucleus, and move closer to the positive charge. The residual kinetic energy of the electrons can produce a wave-like distribution of the returning electrons (as shown in the figure below, blue represents the electrons).
(image) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Illustration_Plasma_Wakefield_Acceleration.png
In the channel formed by the activation field, the potential gradient is particularly large, so that the particle to be accelerated can follow the direction of the excitation source and approach the excitation source The speed of operation (if the excitation source is a laser, then the speed is the speed of light). This results in high energy (velocity) ions. The proton-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration uses the proton beam as the excitation source. The simulation results in the above nature physics literature prove that this acceleration method can obtain the energy of the order of TeV (10^12 electron volts) in one acceleration process, The frontiers of particle physics, such as the Higgs boson that the LHC is looking for, require such high energies.
Such high energy (collisions) may have unpredictable consequences, such as the creation of black holes. The coma and flashing shadows in the Flashforward play are an imaginary made by the screenwriter. Perhaps the contradiction between scientific exploration and the potential dangers brought about by this drama is the contradiction in science.
In addition, in the tenth episode, D-Gibbsons, who was hiding in Hong Kong, explained that the plot seems to have settled on a "Chinese conspiracy theory".
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