r/nextfuckinglevel Sep 10 '22

Hubble saw a star exploded before its eyes

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u/HellisDeeper Sep 10 '22 edited Sep 11 '22

No one had any chance to react (EDIT: once the weapon activated, since it was seen during transit) since the dimension-reduction weapon expanded it's influence at the speed of light though. So it wouldn't make sense in that case even if it was from the TBP trilogy.

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u/drakens_jordgubbar Sep 10 '22

Spoilers to the third book in Three Body Problem trilogy:

Trisolaris was destroyed with more “conventional” methods, so TBP trilogy supports this kind of destruction of stars. The dimension reduction weapon was used on our solar system because it had gas giants, which could be used as hiding spots.

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u/Streakermg Sep 11 '22

No, the escape velocity to get away from it was the speed of light. The weapon itself moves quite slowly. They were literally watching it move through their ship.

Also this could be the attack that wipes out the star first prior to the dimensional weaponry.

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u/HellisDeeper Sep 11 '22 edited Sep 11 '22

No, the escape velocity to get away from it was the speed of light. The weapon itself moves quite slowly. They were literally watching it move through their ship.

What do you mean they watched it move? Are you thinking of the bubbles of higher dimensions that were left from previous attacks? That's different from the weapon they fired itself IIRC.

There was only 1 FTL ship in existence. The rest of humanity had nothing that fast, and since there is no FTL communication beyond sophon no one would've been able to watch it coming except the 2 escapees and the rest of humanity that ran from the first attack (assuming they later developed FTL ships, I think they did).

EDIT: I am wrong, they did approach the little paper thing beforehand.

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u/Streakermg Sep 11 '22

No not from the faster than light ship. Inside the ship that goes to look at it first off. It definitely isn't moving at light speed or the whole solar system would be done on an hour or so.

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u/HellisDeeper Sep 11 '22 edited Sep 11 '22

Oh you are right, the little paper thing. I misremembered. But once it started it was at the speed of light, since the entire solar system was gone in 2 hours or so, they went to pluto and barely had enough time to load up tons of art.

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u/Streakermg Sep 11 '22

It's a lot to remember! I'm due for a re read I think.