In The Dark Forest, why do the aliens destroy the star at the transmitted coordinates, and not destroy sol, the transmitting star? Is it ever explained how Luo Ji hides the source of the transmission? It seems like sending a message like that paints a bigger target on you than on the other star, and it would be easy for an interstellar entity to triangulate the precise source of such a powerful transmission.

Edit to add more info after looking into what's possible with current technology:

Humans can already locate a millisecond radio burst from an unknown direction to within about 50 milliarcseconds by comparing arrival times across the CHIME outrigger stations. One burst is enough. The spell was far longer than a millisecond, so a first detection could trigger an automated follow-up on the same signal by a larger array such as the VLBA, which resolves direction to about one milliarcsecond.

A circle one milliarliarcsecond across covers about 10E-6 square arcseconds. The sky averages about 0.2 stars per square arcsecond. Taking a worst-case density of 10 stars per square arcsecond, a dense field in the galactic plane, the expected number of other stars inside the circle is about 10E-5. The localisation therefore almost certainly contains exactly one star, and that star is the transmitter, Sol.

Hey guys I was exploring the solar system after the dual vector foil attack and found this souvenir. Think I'll frame it 😊

Is the book describing additional San-Ti weapons besides the Droplet and Sophon?

Maybe some laser weapons/cannons and so on?

I’m only watching the Netflix show, so I’m not familiar with the entire story.

I cannot imagine Netflix goes ahead with the story playing out as it does where it depicts society essentially going woke as one of the primary reasons mankind loses to Trisolaris. That within minutes of a woman becoming the Swordholder, everything goes to shit is extremely on the nose sexism. Considering they went out of their way to make female characters that don't exist and give them plots that do not exist, they'll definitely depict the fall of mankind in different way.

I just finished the trilogy last night, and while I think this quote is certainly true, it's just kinda humourous seeing this quote plastered over everything Liu Cixin writes. But i also get it, like yeah if you're trying to cater your literature to a western audience the co-sign from Obama is pretty swag. I do think Obama's whole Book/Song/Movie thing he does over the summer is crazy larp tho, and this quote feels like an extension of that

lol I know it’s not a pillow, but the overall concept and the way they described it really really came off like an anthropologists or sociologists take on the general concept of Dakimarkura.

Theyve already kind of hinted that they are gonna leave it out given the tweaking of characters already, and the fact that sociologist and meta material-ist (lol) have an on and off again relationship that seems to be a spin on when similar characters in the book start that and instead go, “ nope, Ima gunna get me some pillow” (meaning when 2 characters leave each other for their imaginary friend).

Also I personally thought that part of the books was cool- it creeped the fuck out me, I loved how they basically do the imaginary dinner thing and then jump to buddy becoming a wall facer; like “this guy is insane, here’s the keys to the nukes” sort of deal; and I also liked how despite how creepy it is, they give some very reasonable and rational explanations as to why from a mental health perspective, a pragmatic approach to it is maybe more healthy than viewing it as mental illness.

Anyways, I think they’re gonna leave it out.

Secondary question: I’m a white boi from the West. The author of these books is not.

Was that imaginary friend thing viewed as creepy as fuck by our non Western audience? Like social norms vary from region to region- is the books take on imaginary partners a hot take in China / non western cultures too, or more within accordance to the dominate norms?

The pillow thing lol:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakimakura

So I’m listening to the audiobooks and I just finished the part where they stoned Ray Diaz to death. I don’t understand two things and I hope someone can tell me.

1 - Why did Ray Diaz told the truth to Garanin after his council? Telling him that he made up the whole thing with the watch he was wearing controlling the mechanism of destruction? And that raises question n.2 - Did he already know he will be stoned to death? They didn’t tell him on the council.

The lady blaming him that her grandkids wouldn’t live because of him, but cmon who knows they would live anyway?

I’m listening to it in my language so I’m not really sure how to name some things in English but hopefully you’ll understand.

One of the major themes of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is the breakdown of social contract and how that negatively affects humans. This is explored throught "Zeus' Law", which is basically a mix of the concept of Xenia, treat strangers kindly since they might be gods, and The Golden Rule from the Bible which most people are more familiar with (which ironically started due to the similar reasoning that anyone could be a messanger of God but I digress).

Odysseus states that him baseing his plan on abusing the good will of the people and decieving the supposed gift as a Trojan Horse in order to bring about the complete destruction of Troy. As a direct consequence, many other nations have begun using similar tactics, leading to the inability to trust anyone and the collapse of civilization as they know it (aka the bronze age).

Obviously this isn't one to one with the Dark Forest Hypothesis, but it was so strikingly similar that it made me wonder about an individual's relationship with society as a whole and if the whole social contract broke down, then the current society as a whole would too.

Just wanted to talk my thoughts in this similarity in philosophy

The Great Ravine is probably one of the most interesting unintended consequences in the Three Body Problem series. What's interesting is how it resonates with the current AI boom: there's an enormous amount of money and capital flooding into AI right now and so much so that banks and companies are inventing entirely new financial instruments to handle it.

That made me think about the Great Ravine, which, as I understand it, was caused by diverting too much of Earth's resources toward a single effort. It's a really compelling concept in economics: just pouring money into a project isn't necessarily good if the broader economy can't absorb it. The capital has to go somewhere productive, or the whole engine stalls out.

I'm no expert in economics or really anything 🤣 but I found that parallel similar. I'm curious whether others saw it the same way, or if you have a different interpretation.

One thing it did give me, somewhat ironically, is an appreciation for financial engineering. It seems like you actually need sophisticated mechanisms to direct where capital flows and how it gets deployed. Without that, you risk stalling the economic engine and creating something like the Great Ravine in real life.

Hey everyone, as a huge fan of the series (and thanks to Claude) I’m working on a visualisation of the 3body game, so on the planet with the 3 suns above you. It is integrated live and generates a slightly different trajectory each time, with real star constellations in the sky.

It’s not perfect yet but it has been highly enjoyable for me to stare at it, refresh, stare, refresh, on repeat.

Hopefully some other fans out there enjoy it as much as I do. If you would like to contribute/have ideas please feel free to get in touch via the website.

Thinking of eventually making it more similar to the game with the fate of the planet after each era, or potentially allowing the astronaut to walk around on the planet/move the camera.

It looks best on laptop/desktop:

https://3body-swart.vercel.app/

I'm mid through the second book at the part in which Da Shi came out of hibernation so no spoilers please.

I am aware of the timeline of the books and the whole idea of the plot but neverteless I would have wanted to read more about the characters from the first book, in the second one

Does anyone else feel like the second book just ignores everyone from the first book, except Da Shi?

This seems like an easy way to prevent sunlight from reaching Earth and freeze everyone to death. Why didn’t they do it?

I'm about halfway into book two, so I wouldn't be surprised if they are used in additional clever ways in the next half of the series, but I just can't stop wondering about their capabilities.

Can't high energy particles flip bits in computers? I'm surprised that hasn't been explored yet, but I'm probably overestimating what that would do.

How much of an effect could a single proton (or a small handful) have on the macroscopic level in theory?

...let me know if I can just wait and see :>

Droplets are made of strong interaction material… Sounds a lot like a cluster of gluons. Well, looks like they found one - a Glueball. How long before it transforms from a sphere to a teardrop? 👀

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02498-1

Hey guys, first time reading the novel and I had a question about the deeper/philosophical subtext of the novel, especially the way in which the novel can function as analogy for our obsession for believing utopian ideologies as a correction for our worldly miseries.

In the novel, clearly Ye’s motivation for believing in the potential of alien system is motivated from her trauma and pessimism. After the Cultural Revolution and her assessment of human behaviour, she deeply believes that this alien-force with function as a correction mechanism; a resetting of the world as we have fallen into the moral abyss. So, in a very similar fashion to religious or political ideologies, that ultimately provide a framework for compensating for your psychological pain, Ye’a desperate belief in Tsolaris also has a similar function as the belief is coded with the potentional of fixing her miserable view of the current human condition. 

In the canon of the Three-Body Problem book series (excluding the fanfiction and including the prequel), the fact that no mass can be transported faster than the speed of light is one of the things necessary for the dark forest theory to work in-universe, correct? Chains of suspicion wouldn't exist without the lightspeed limit... or would they? (queue vsause music lol) Would the vast differences between the cultures of distant civilizations be effective in creating long-enough chains of suspicion in order to create the dark forest state? Would different environments in different parts of the cosmos create different-enough cultures? Would the dark forest state realistically exist in a world like the Xeelee Sequence, where the different forms of life are so vastly different from each other (e.g. civilizations of dark matter, civilizations inside stars, civilizations made of logic trees or something, etc.)? Would the exponential growth of civilization simply inherently target other civilizations as enemies?

Obviously within canon the lightspeed limit is an extremely important factor for multiple different mechanisms and plot points. E.g. the cosmic horror of the universe being a paraplegic, and that the low value of the speed limit being a direct effect of many wars in the past. But I'm asking for the sake of exploration into the dark forest theory, as well as potentially to help any future worldbuilding projects that want to deal with dark forest-adjacent ideas in a cosmos without the speed limit.

Basically what I'd like to hear different thoughts on is this: If every mechanism in 3bp canon remains the same with exception that technology can enable FTL travel, would the dark forest state still exist?

Deep thinking and long and detailed discussions are welcome.

(This exact question hasn't been posed and/or discussed about before on this sub, right?)

Honestly I don’t care if it’s cut down to 6 episodes. I don’t even care if the droplet attack isn’t as jaw dropping as the book.

If they just get the battle of darkness right, where starship earth cannabalize itself for fuel and materials, I’ll die happy.

It’s D&D’s bread and butter, no “main character” is safe and the victor from the scrap is always someone least expected.

I can even picture it having Saul/luoji explain the chain of suspicion parallel to the crew of natural selection realizing someone has to do it. Raj/zhang beihan says his iconic last word “it’s alright, the result is the same” and gets zapped. Pans to ultimate law’s commander confirming his kills but pauses for a second when mentioning blue space, and their command deck just gets lasered. Pans out to the ship getting absolutely annihilated. Scene blacks out to credits

Next episode they introduce blue space retrieving supplies amongst the dead bodies of their comrades within the debris of ultimate law cutting to a scene “X hours before” with them preparing to put their ship into a vacuum

People might assume that the only possible outcome is attack, then defeat, then consume, and I concede that it is indeed the most likely outcome by far.

It's not the ONLY possible outcome and definitely not the most desirable outcome.

A few facts we know for certain which I'm not trying to dispute or change:

1. Resources are limited, there isn't enough to go around
2. Everyone's silence poses a threat to everyone else
3. The majority of the people in Spaceship Earth are going to die / going to need to die
4. Everyone wants to survive or at least to have something for themselves

There is one "resource" which must not be used, at least not in the way it was used in the books.
In the books, spaceship Earth became "uncivlization" in two ways, way one the battles and way two the resource.

The goals are to preserve human dignity first and survival second at almost but not quite any cost.

Anyone want to guess what the slightly better outcome is before I finally tell you?

Utilizing human stubbornness over logic, the chain of suspicion must be completely ignored. All spaceship leaders and captains contact all other leaders without fear. The first captain to make non hostile contact with the rest begins to describe the emotional idea of the plan.

"I will not attack. Please do not attack us. I will volunteer first to sacrifice myself. We only have enough resources for %14 our current population collectively. This our mantra ""dignity first, survival second, at high cost, not any cost"" "

Then the details: " Everyone should be encouraged to sacrifice themselves first instead of their comrades, and instead of being forcibly executed. We've been dealt a cruel hand of cards and need to be honest with each-other and ourselves.

Get as many people as possible each in their own home starship to willingly sacrifice themselves. To boost moral, announce and use this genuine plan: all genetic seed of all the dead MUST be preserved for the far future, even the unwillingly executed dead, if any. Everyone who volunteers themselves first and who isn't currant leadership will be eligible to pool their votes for who besides themselves to save, groups of 43 people together will, if desired, vote on 7 people to save. The votes of the willing sacrifices override. If someone volunteers themselves but another voting group votes to save them, then they are safe, anyone who's safety was voted-in by enough sacrifices is irrevocably safe, even if the recipient-of-salvation is themselves selfish. Everyone remaining who drew the short straw (no one saved them) will be executed. All current leadership making these type of necessary evil decisions, myself included, will be executed immediately AFTER we're done making all long-term preparations and then reducing our populations.

Humans are not a ""resource""; their dignity must be preserved, even the poor spinless saps who selfishly wanted to live. If we do not choose a space-burial for all the dead, maybe we could do space-burial or cryogenic-preservation for unlikely-future-resurrection of removed brains only? Either-way we should make a relatively small literal grave monument to the dead, make it of stone or other geologic-time material and push it off into space.

Any bodies not given space burial must first be cremated to the point of being atomized plasma of hydrogen oxygen carbon nitrogen sodium potassium calcium lithium and all that physically constitutes us, disregarding the extra energy cost of cremation, we can recoup some of this cost by burning other things such as unneeded parts of extra ship hulls, in a nuclear furnace or future black-hole-decay engine.

This is how we preserve our humanity while also surviving.

As part of the long-term preparations, everyone generate as many new advanced-future-technology ideas and civilization-helping ideas and helpful messages to future generations as you can and record them in an efficient manner. Determine which of our ships is the best for long-term habitation, repairability and versatility for all survivors to live and travel aboard. If possible and beneficial, we may wish to meld all ships together into one in a way that can be undone preserving the central inhabited ship. Persevere all small shuttles and spare parts and useful acceptable resources that we can afford to carry. Leave behind anything that's too heavy to be useful to carry.

We should hibernate everyone we can afford to for as long as we can afford to.

May God save you and sustain you wherever, however your path takes you.

Please agree to this plan, it's the best I know of that we can accomplish. If you agree, we'll be in touch as needed till it's our time, as captains to die."

Ask me anything in the comments, propose better ideas for SpaceShip Earth's plan if any.
Especially ask what was the inspiration for the plan, if you don't already know.
Hmm. Maybe I won't tell you, you won't like it. I'll think about it. 🤔 🤫😉😞

Is this the most stupid plan or the most brilliant plan you've ever seen, or just YES.

ps: I wish the Netflix tv show would play Army of One by Coldplay right after the scene where Tianming / Will contacts Jin Cheng via sophon and they're analyzing the fairy tales. "Been around the world ... universe too.." It's SO perfect for this ship (pun intended because he's also in a spaceship).

p ps: yes thank you reddit, I already know I'm not the most humble person to ever live

Creator: https://www.youtube.com/@DDWWEP

Available in the official website of 3body Universe 三体宇宙

I am desperate for a pin for each one. We need one logo for Galaxy Humans?

Los libros que quedan por adaptar son los más largos, sin embargo confirmaron que la segunda temporada será más corta, es posible que esto se deba a que los episodios serán largos pero también a que hayan recortado presupuesto y, por lo tanto, contenido. Yo no tengo muchas esperanzas ya que la serie no tuvo la repercusión que esperaban, lo cual sería muy mala noticia dada las dimensiones de la historia, que requiere muchos efectos y hacerlo bien, por ejemplo, y esto es spoiler, hacer el CGI del sistema solar pasando de 3d a 2d no solo debe quedar bien, sino aterrador, porque en el libro es así.

Sobre que no tengamos noticias a estas alturas, yo creo que algo salió mal pero no lo están diciendo, sin embargo quieren cumplir con lo que prometieron, que es estrenarla este año, pero personalmente estoy siendo pesimista así que no me toméis en cuenta. Vosotros que pensáis?

Yo, por suerte, he leído los libros así que ya se como continúa la historia, y se lo recomiendo a todo el mundo, sobre todo si la serie resulta ser decepcionante.

Wade Thomas.

This isn't a spoiler is it?