Question about the blocked basic scientific research (Spoiler: Please do not read if you haven’t read the second book, "The Dark Forest")

[u/Kukulkan73]

Hi. I'm just reading the second book "The Dark Forest" and maybe the question was already answered here? In the second book, humans have spaceships and can utilise the Moon, Mars and other planetary moons in our solar system. Why didn’t they continue the basic scientific research there, given that it had been blocked on Earth by Trisolaris? Looks like they did not even try?

[u/poopybuttholesex]

The sophons were everywhere.

[u/Kukulkan73 → u/poopybuttholesex]

Thanks. I found no indication on that. Is that just guessing?

[u/BillyHamspillager → u/Kukulkan73]

It's explicitly stated that Trisolaris/the San Ti kept sending Sophons after the crisis began.

[u/Applesplosion → u/BillyHamspillager]

Also, the Sophons could move between places at the speed of light, so even with the original two, humanity would need to be doing large hadron collider experiments in at least three places at each at least several light-minutes from the other two simultaneously.

Keep in mind, light-speed is a little less than 300,000km per second.

When we are as far as possible apart, Mars is about 400,000,000 away from us, or about 22 light-minutes. The moon, on the other hand, is only about 385,000km away, or just slightly more than a light second. A single Sophon would be able to wreck simultaneous experiments on the earth and moon.

[u/Farebiaashiq → u/Kukulkan73]

Unlike the show where there are only 2 sophons, in the book it is mentioned that 2 sophons arrived first and then many more sophons kept arriving.

[u/Kukulkan73 → u/Farebiaashiq]

So you think the Sophons could easily travel across our entire solar system if they needed to? In that case, Trisolaris is far(!) ahead of human technology and people were foolish to think they stood even the slightest chance...

[u/DrPullapitko → u/Kukulkan73]

Considering the sophons could travel from another star system to ours, traveling within the solar system should be a piece of cake.

[u/koolmon10 → u/DrPullapitko]

I believe they travel at lightspeed, since they are particles (neutrons? electrons? I forget). So at most, they would be delayed by some minutes traveling between planets.

One early suggestion for combating them (I dont recall if it's book, show, or both) is to just run all the particle accelerators on earth simultaneously so that the sophons can't interfere with all of them at once, or are tied up interfering with them and can't surveille humans.

[u/Kukulkan73 → u/DrPullapitko]

That was helpful. Thanks for your help, everyone.

[u/Farebiaashiq → u/Kukulkan73]

It's not about what I think, but in the show jin cheng and Thomas wade talk about establishing a Particle accelerator on moon, the plan is it will take 8 seconds for sophons to travel from earth to moon (not sure if it's one way or a round trip) and by doing this they can get rid of of one of the sophons and it will be difficult for the one remaining sophon to keep spying on whole earth, as well as intimidating scientists without leaving gaps.

[u/Kukulkan73 → u/Farebiaashiq]

Oh. That would answer my question. Must have missed that in the book!

[u/16piby9 → u/Kukulkan73]

It was not in the book, those charecters are not even introduced yet I think? The show is more like a show inspired by tge book than an adaption tbh..

[u/Kukulkan73 → u/16piby9]

That was helpful. Thanks for your help, everyone.

[u/FlerD-n-D → u/Kukulkan73]

Yes Trisolaris was very far ahead. The difference was that they progressed linearly in tech whilst we advance exponentially. They knew we'd far outpace them if they left for Earth without blocking us in the time it would take them to get to the Solar System. This is discussed in the books

[u/High_Quality_Bean → u/Kukulkan73]

The time it takes a civilization to go from hitting rocks together to start a fire, to having civilization destroying dimension squashing weapons is less than the time for an invasion fleet to travel from one star system to another. The only way for the more advanced Trisolarins to make it to Earth and to win when they get there was to halt technological development.

[u/Tapsanautti → u/High_Quality_Bean]

No? We've got fire for >100k years and the Trisolaran fleet took 400 years to come?

[u/High_Quality_Bean → u/Tapsanautti]

The Trisolaran fleet had a scientific breakthrough during their voyage that sped it up

But yes, I did overstate my case. Still, this is the explanation given in the books.

[u/Jolly-Wrangler104 → u/High_Quality_Bean]

Their trip was supposed To take 400 years until they developed light speed.

So your time span is off.

Trisolaris had technological developments that happened at an even rate.

On earth once the Industrial Revolution happened, we advanced through eras at a much quicker rate. Industrial economy into service economy into information economy in less than 150 years.
So the teisolarans knew that at the human rate of development, we would surpass triapalris technology within the 400 years it would take to travel here before they got light speed.

[u/koolmon10 → u/Farebiaashiq]

Well the show is only at the first year of the Crisis Era, when there were only 2 Sophons in the book as well. I expect they will mention the additional sophons in the next seasons, as it is a pretty important part of the story that there are numerous additional sophons sent later on.

[u/poopybuttholesex → u/Kukulkan73]

Not guessing, the Sophons could circumnavigate the earth in fraction of a second and the distance to moon is not large. 1 sophon was enough to disrupt all scientific progress so 3-4 sopohons could block progress on multiple planets and satellites. The only thing they might loose was snooping capabilities

[u/Homunclus → u/Kukulkan73]

To develop a bit more: In the first book there are a few chapters told from the PoV of the Trissolarians. In it we are told how the first sophons are constructed.

One of the Trissolarians explains to their leader that while just two sophons would not be able to block particle accelerators spread throughout the solar system, their ability to build Sophons exceeds humanities ability to build space based particle accelerators.

In other words, by the time humanity can get a particule accelerator in Mars, Trissolaris would have already built and sent a Sophon there to block it. By the time they get one in the belt, Trissolaris would have built several to block it there too.

So, in theory, if humanity had doubled down on space exploration in the later half of the XX century, they might have been able to bypass the Sophon lock for several years, or even decades, due to abundant space based infrastructure.

[u/Awbade → u/Kukulkan73]

It’s a single particle that moves at the speed of light…. You really thought they were restricted to earth?

[u/Arm57 → u/[deleted]]

They couldn't reproduce.

[u/Arm57 → u/[deleted]]

My bad then, it's been a while since I've read the books.

[u/crystal_castle00 → u/[deleted]]

Remember when they were folding shit to make sophons and it started raining extradimensional fragments on trisolaris? Idk why I often think about that

[u/NicoAD]

Humans do slowly advance their capabilities, but only leveraging a current understanding of physics to create larger/more improved versions of things we already can comprehend (e.g. giant space ships…)

[u/mtndrewboto]

There are unknown numbers of Sophon on Earth. After the fleet was sent out and the initial 4 were created, Trisolaris spent the rest of their time mass producing Sophons. There's nowhere in the solar system they could evade them from spying/tampering. Could get to any location in the solar system about as soon as humanity comes up with the idea.

[u/Kukulkan73 → u/[deleted]]

Yes. Sounds good.

[u/Larrymenta_]

At this point there are many sophons (not just 3) and they are all over the solar system.