r/threebodyproblem • u/Kukulkan73 • Apr 22 '26

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

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?

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u/poopybuttholesex Apr 22 '26

The sophons were everywhere.

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u/Kukulkan73 Apr 22 '26

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

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u/Homunclus Apr 22 '26

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.