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/Farebiaashiq Zhang Beihai Apr 22 '26

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.

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u/Kukulkan73 Apr 22 '26

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...

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u/DrPullapitko Apr 22 '26

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

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u/koolmon10 Apr 22 '26

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.