Understanding "The Three-Body Problem" in one article: What is it about? What are the "black technologies"?

The hit TV series "The Three-Body Problem" has once again sparked a wave of discussion on the science fiction series.

Although "The Three-Body Problem" is a science fiction story, it involves a lot of real scientific knowledge. If you understand these, your experience of watching the drama and anime may be better.

Image source: Internet

01

The Three-Body Problem is so popular

What does it say?

The story of "The Three-Body Problem" dates back to the Cultural Revolution, a special era when many people experienced hardships.

After experiencing many tragic experiences, including her father's persecution and her own false accusations, the young astrophysicist Ye Wenjie became disheartened.

One day, she discovered a special signal at work, which came from the technologically advanced "Three-Body" world.

Ye Wenjie believed that human civilization had fallen and needed to be saved by a more advanced civilization, so she responded to the signal and exposed the coordinates of the earth.

After learning of the existence of the Earth, the "Three-Body" civilization, which was determined to escape from the harsh living environment, set a goal: to set out for the Earth and make it their new home.

Decades later, a series of suicides of famous scientists occurred around the world. It turned out that all of this was a conspiracy by the Three-Body Civilization and its supporters:

They are trying to block the possibility of progress of Earth civilization by disrupting Earth science.

Image source: Screenshot from the TV series "The Three-Body Problem"

In order to resist the Trisolaran civilization, humans have made various attempts: destroying the organizations on Earth that support the Trisolaran civilization; developing interstellar spacecraft; implementing the "Wallfacer" plan; confronting the Trisolarans...

In order to survive, the Earth civilization and the Trisolaran civilization are both working hard, but in the end, humans, the Trisolarans and even the entire universe come to an unexpected end.

Maybe many people have not read the whole book, so this article will not give any spoilers. Let’s just talk about the scientific knowledge involved in "The Three-Body Problem".

02

What is the “Three Body”?

What exactly does the somewhat strange title of "The Three-Body Problem" refer to? Although there are different opinions on its exact meaning, it may be related to the living environment of the Three-Body civilization set in the novel.

The Trisolaran galaxy actually has three "suns". They continue to move irregularly under the influence of gravity, making the Trisolaran planet either extremely cold or extremely hot. It is also affected by gravity, bringing them great suffering.

So why does the movement of the three spheres cause such chaotic results?

The Trisolarans' technology is so advanced, wouldn't it be better to predict their movement trajectories and positions and make preparations in advance?

This brings us to the famous problem in astronomy - the "three-body problem".

It is a mechanical model: given three celestial bodies with arbitrary mass, initial position and initial velocity, their motion laws under the influence of mutual gravity are studied.

Although this doesn't sound too complicated, it is very difficult to accurately solve the motion trajectories and positions of these three celestial bodies.

Both the Trisolarans and the people on Earth found it difficult to determine the operating rules of the three "suns", and the Trisolarans had to abandon this harsh "home" and flee to Earth.

It can be said that the difficulty in solving the "Three-Body Problem" is the origin of the whole story .

Image source: The Three-Body Animation

03

Can “Operation Guzheng” succeed in reality?

In the story of "The Three-Body Problem", in order to capture the organizations on Earth that support the Three-Body civilization, people placed an extremely sharp, ultra-strong nanomaterial wire on the canal that ships must pass through.

They are arranged like the "strings" of a guzheng, and when members of the organization pass by by boat, the "strings" will cut the boat into pieces.

Image source: Resident Evil 1

The technology used in the "strings" is "nano flying blades", which comes from the research of Wang Miao, one of the protagonists of "The Three-Body Problem", and is a nano-scale material.

Nanometer is a unit of measurement for length. 1 nanometer is equal to 10 to the negative 9th power meters, which is equivalent to about one 60,000th of the diameter of a hair. Nanomaterial is the abbreviation of nanoscale structural materials, and the structural unit size of this material is between 1 nanometer and 100 nanometers.

This scale has reached the atomic and molecular level. Many substances at this level will exhibit properties that are very different from those in the macroscopic state. This is related to the arrangement structure of the atoms that make up the substance.

In the macroscopic state, the atomic arrangement of some substances is very irregular, but if the atoms are arranged neatly according to certain rules at the nanoscale, some special properties can be produced, such as increased magnetism, stronger toughness, better conductivity, etc.

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So, are there materials similar to "nano flying blades" in reality?

According to the setting of the novel, this material needs to meet at least several characteristics: extremely fine diameter, extremely high strength and toughness.

In fact, there is a kind of nanomaterial that meets all these points, and that is carbon nanotube .

Due to its special structure, although it is very thin, it has extremely high strength and toughness, and is nowadays a popular "fiber of the future".

However, if we really want to use carbon nanotubes to cut ships, we still have to solve many scientific problems, and if we want to get a real "nano flying blade", we need to continue exploring.

04

Can the communication speed of "Smart Son" exceed the speed of light?

There is a very special "character" in "The Three-Body Problem" - "Sophon", an intelligent body sent by the Trisolarans. It can interfere with scientific experiments on Earth, display mysterious phenomena to disturb scientists' minds, and monitor the entire human society.

The most amazing thing is that although the Earth and the Trisolaran Galaxy are 4 light years apart, the "Smart Son" can communicate with its mother planet in real time. How is this done?

The original work mentioned that this was achieved by utilizing the special properties of quantum, which most likely refers to the **"quantum entanglement effect"**.

Quantum entanglement is a special phenomenon at the microscopic scale.

When two or a group of particles interact with each other, a collective property is produced, which is called quantum entanglement.

Amazingly, if the entangled particles are separated, they retain this property no matter how far apart they are.

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To make an inappropriate analogy: suppose there are two particles that were once in an entangled state and then separated to the two ends of the universe. They will show a state of telepathy. When the particle at the other end of the universe decides to turn left, the particle at this end of the universe will instantly decide to turn right.

Even though they were separated by the entire universe, both of them could instantly understand each other's thoughts, as if the speed of communication between them exceeded the speed of light.

Because the change occurs instantaneously, many people believe that this instantaneous effect could be used to revolutionize communications technology.

But in reality, information transmission requires a carrier, and there is no carrier that can transmit information between quantum entanglement.

Therefore, quantum entanglement cannot be used in communication technology so far. Instantaneous communication of "smartons" is difficult to happen in reality.

05

Is the technology used in this spacecraft available now?

There is a very popular character in "The Three-Body Problem": Space Force Commander Zhang Beihai.

Faced with the threat of the Trisolarans, he believes that a "fluidless spacecraft" should be developed to lead humans to escape into space.

One of the core technologies used by this spacecraft is controlled nuclear fusion technology.

Nuclear fusion is a nuclear reaction. It refers to the process in which, under certain conditions, the nuclei of two atoms with small mass attract each other, collide with each other, and aggregate to generate new nuclei with heavier mass. Huge amounts of energy are released in this process.

For example, the hydrogen bomb that we are already familiar with uses the principle of nuclear fusion.

3D rendering of a nuclear fusion reactor. Copyright image, no permission to reproduce

The technology used in the spacecraft that Zhang Beihai has been dreaming of is more advanced. It is a kind of controlled nuclear fusion. As the name suggests, humans can control the speed and scale of nuclear fusion under certain conditions so that its energy can be fully utilized.

Controlled nuclear fusion has huge benefits and has always been regarded as an important technology for solving the energy crisis, but its research is very difficult and progress is slow.

However, China has achieved certain results in this field. At the end of last year, the plasma current of China's new generation "artificial sun" (HL-2M) device exceeded 1 million amperes (1 megaampere), setting a new record for the operation of China's controlled nuclear fusion experimental device .

Although controlled nuclear fusion technology is still a dream, it is no longer so far away.

Perhaps we will see spacecraft that use this technology and allow humans to travel across the stars in our lifetime.

In addition to the knowledge points mentioned above, The Three-Body Problem also involves a lot of scientific and even sociological knowledge:

Such as the "water drop" involving the use of strong interaction materials ;

The **"Thought Stamp"**** related to brain science may refer to the "Dark Forest" theory** of the sociological masterpiece "Leviathan" and so on.

Some of these contents are wrong, while others are very clever.

Even if you don’t understand these, it’s still worth reading The Three-Body Problem. Humans currently have limited knowledge, but their unique imagination is infinite. This is perhaps the greatest charm of science fiction: in just a moment, it can take us to places that no one has ever been to before.

References:

[1]https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/quantum-science-explained/entanglement

[2]https://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology/introduction/introduction_to_nanotechnology_22.php

[3]http://www.news.cn/tech/2022-10/21/c_1129074076.htm

[4]https://www.sciencealert.com/what-is-nuclear-fusion

Author: Wang Jiangshan, PhD in History of Science and Technology

Reviewer: Wang Yangzong, Professor of the School of Humanities, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

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