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Liu Cixin, the author of The Three Body Problem had a short story (2002) on communication with gravitational waves. In a distant future, just before the human
by segfaultbuserr 6y ago
Liu Cixin, the author of The Three Body Problem had a short story (2002) on communication with gravitational waves.
In a distant future, just before the human started the largest, continent-scale particle accelerator (capable of reaching 10^20 GeV) to collect the final data for the Theory of Everything (ToE), an alien agent Risk Eliminator intervened at the last second and dismantled the accelerator, transforming it into a bunch of trees and grass. The alien told humans that the experimental verification of Theory of Everything was extremely dangerous - This was the experiment that triggered the Vacuum Decay [0] event and destroyed all galaxies in the previous universe. Despite the existential risk that was clearly known prior to the experiment, all civilizations in that universe believed discovering ToE was the ultimate peruse of intelligent life (evolution took a different path), it was allowed to proceed and destroyed the universe. As their brain was the ultimate supercomputer, there were speculations that that civilization found the ToE in the last microsecond before destruction, it was unlikely.
Nevertheless, the experiment was designed to transfer data via powerful gravitational waves as a one-way broadcast, which preserved the history of their existence and the experiment. Being the first scientific civilization of the current universe, the Risk Eliminator's world received the gravitational waves from the previous universe before it was dampened out to undecodable level, successfully reconstructed the data and derived the ToE. Since then, their civilization was known as the Risk Eliminator, and their goal was to silently monitor all intelligent lives, and to destroy all ToE experiments when necessary - evolution took a different path, unlike the previous world, not everyone valued the ToE, such as experiment would be unjust to other civilizations.
The human civilization, or any other civilization, was also forbidden to learn the ToE. First there was the Star Trek-style principle that forbids the transfer of any technical knowledge from a civilization to another, which was well understood. But it's still forbidden even when said civilization already had the capability to derive the ToE experiment via experiment due to practical reasons - it was too risky. The practical applications of ToE would allow a civilization to manipulate an even higher energy level - the energy level reachable by a pre-ToE civilization was already deadly. Also, ToE showed the existence of parallel universes, and that the ToE was only a limited model within an individual universe. The curiosity of the intelligent lives may lead them to start researching super-ToE in experiments with even higher energy level, and this could destroy not one, but multiple universes, which was unacceptable.
Finally, the human physicists and the Risk Eliminator made a deal - similar to how the civilizations in the previous universe may have found the ToE in the last microsecond, the human physicists who saw ToE as the lifetime goal could be allowed to learn it in a lecture, but after they've understood the lecture, they would be killed in a giant plasma fireball. Many prominent physicists agreed. After it was on the news, other researchers, such as some mathematicians who wanted to know the proof of the Goldbach's conjecture, or paleontologists who wished the learn the true reason that caused dinosaur to go extinct, also joined the party.
The last physicists who went to the lecture was Stephen Hawking.
"What is the purpose of the universe?"
"How the heck should I know? You are allowed to leave, Professor."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum
- corgihamlet 6y agoCommunication via gravitational waves is also a huge plotline in the third book in the RoEP-series.