5 ms·

If aliens don't like us, then why wouldn't they just destroy us, rather than troll our physicists and mess with the results? Why would they specifically mess w

If aliens don't like us, then why wouldn't they just destroy us, rather than troll our physicists and mess with the results? Why would they specifically mess with the particle accelarators at this point? Why not with earlier physics?

kingkawn 5y ago
Because they're hundreds of years of space travel away so they send sentient protons to sabotage our particle physics so that we can't develop advanced enough technology to stop them by the time they arrive.
- sweetheart 5y ago
  While the entire series is absolutely incredible, I _loved_ the premise of human beings knowing 400 years in advance that aliens are coming. Such a fascinating start to the trilogy.
joshspankit 5y ago
Here’s a possibility: They are in the next universe over, and so far the only thing that passes between is gravity. Fine-grained control over gravity could allow them to mess with things but not destroy us (if they even wished to. I don’t even think Earth would vote to destroy an unknown civilization if the roles were reversed)
maininformer 5y ago
maybe we are their toys, or maybe our emotions is their energy source
AdamN 5y ago
In the book that's the state of human science when they learn of our existence. Also, they want our planet and it will take them a long time to get to earth - so long in fact that they predict that if our physics is allowed to mature they won't be able to beat us militarily by that time. They need to stop progress asap.
gizmo686 5y ago
Spoilers below: The Three Body Problem trilogy breaks down if you think about it too hard. The in-universe explanation was that the aliens did want to destroy us, and had an attack fleet heading towards us. However, the attack fleet was relativly slow, and they were concerned that by the time it reached us we would have advanced to the point where we might win in a fight. To prevent this, they sent smaller probes to us at near light speed. In theory, these weren't capable of causing significant damage, but they could cause enough of an effect that they could make the results of particle accelerators useless. Without being able to use particle accelerators, we wouldn't be able to advance our knowledge of fundamental physics, so the aliens were confident that when their attack fleet reached us we would be defenseless. By itself, what I have written is not particularly absurd, but if you look at the other things those advanced probes ended up being able to do, they could have easily just killed everyone.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  Killing everyone is too much to ask, remember they were ultimately just protons, physically they're not more powerful than cosmic rays. Their strength was information gathering and special effects.
  - gizmo686 5y ago
    Protons that could cause controlled visual hallucinations in people. If they can cause that level of interference with our nervous system, they can kill us. Even if they were somehow limited to visual hallucinations, a well timed hallucination is easily lethal. They probably ought to be able to hack into computer systems with that as well.
  - HotHotLava 5y ago
    Tbf, from the way they were described it should have been fairly easy to defeat the Sophons even without any science-fiction technology; just build e.g. 10-20 particle accelerators distributed over the world and take measurements close enough in time to each other that you cannot be at multiple sites without exceeding the speed of light. Then at most 3 of them could be corrupted for any given run, and these can be thrown out as statistical noise.
JetSetWilly 5y ago
Because your interstellar equivalent of the CIA can obtain the political capital to prevent a civilisational rival from emerging via subtle manipulations, but it can't obtain the political capital and consensus needed to commit wholesale genocide. There's a big difference between the scenarios.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  In this case the subtle manipulations were just a holding pattern while they waited on the genocide; it was going to take them 400 years to get here.
midrus 5y ago
Maybe because we're their big brother tv show or just their zoo
nolok 5y ago
Haven't read those specific books, but "keep the species at the level they were when discovered for preservation" is a very common trope of such things, and usually mapped on how humanity considers that "preserving a species" means keeping it exactly as they were when first discovered.
yarky 5y ago
If you insist on looking at it from our perspective, how about curiosity? Let's see how far they (us) keep trying to make sense out of this nonsense. Trolling in the name of science I guess. People from North Sentinel Island might ask themselves the same question about us.
artursapek 5y ago
I troll people I don't like all the time

kingkawn 5y ago

Because they're hundreds of years of space travel away so they send sentient protons to sabotage our particle physics so that we can't develop advanced enough technology to stop them by the time they arrive.

sweetheart 5y ago
While the entire series is absolutely incredible, I _loved_ the premise of human beings knowing 400 years in advance that aliens are coming. Such a fascinating start to the trilogy.

joshspankit 5y ago

Here’s a possibility: They are in the next universe over, and so far the only thing that passes between is gravity. Fine-grained control over gravity could allow them to mess with things but not destroy us (if they even wished to. I don’t even think Earth would vote to destroy an unknown civilization if the roles were reversed)

maininformer 5y ago

maybe we are their toys, or maybe our emotions is their energy source

AdamN 5y ago

In the book that's the state of human science when they learn of our existence. Also, they want our planet and it will take them a long time to get to earth - so long in fact that they predict that if our physics is allowed to mature they won't be able to beat us militarily by that time. They need to stop progress asap.

gizmo686 5y ago

Spoilers below: The Three Body Problem trilogy breaks down if you think about it too hard. The in-universe explanation was that the aliens did want to destroy us, and had an attack fleet heading towards us. However, the attack fleet was relativly slow, and they were concerned that by the time it reached us we would have advanced to the point where we might win in a fight. To prevent this, they sent smaller probes to us at near light speed. In theory, these weren't capable of causing significant damage, but they could cause enough of an effect that they could make the results of particle accelerators useless. Without being able to use particle accelerators, we wouldn't be able to advance our knowledge of fundamental physics, so the aliens were confident that when their attack fleet reached us we would be defenseless. By itself, what I have written is not particularly absurd, but if you look at the other things those advanced probes ended up being able to do, they could have easily just killed everyone.

ASalazarMX 5y ago
Killing everyone is too much to ask, remember they were ultimately just protons, physically they're not more powerful than cosmic rays. Their strength was information gathering and special effects.
- gizmo686 5y ago
  Protons that could cause controlled visual hallucinations in people. If they can cause that level of interference with our nervous system, they can kill us. Even if they were somehow limited to visual hallucinations, a well timed hallucination is easily lethal. They probably ought to be able to hack into computer systems with that as well.
- HotHotLava 5y ago
  Tbf, from the way they were described it should have been fairly easy to defeat the Sophons even without any science-fiction technology; just build e.g. 10-20 particle accelerators distributed over the world and take measurements close enough in time to each other that you cannot be at multiple sites without exceeding the speed of light. Then at most 3 of them could be corrupted for any given run, and these can be thrown out as statistical noise.

JetSetWilly 5y ago

Because your interstellar equivalent of the CIA can obtain the political capital to prevent a civilisational rival from emerging via subtle manipulations, but it can't obtain the political capital and consensus needed to commit wholesale genocide. There's a big difference between the scenarios.

rsynnott 5y ago
In this case the subtle manipulations were just a holding pattern while they waited on the genocide; it was going to take them 400 years to get here.

midrus 5y ago

Maybe because we're their big brother tv show or just their zoo

nolok 5y ago

Haven't read those specific books, but "keep the species at the level they were when discovered for preservation" is a very common trope of such things, and usually mapped on how humanity considers that "preserving a species" means keeping it exactly as they were when first discovered.

yarky 5y ago

If you insist on looking at it from our perspective, how about curiosity? Let's see how far they (us) keep trying to make sense out of this nonsense. Trolling in the name of science I guess. People from North Sentinel Island might ask themselves the same question about us.

artursapek 5y ago

I troll people I don't like all the time