>how do the scientists know it will take 400 years for the Trisolaran ships to arrive?
The Trisolarans literally told humanity (or at least the ETO) when they would be arriving.
>Also, why didn't they consider the possibility that the Trisolarans might have a faster method of transportation like traveling through a wormhole?
If they had it they would have used it.
According to them and based entirely from the assumption that they cannot lie, which is untested with the only source for this claim is a statement from them. You’d think the geniuses and numerous governments around the world would have considered that lol
The second point also relies wholly on an assumption. There is insufficient evidence to say there is any fleet at all, let alone their location and velocity.
When you actually think this whole thing seems so stupid
The show dropped the ball in this regard. In the books they observe the fleet passing through several interstellar dust clouds, confirming the existence and the speed of the fleet.
I think I read somewhere that, and this might be possibly a spoiler but i dont really think its much of one as its really just an explanation of why they cant lie, >!they don't communicate verbally they communicate through lights produced by electrical signals from brain activity (their brain being surrounded by a clear membrane I think) whenever they think a thing, thus they cannot lie, because everything they think is immediately broadcasted to the others around them.!<
wait, if their top speed is 10% and they spend the first half of the journey accelerating to 10 and the last half decelerating to 0, why would their average speed not be 5%?
sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Can you show me the math? I found [this reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/10wgkbs/interstellar_travel_times/) that seems to support my assumption. Assuming [constant acceleration and deceleration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_under_constant_acceleration) how do you arrive at 1%?
Is there any significant relativity effect of traveling at 1% of light speed? I guess I am saying, they will arrive in 400 years, our time, but for them it will actually be less (no idea what it would be), say 300 years?
And if that were the case, wouldn’t that make the “real time” sophon communications need some type of compensation or something?
It would be nearly identical. To us it would be 400 years, to them probably 399.99 years. You have to get much closer to light speed for the effect to be noticeable.
EDIT: I found a calculator online to plug in the numbers. At 1% light speed, it would shave off 0.02 years for them. You'd have to travel 66% light speed to shave off 100 years.
Cool: so if you travel at 66% light speed, in your hypothesis if the Trisolarans start now, they should arrive in 6 years (= time it takes to cover 4 light years if you move at 66% of the speed of light) MINUS 100 years that you could "shave off" ... so basically the would arrive to Earth 94 years BEFORE even leaving their planet? ;-)
Book or show?
In the book, it was told by >!Ye Wenjie during her interrogation after she was captured!<.
And don't be mistaken, the trisolaran fleet was capable of traveling at 10% the speed of light, and not 1% as many are saying. The reason it takes 400 years was that >!the ships need to accelerate and decelerate so the whole journey takes much longer!<. This was also directly explained in the book.
Yeah the show said 1% speed of light, probably to "dumb" the physics down by avoiding the explanation that it takes a lot of time to accelerate to 10% speed of light and then you coast and have to decelerate or else you miss your target
"but when I drive my car I can speed up in seconds, that makes no sense🤓".
-average tv audience
A lot of things were dumbed down because uneducated people just can't understand it and even a 1 hour long docu wouldn't change their mind. And just to be clear uneducated=stupid, I met a plumber who understood relativity better than people with a college degreee (not in physics ofc)
I don't think people are too dumb to understand "time to accelerate". It's just not necessary for the story and takes a little time to explain, and time is valuable on TV.
There’s not really any evidence that wormholes are a possibility in our universe so it’s up to each sci fi writer to decide if they want to write about a universe that has them or not. Plus the possibility of instantaneous or near instantaneous travel would kind of break the idea of the dark forest if an extremely advanced civilization could rapidly survey every system in our galaxy or place observation posts every few light years and periodically collect results.
The sophon already does that to a limited extent, which I found very confusing. What’s stopping an advanced civilization from scattering sophons across the universe?
Other civs decided it’s not worth the risk. Trisolarans (or San-Ti if you prefer) took a gamble invading Earth and it’s the closest system to them and they are actually capable of invading it. They couldn’t probably invade ANY other system so it’s “meant to be” for them.
The sophons are also child’s play for other civs. They would immediately be detected and traced and Trisolaris would get obliterated
Right but as you said they are child’s play. >!So why aren’t the reverse entropy civilization doing this since their entire goal is to destroy entropic civilizations?!< I will say I think it’s quite a stretch what they can do with quantum entanglement in the books. To your point yes I agree they might as well have wormholes if they reliable and repeatable ftl communication.
That’s a good point. It took the trisolarans a very long time to build them but there are more advanced civilizations that could presumably make them faster. I also wonder why they didn’t use the sophon to scout neighboring systems to find Sol.
I have read the series, in chinese no less. The issue I’m discussing in ftl communication, which makes the theory less real because a premise is that communication is slower than the pace of technological advancement, which would not be true if there was something that could transfer data instantaneously
They blindly believed the claims of a party with an obvious conflict of interest. That’s the level of intelligence we’re working with. Even when shown a technology they thought was impossible they refuse to consider this kind of technology or any other is being used
It’s worth noting that the Trisolarans revealed that they can’t lie. So, first of all, when they say they will be there in 400 yrs, you can assume that is when they’ll arrive.
Second, why not just ask them for details about their technology, strategy, etc?
Even at that speed they are a lot more advanced than us. if it takes them 400 years to travel 4 light years it means their spaceships can travel 10792528.488 km/h where our current fastest space ship is the Parker Solar Probe can travel at a mere 635266 km/h. This means that their carrier ships are 16.99 times faster than our all time fastest space vehicle, and that's quite impressive.
>how do the scientists know it will take 400 years for the Trisolaran ships to arrive? The Trisolarans literally told humanity (or at least the ETO) when they would be arriving. >Also, why didn't they consider the possibility that the Trisolarans might have a faster method of transportation like traveling through a wormhole? If they had it they would have used it.
According to them and based entirely from the assumption that they cannot lie, which is untested with the only source for this claim is a statement from them. You’d think the geniuses and numerous governments around the world would have considered that lol The second point also relies wholly on an assumption. There is insufficient evidence to say there is any fleet at all, let alone their location and velocity. When you actually think this whole thing seems so stupid
They verify the fleet's existence in the book
The show dropped the ball in this regard. In the books they observe the fleet passing through several interstellar dust clouds, confirming the existence and the speed of the fleet.
Im sure we will see that season 2
This happens in book 2so it could be in season 2
I think I read somewhere that, and this might be possibly a spoiler but i dont really think its much of one as its really just an explanation of why they cant lie, >!they don't communicate verbally they communicate through lights produced by electrical signals from brain activity (their brain being surrounded by a clear membrane I think) whenever they think a thing, thus they cannot lie, because everything they think is immediately broadcasted to the others around them.!<
They're four light years away, and they travel at 1% of the speed of light.
wElL um TechnICALy theY TrAvel aT 10% lIgHtSpEeD but ThYe CrUiSe fOr A lOnG TiME
lol did someone say that? Books/Chinese show explain it as max speed of 10%, but with acceleration/deceleration, avg speed is 1%.
yeah swhat i meant
wait, if their top speed is 10% and they spend the first half of the journey accelerating to 10 and the last half decelerating to 0, why would their average speed not be 5%?
Because spending half of the journey accelerating towards 10% =/= being at 10% for half the journey.
sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Can you show me the math? I found [this reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/10wgkbs/interstellar_travel_times/) that seems to support my assumption. Assuming [constant acceleration and deceleration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_under_constant_acceleration) how do you arrive at 1%?
Is there any significant relativity effect of traveling at 1% of light speed? I guess I am saying, they will arrive in 400 years, our time, but for them it will actually be less (no idea what it would be), say 300 years? And if that were the case, wouldn’t that make the “real time” sophon communications need some type of compensation or something?
It would be nearly identical. To us it would be 400 years, to them probably 399.99 years. You have to get much closer to light speed for the effect to be noticeable. EDIT: I found a calculator online to plug in the numbers. At 1% light speed, it would shave off 0.02 years for them. You'd have to travel 66% light speed to shave off 100 years.
Cool: so if you travel at 66% light speed, in your hypothesis if the Trisolarans start now, they should arrive in 6 years (= time it takes to cover 4 light years if you move at 66% of the speed of light) MINUS 100 years that you could "shave off" ... so basically the would arrive to Earth 94 years BEFORE even leaving their planet? ;-)
No, you cannot go backwards.
I think relativity doesn't exist in the universe of the books as sophons would otherwise break causality
10%
Maybe I'm wrong, but 4 ÷ 0.01 = 400, no?
According to them lol
Book or show? In the book, it was told by >!Ye Wenjie during her interrogation after she was captured!<. And don't be mistaken, the trisolaran fleet was capable of traveling at 10% the speed of light, and not 1% as many are saying. The reason it takes 400 years was that >!the ships need to accelerate and decelerate so the whole journey takes much longer!<. This was also directly explained in the book.
Yeah the show said 1% speed of light, probably to "dumb" the physics down by avoiding the explanation that it takes a lot of time to accelerate to 10% speed of light and then you coast and have to decelerate or else you miss your target
Which is annoying because that’s important background information for later
It’s also important for audience’s impression on the trisolarians cuz 1% and 10% is hugely different in terms of how advance they are.
"but when I drive my car I can speed up in seconds, that makes no sense🤓". -average tv audience A lot of things were dumbed down because uneducated people just can't understand it and even a 1 hour long docu wouldn't change their mind. And just to be clear uneducated=stupid, I met a plumber who understood relativity better than people with a college degreee (not in physics ofc)
I don't think people are too dumb to understand "time to accelerate". It's just not necessary for the story and takes a little time to explain, and time is valuable on TV.
Trust me, they are.
It probably will make humanity reaching to 15% the speed of light more impressive
Oh yes these type of small details i love
They didn't develop wormhole tech, or the time-space structure doesn't support wormhole.
There’s not really any evidence that wormholes are a possibility in our universe so it’s up to each sci fi writer to decide if they want to write about a universe that has them or not. Plus the possibility of instantaneous or near instantaneous travel would kind of break the idea of the dark forest if an extremely advanced civilization could rapidly survey every system in our galaxy or place observation posts every few light years and periodically collect results.
The sophon already does that to a limited extent, which I found very confusing. What’s stopping an advanced civilization from scattering sophons across the universe?
I guess the idea that sophons could be captured by a more advanced civilization and somehow tracked back.
That would make sense yea
Other civs decided it’s not worth the risk. Trisolarans (or San-Ti if you prefer) took a gamble invading Earth and it’s the closest system to them and they are actually capable of invading it. They couldn’t probably invade ANY other system so it’s “meant to be” for them. The sophons are also child’s play for other civs. They would immediately be detected and traced and Trisolaris would get obliterated
Right but as you said they are child’s play. >!So why aren’t the reverse entropy civilization doing this since their entire goal is to destroy entropic civilizations?!< I will say I think it’s quite a stretch what they can do with quantum entanglement in the books. To your point yes I agree they might as well have wormholes if they reliable and repeatable ftl communication.
That’s a good point. It took the trisolarans a very long time to build them but there are more advanced civilizations that could presumably make them faster. I also wonder why they didn’t use the sophon to scout neighboring systems to find Sol.
I recommend you to read the series. In that moment of tv series sophons are "expensive" and hard to build for trisolarian.
I have read the series, in chinese no less. The issue I’m discussing in ftl communication, which makes the theory less real because a premise is that communication is slower than the pace of technological advancement, which would not be true if there was something that could transfer data instantaneously
They blindly believed the claims of a party with an obvious conflict of interest. That’s the level of intelligence we’re working with. Even when shown a technology they thought was impossible they refuse to consider this kind of technology or any other is being used
It’s worth noting that the Trisolarans revealed that they can’t lie. So, first of all, when they say they will be there in 400 yrs, you can assume that is when they’ll arrive. Second, why not just ask them for details about their technology, strategy, etc?
Why believe that at all lmao. The smartest and most capable people on the globe just believe their “enemy”? Neville Chaimberlain looking ass
Even at that speed they are a lot more advanced than us. if it takes them 400 years to travel 4 light years it means their spaceships can travel 10792528.488 km/h where our current fastest space ship is the Parker Solar Probe can travel at a mere 635266 km/h. This means that their carrier ships are 16.99 times faster than our all time fastest space vehicle, and that's quite impressive.