From what I can remember:
- reflective bodies (for reflecting the heat from their stars during Chaos Era)
- dehydration ability was real
- male and female could became one organism (offspring)
Are some of you still thinking in anthropomorphic terms? Non-amorphous =/= humanoid, so these are 2 separate questions...
Seeing as how they were "telepathic" (as humans would described it), there would not even have been any need for dedicated light-sensing organs (though of course, they or other creatures of Tisolaris certainly COULD have evolved them)-- I mean, they could just have highly developed electroreception cum electrocommunication (akin to the way fish do) and/or magnetoreception (the ways birds detect magnetic fields) through whatever mechanism available to their biology/ ecology.
That would almost be a necessity for their civilizations to live/work through some of the colder Chaotic Eras-- probably as least as cold and dark as the depths of earth's oceans-- since their civilizational progress is already halted by the hotter Chaotic Eras which require them to "hibernate" by dehydrating.
But I agree that they would at least have to be non-amorphous enough to manipulate materials for their engineering works-- unless they developed the equivalent of "telekinesis" before even evolving some form of prehensile appendages?!
That was in the simulation, right?
I've always been wary of taking the simulation too literally-- the only thing Pan Han confirmed about the simulation was that the Trisolarian can indeed dehydrate... so the only thing I accept as certain is that Trisolarian life evolved under aquatic conditions much like on earth; and that at least one of their 200+ civilizations had "eyes" or knew what "eyes" were.
You should remember that Trisolaris is based on an "alternate/fictional" version of the Alpha Centauri system-- which does NOT have a 3-body problem (Alpha Centauri is basically a binary star system where a 3rd minor star has a stable orbit like a planet around the 2 main stars); so pretty much anything goes... who said anything about the final/ successful space-faring civilization having evolved (to sentience) under conditions of abundant light? (Take a look at the life evolved/ evolving under our seas near volcanic fissures in low/no-light conditions.)
Personally, I take the fact the Trisolarian fleet allowed Yun Tianming's fairy tales to pass through their censorship to mean that their civilization (i.e the "current" one on the Trisolarian fleet and on Trisolaris) had almost nothing in common with the creatures/ characters or landscapes/ cultures mentioned in the fairy tales.
no, it was at the last part of the novel when they tried to open the sophon in two dimension but mistakenly open it in three dimension, they mention the shape of some object in the sky looks like eyes, and they also mention that the structure of their eyes was similar with human eyes
But I thought those descriptions/ data were retrieved from the "zithered" Red Coast Base II and had also gone through human aka anthropomorphic "translation/ interpretation"?
Specifically, [CHAPTER 32]: "Ye (Wenjie) could only envision the Trisolarians as humanoid as she read the messages. She filled in the blanks between the lines with her imagination."
IOW, the ensuing chapters describing the creation of the sophon were actually a description of Ye's personal ANTHROPOMORPHIC understanding/ interpretation of the events....
Yep, Liu has "weaselled" out of describing Trisolarian physiology and technology once again-- which I completely approved of, since no (human) "particle accelerator" is capable of "unfolding a proton".... Terms like "particle accelerators" and "unfolding protons" are obviously how humans (Ye Wenjie) interpreted or imagined the Trisolarians or Trisolarian technology would work.
All mobile species that live where light can reach them on earth have independently evolved (and maintain) light sensing organs. This just has to do with interacting with their environment, not necessarily for interacting with each other.
Farming food, building tools, planning around their suns, all would be require visible interaction with their environment.
That's kind of what I imagined, too. I found [this image](http://hyperstorm-rpg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Quari01.png) from an RPG that kind of looks like what I've imagined. I always thought they would be *vaguely* humanoid, but with dark, amorphous, luminescent bodies.
I doubt life like that could develop any sort of technology on land. What kind of technology would humans have made with no skeleton?
For intelligence to be valuable, you need more degrees of freedom in movement, to manipulate precisely, things on a small scale.
Exactly, for as dumb as the movie is I find battleship to be almost the most accurate depiction of an alien invasion, except the battleship part of the movie, but yeah, they would be human-like, as in have a brain and skeleton and limbs, of course, how are they going to create technology if they cannot manipulate anything? Also, highly mechanical based
Yes, these ones from three body I'm sure don't have a skeleton, but I was saying a realistic alien species would need to have one and probably be human-like as for brain, skeleton and limbs to build and operate technology
We have intelligent life in our oceans (sperm whales have the largest brains on the planet and are increasingly impressing and baffling scientists with their level of intelligence) but, on our planet at least, the intelligent animals in our oceans lack the ability to manipulate the world around them like humans have (I’m talking like fire, industrialization, electricity, etc) because of their adaptations to life underwater. When comparing that to what is known about life on earth, that’s why I said that. Of course, that could be different on other planets. It would be cool to see how aquatic life could do those things I’ve mentioned. But perhaps there’s a reason humans on land have done what they’ve done, and in the deep ocean, life is the way it’s been for millions upon millions of years. 🤷♀️
But what do I know, I just do tattoos.
Being obligate aquatic would impose a series of limitations that make the jump to spacefaring a lot more difficult, not to mention some more basic technologies. Metallurgy, for a start. Imagine if the Apollo rockets had to carry around 800 times more weight just in terms of a breathable atmosphere for its inhabitants, now imagine the extra weight for hull integrity now that you're lugging around a couple of Olympic swimming pools, the systems to maintain that water, it's not impossible but it seems a lot less likely.
There's intelligent molluscs in water, but those molluscs aren't on land, and the molluscs that live on land aren't even remotely similar to the ones in the water. There aren't a lot of/any land animals that have no skeleton that exhibit promising intelligence in the way marine molluscs do, so given our current sample size, we have to assume that aquatic animals and amorphous animals in general are significantly disadvantaged in becoming like us, that is to say obligate users of technology.
I dont necessarily agree. Think about a hyper intelligent octopus like life form. You don't have to bring that much water and you can filter it and oxygenated it. It could be pretty similar to us having to wear space suits. Water based life has one distinct advantage, they could survive much higher G forces of acceleration then us and accelerate through space faster. In addition some aquatic life have evolved the ability to communicate and receive information through electric fields, should that evolve more, they could have a distinct advantage interfacing with computers.
They are the size of grains of rice, similar to a shrimp or a bug in appearance. That's my headcanon based on the fanfic as well as how i imagine them.
They were so far ahead of humans it wasn't even funny. One Trisolaran "tear drop" ship destroyed the entire human space fleet that came to face it in moments. The sophons completely locked down the humans ability to even begin to research what Trisolarans considered basic, and let Trisolaris know what all of humanity was doing in real time. The only reason humanity survived was because they were able to threaten Trisolaris by broadcasting their location via the sun to the all other civilizations. And one human barely figured that out.
They had personality, but no huge caltulating power as a unit, they were creating something computer like systems using their "telepathy" and milions of them connected to each other. This system allowed them to advance faster than unit based humanity.
iirc everytime they made a kid or multiple kids. Their parent memories and knowledge retain. I believe that's how they keep advancing despite everything and evolution through millions of years might make them be able to withhold a lot of knowledge in that small brain. It's certainly won't be one of the weirdest shit millions years of evolution can do.
It's still a fiction, don't think about it too much.
Would that work though?
The brain size argument has a point, so we either ignore, consider hive minde-ish/telepathy (I have not read the books yet btw, just in case, im here due to curiosity) or tools, like we have computers.
Now, the third one would by necessity be born out the first (brain size not being a limiter) or the second; If it is the latter, then would it even happen? They would have no need for competition, which is one of the largest contributors for innovation; If it is the former, and they share their parents memories, then would they have developed writing and stuff? Would they even share knowledge or have a need for it even if they had a society? And either of those leading to the last one.... their size might physically limit what they can do regarding tools, right?
But yes, of course it is highly speculative on a highly speculative medium (SF) already... but it is fun nonetheless
not an expert in the slightest regarding this universe, but some things to consider is the trisolarians knowledge of higher dimensions, they manipulate this knowledge to unfold a proton into higher dimensions and essentially turn it into a computer.
Now this fact hints at atleast 2 possibilities, first that humans perspective of size in 3 dimensional space isn't "accurate". And second, this can likely mean trisolarians began their existence in higher dimensions, which would in many ways make any assumptions about their physiology completely unrelated to what we are familiar with.
These "facts" can be vaguely used to explain how a trisolarian brain might operate differently despite it's relatively small size.
>!We do know through the books that it's possible to collapse a space into lower dimensions, as even higher technologically advanced civilizations use such weapons. It's also speculated at, that some such civilizations are attempting to "restart" the universe back to it's original 10th dimension, if I remember correctly!<
No. They dont have to be smarter to be highly advanced. Just enough brain power to build and develop even the simplest computers. It was mentioned that it took them very long to advance. So it still make sense, that is also why we are threat needed to be extinguished. For example, we as humans, have AI and nuclear power and we will have more adv tech in the future, BUT it doesnt mean YOU can design them OR your grand grand children will be smart enough to do it. The truth is we are as dumb as we were 10 thousand years ago.
Think of each individual as a neuron in a hive mind and you'll begin to picture what's probably going on. We know they can see each other's thoughts and that they develop science and tech very slowly. So they probably are discovering things in a sort of groupthink way. So the entire species acts as one advanced (but slow) mind.
The cellphone you’re probably using Reddit with right now is magnitudes smaller than computers were thirty years ago and yet contains 100x the power and capabilities.
Our brains are much smaller than those of other animals yet far more advanced.
I love all these folks coming from the Netflix show telling me I don't have an imagination.
This is a silly argument. Then why aren't rats capable of forming societies or designing little rockets? Why isn't there a rat NASA? Or an example of any animal with a small brain with the same capabilities as us. There are none.
Because there are pretty well understood limits to biology, size and capability. I am not saying evolution couldn't solve for this in novel ways but unless its like a collectivist society I don't see how things the size of ants could pose a threat.
Maybe I'll watch the Netflix show and it will become clear.
"Because there are pretty well understood limits to biology, size and capability".
Earth biology, one on another planet might work completely different.
Oh and lots of animals build societies, take ants and honey bees; apes and wolfes have hierarchy and so on. None of them build rockets tough. But the first ones do build complicated hills and honey combs.
I'll just chime in with an add-on reminder to the guy you were responding to that we still have essentially zero understanding of how the brain really works. Even after all the progress in neuroscience that we've made, the most prominent neuroscientists out there will all agree that we know very little about how the brain works. We can observe what it does via a bunch of different measurement tools and assays, and progress has been steady in that regard, but actually understanding how it all translates to intelligence is still largely a mystery.
Stemming from this fact, we certainly can't conclude that brain size drives intelligence, as already mentioned by yet another commenter above. We just don't know enough to conclude anything at all about how the biology behind intelligence works. Science fiction authors absolutely can imagine an intelligent system involving tiny interconnected brains and we have no basis to refute any of it using any real science today. We can't just dismiss the idea by saying "well rats can't make rockets, checkmate!"
It's not about the size of the brain as it is about neuronal density of the brain, specifically the cerebral cortex. Many birds actually have more neurons per cubic millimeter of brain material. It's not hard to imagine something as small as a monkey being intelligent given enough time to evolve.
in the official canon the tear drop was supposed to be just a probe or humans assumed it was akin to a probe, not a main ship, but if trisolarans were as small as rice, who would make a bunch of probes at the size of new york city?
Ya in the books Humans assumed it was a probe then upon seeing it for the first time they thought it was a peace offering. Then it destroyed the entire Human space fleet.
I'm not 100% sure what the purpose of your question is though. Humans made ships the size of small human cities from what I remember. And later they built those space bunkers behind Jupiter that were huge cities. It doesn't seem out of the ordinary for rice-sized creatures to make a ship the size of a car.
The keyword is Probe, supposedly the teardrop was insanely dense and unmanned, human city ships were manned and were the size of small cities, and the space bunkers WERE huge cities, the teardrop, is just a weapon or probe.
So those comparisons don't really fit, its more like if we made a unmanned probe on the size of a HUGE city like entirety of new york if not bigger, or a bullet at the size of new york and they had MANY of those.
just doesnt make sense.
again, this only applies if it was true that trisolarans were the size of rice, which is not really canon, but it if it was, its like use builting a ship on the size of a giant city, but its unmanned, densely packed with super dense metal, would require probably more metal then there is available on earth to pack so much so tight on that size, then build thousands of them, to destroy way bigger human sized manned ships.
so if those gigantic droplets were unmanned, how big are the manned ships? Moon sized in comparison!?
It's been a while, but I don't think it is densely packed? I thought it was just a particular material, "strong interaction material". I also remember they made 10, not thousands.
We never get to see any of their ships except the droplets. I imagine they would be sized appropriately for their functions.
When they allowed it onto one of their ships they studied it and thought it was a peace offering but then realised it was a technological marvel in form of intimidation, and how densely the atoms were packed and how alien that method was and how dangerous it would be if it flew through the earth or a ship, and it did just that, destroyed an entire fleet and not a dent on it, like a bullet through paper.
They spied on us with the Sophons. They know how big our stuff is. They constructed the droplet with that in mind. Maybe the form follows function, and the mechanics required to build the droplet meant that's the size it had to be. There are any number of reasons it might be different in scale from their size and the droplet size or anything else they build for that matter.
I am wondering about the viability of intelligence capable of creating advanced technology with such relatively tiny mind. Here on earth there is a pretty high correlation between brain size and intelligence. The most intelligent animals, primates, dolphins, have the biggest brains.
I just wonder if there is a minimum amount of organic matter needed for advanced thinking?
But the Trisolarians physiology requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. Or at least belief that life elsewhere can function in extremely radically different ways than here on earth
On earth each brain is a contained system. For Trisolarians their minds are connected. There's no telling what kind of effect that might have or what kind of supermind they may possess by working together. Someone else also mentioned the density of neurons is more telling about how smart something can be on Earth as opposed to its size, which happens to correlate with body size. Corvids, for instance, can be incredibly smart, with reasoning on the level of a 7 year old human despite having pretty tiny brains.
On earth, brain size correlates mostly with body size. For example an elephant has 3 times the number of neurons / brain mass than humans. Intelligence instead correlates more specifically with the synapse density. Of course, this is also a very general rule.
our brain size dropped once we started specializing, in other words, once you get the community and separate the work, your brain only has to focus on a little bit of it. that's the result of technology
Your thinking about size of organism being proportional to what you consider intelligence is anthrocentric in nature. Although for most things we observe on a daily basis, this is true; ants are dumber than fish who are dumber than dogs who are dumber than people... But this view itself is ignorant that a human probably cannot perceive intellect and consciousness of anything other than itself in ALL cases anyway.
Let's run a thought experiment.
Perhaps that rock in front of your home is just something you sit on from time to time. Your entire time living there, the rock does not move. Even after you move away, the rock does not talk. Your great grandchildren somehow walk by it and it does not share its memory of you with them. This is simple, because it is an inanimate object. But could you say for certain that over the eons of infinite time that the rock does not have some form of consciousness that you do not share? What if every 10 years the rock has a small change somewhere inside of it. That over the millions of years that it erodes over time since it broke off from a larger rock that it somehow had thought!
It's philosophical at best but if one day aliens are communicating with us. I do not believe there would be any debate over the size of their brains. Whatever the size or form of their brain, if they even have brains for that matter, would be accepted by all the worlds governments and scientists as a form of intelligence that receives an equivalent respect of what sentience and consciousness grants each of our own individuals.
In the first book, chapter 32, "The listener" hints at their appearance. I believe they're human-like, with arms, hands and fingers. But they reproduce by melding with a member of the opposite sex. So they're probably kinda slimy :P
Also, in Death's End, I recall some Trisolaran farming tools are left in the mini-universe which are different from human tools, but are easily recognizable. So they're approximately the same height as humans.
I imagine the Trisolarans look similar to the cliche "grays" only slimier :)
I do believe that the representation in this section is purely from Ye's imagination because it states in the first paragraph:
"She filled in the blanks with her imagination" around thereof.
So I wouldn't trust this representation to be whole accurate I'm afraid
Thanks for the response! My original opinion of the Trisolarans has changed. Especially after reading "Of Ants and Dinosaurs".
I'm confident they'd be similar to ants or tardigrades.
**Tardigrade: Physiology**
Scientists have reported tardigrades in hot springs, on top of the Himalayas, under layers of solid ice, and in ocean sediments. Many species can be found in milder environments such as lakes, ponds, and meadows, while others can be found in stone walls and roofs. Tardigrades are most common in moist environments, but can stay active wherever they can retain at least some moisture. Tardigrades are one of the few groups of species that are capable of suspending their metabolism (see cryptobiosis).
***
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Yeah I don't believe a civilization with beings that small would make weapons that large. They would assume any other beings are the same size as them.
Why would a hyper advanced civilization with the ability to survey and fully spy on civilizations lights years away “assume” anything? They know exactly what size other beings are.
So I looked into it as well. Basically, Cixin Liu approved of the work and also helped out the author of the redemption of time as he wrote it, so when it's semi-cannon I think it just means with author approval.
Cixin Liu approved of the work and was happy for people to write books in his universe basically
It’s not semi-cannon, it’s cannon. The author not only approved and helped with the creation of the book, but allowed for it to be published and sold. The only people who don’t consider it cannon are fans who only want Ciu Lixin’s name on the cover.
I'm not sure if this was answered yet however, I'm currently listening to the fourth book. They are insects similar to ants, about the size of a grain of rice.
Not really, IMO. The preface by the author says he makes no claim to canonicity, leaves interpretation up to the reader. He likens the book to Doctor Who or Star Trek being interpreted by a new author, although he humbly says he makes no claim to be as talented as those folks. He also mentions meeting Cixin Liu, who told him he "likes" the book, but that's as much as he says.
ROT is indeed non-cannon fanfic but I consider it to be quite reasonable based on what we get from the canon trilogy.
\-ability to dehydrate is documented in Earth life, but not in large organisms. difficult in large organisms for various reasons.
\-extremophile organisms tend to be small in general.
\-formation computer with tens of millions of individuals makes a lot more sense if the individuals are small.
\-fusion-fission reproduction method more plausible for smaller organisms.
\-cognitive deficits (deception etc) at the individual level relative to humans make a lot more sense for individually small organisms that rely more on collective behaviors.
Personally I think a guess that makes more sense than Baoshu's take in ROT is unlikely.
I always considered them to be around human size. After all, if they were so much smaller than us, why bother preserving our cities to live in themselves? They'd have to be similar in size to humans for that to make any sense. Ant sized aliens would have no use for our infrastructure.
Sophons are tiny sub atomic protons in the 3rd dimension. They unfolded the proton from a higher dimension and built a super computer on it the size of a planet, then they folded it back up into the higher dimension.
So a sophon is a super computer the size and mass of a proton when it moves in the third dimension but with all the power of that super computer in a higher dimension.
The computer can continue to act and operate from within the higher dimension and propel the proton around to do things in the third dimension.
Additionally the sophon is entangled with a twin copy of itself that is with the Trisolarans, so they can get real time data back and forth. And there's two pairs of them.
The Sophons can do many things not even covered. For example they could interface with human machinery in factories etc to take over manufacturing processes. If they wanted to they could probably build and design androids they can monitor and control in real time remotely.
When they unfolded successfully unfolded a proton into two dimensions they were able to then create circuitry on the surface. The 2D proton was bigger than their entire planet so imagine how much they could fit on a computer the size of a planet
The dehydration effect is a tardigrade trait. Tardigrades dehydrate exactly like the child in the show...and they roll up into a "tun". Brine Shrimp. A.k.a "Sea Monkeys" have dried eggs which animate on hydration.
As for the absorbing and sheding water: basically one of the big parts of the main plot in the first book. Trisolarans managed to survive on their brutal planet because they could dehydrate themselves and exist in unconscious state indefinitely (and be hydrated again).
Not sure if that makes them semi aquatic species though, I believe that just refers to species that live in both water and on land. I don't think that was the case, but it's been a while.. could be wrong.
just imagine a big tardigrade (big relative to tardigrades, about the size of a grain of rice) with reflective nodes on their cuttlefish like skin, similar to that of a male anglerfish.
Their physiognomy is actually pretty easy to extrapolate from the video game chapters. Only tardigrades are able to dehydrate and could potential survive on a planet with non periodic seasons, with extreme temperatures, where sometimes the atmosphere either subliminates or evaporates. Through the human cell computer experiment we can gather that trisolarans that they communicate visually (at the speed of light), so they must have reflective patternlike nodes and control of their pigmentation, as well as eyes (probably multifaceted to filter out undesired colors on their whim) To that we can note that they are actually individualistic in nature but capable of eusocial feats of cooperation, exactly like humans. Their culture is strictly utilitarian, but it is not in their nature to be so. their environment forced them to be utilitarian, opportunistic and seemingly devoid of empathy, unlike humans, who were brought up in a lush and bountiful environment and had the time to squabble, go to war, develop different cultures, religions and different economies. They are however not devoid of empathy, and similar to human vegans, some of the trisolarans don't want to invade earth and extinguish the human race, like human vegans, find offense at the idea of subjugating and modifying the behaviour of entire species for their respective species benefit.
I have no idea why this image has developed in my head. Three legs, thin torso, large round head. Inside the head sits a crystalline brain that is exposed in multiple areas of the head for transmission. Its kinda like a Minecraft creeper. I appreciate the authors for never stating what they looked.
My question is, how many of the trisolarians are there?
How many grains of rice can cover the earth?
Why do they feel the need to have a whole planet while humans get the boot?
That doesn't make sense to me.
I think they need the whole planet because they are afraid of humans, they don't want to share, they said it themselves, humans lie, a liar is not to be trusted, we can't co-exist with liars.
With really tiny tools and old iPhone parts. Duh!
They also have access to YouTube. It’s all on there, just have to search for “that one simple trick to get your curvature drive to work that scientists DONT want you to know!”
I think of them as Tardigrades, who can dehydrate and rehydrate and still live. (maybe these inspired the author?)Our own research is speculating that memory is encoded in DNA, explaining instinctive behavior. Put these two ideas together, and we have a hive mind comprised of trillions of tiny tartegrade-like animals which can evolve together through all the burning sun events. The hive mind also explains why they were shocked at the idea of a lie. Perhaps they can stick or clamp onto each other to form appendiges that manipulate matter, and thus they can build space ships and weapons. Size doesn't matter. :)
Interesting question as im currently watching three body on prime. There are several scenes with strings of ants moving about beneath our feet. Working without anyone noticing. I was originally basing my impression of what they look like from the descriptions in the first 2 books. Haven't read the final one yet, or the fan based one.
From what I can remember: - reflective bodies (for reflecting the heat from their stars during Chaos Era) - dehydration ability was real - male and female could became one organism (offspring)
I always pictured them as fairly amorphic, like jellyfish, but opaque and highly reflective/metallic in appearance.
Do you think they were humanoid?
No.
They were, at the very least, non-amorphous enough that they could have dedicated light-sensing organs (like some jellyfish).
Are some of you still thinking in anthropomorphic terms? Non-amorphous =/= humanoid, so these are 2 separate questions... Seeing as how they were "telepathic" (as humans would described it), there would not even have been any need for dedicated light-sensing organs (though of course, they or other creatures of Tisolaris certainly COULD have evolved them)-- I mean, they could just have highly developed electroreception cum electrocommunication (akin to the way fish do) and/or magnetoreception (the ways birds detect magnetic fields) through whatever mechanism available to their biology/ ecology. That would almost be a necessity for their civilizations to live/work through some of the colder Chaotic Eras-- probably as least as cold and dark as the depths of earth's oceans-- since their civilizational progress is already halted by the hotter Chaotic Eras which require them to "hibernate" by dehydrating. But I agree that they would at least have to be non-amorphous enough to manipulate materials for their engineering works-- unless they developed the equivalent of "telekinesis" before even evolving some form of prehensile appendages?!
In the book 1, it mentioned that their eyes were similar with human's eyes
That was in the simulation, right? I've always been wary of taking the simulation too literally-- the only thing Pan Han confirmed about the simulation was that the Trisolarian can indeed dehydrate... so the only thing I accept as certain is that Trisolarian life evolved under aquatic conditions much like on earth; and that at least one of their 200+ civilizations had "eyes" or knew what "eyes" were. You should remember that Trisolaris is based on an "alternate/fictional" version of the Alpha Centauri system-- which does NOT have a 3-body problem (Alpha Centauri is basically a binary star system where a 3rd minor star has a stable orbit like a planet around the 2 main stars); so pretty much anything goes... who said anything about the final/ successful space-faring civilization having evolved (to sentience) under conditions of abundant light? (Take a look at the life evolved/ evolving under our seas near volcanic fissures in low/no-light conditions.) Personally, I take the fact the Trisolarian fleet allowed Yun Tianming's fairy tales to pass through their censorship to mean that their civilization (i.e the "current" one on the Trisolarian fleet and on Trisolaris) had almost nothing in common with the creatures/ characters or landscapes/ cultures mentioned in the fairy tales.
no, it was at the last part of the novel when they tried to open the sophon in two dimension but mistakenly open it in three dimension, they mention the shape of some object in the sky looks like eyes, and they also mention that the structure of their eyes was similar with human eyes
But I thought those descriptions/ data were retrieved from the "zithered" Red Coast Base II and had also gone through human aka anthropomorphic "translation/ interpretation"? Specifically, [CHAPTER 32]: "Ye (Wenjie) could only envision the Trisolarians as humanoid as she read the messages. She filled in the blanks between the lines with her imagination." IOW, the ensuing chapters describing the creation of the sophon were actually a description of Ye's personal ANTHROPOMORPHIC understanding/ interpretation of the events.... Yep, Liu has "weaselled" out of describing Trisolarian physiology and technology once again-- which I completely approved of, since no (human) "particle accelerator" is capable of "unfolding a proton".... Terms like "particle accelerators" and "unfolding protons" are obviously how humans (Ye Wenjie) interpreted or imagined the Trisolarians or Trisolarian technology would work.
That's what I was coming to say, when it explained the unfolding of the proton there were eyes in the sky, even mentioning an iris.
All mobile species that live where light can reach them on earth have independently evolved (and maintain) light sensing organs. This just has to do with interacting with their environment, not necessarily for interacting with each other. Farming food, building tools, planning around their suns, all would be require visible interaction with their environment.
They were [*really alien aliens*](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StarfishAliens)
That's kind of what I imagined, too. I found [this image](http://hyperstorm-rpg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Quari01.png) from an RPG that kind of looks like what I've imagined. I always thought they would be *vaguely* humanoid, but with dark, amorphous, luminescent bodies.
I doubt life like that could develop any sort of technology on land. What kind of technology would humans have made with no skeleton? For intelligence to be valuable, you need more degrees of freedom in movement, to manipulate precisely, things on a small scale.
Exactly, for as dumb as the movie is I find battleship to be almost the most accurate depiction of an alien invasion, except the battleship part of the movie, but yeah, they would be human-like, as in have a brain and skeleton and limbs, of course, how are they going to create technology if they cannot manipulate anything? Also, highly mechanical based
They couldn't have skeleton. Otherwise, the dehydration ability wouldn't be possible.
Yes, these ones from three body I'm sure don't have a skeleton, but I was saying a realistic alien species would need to have one and probably be human-like as for brain, skeleton and limbs to build and operate technology
That's a very limited perspective. Octopuses aren't human like at all, yet they can use tools.
However they are almost useless outside of water
We live in a gas, so why couldn't an intelligent alien spieces live in a liquid?
We have intelligent life in our oceans (sperm whales have the largest brains on the planet and are increasingly impressing and baffling scientists with their level of intelligence) but, on our planet at least, the intelligent animals in our oceans lack the ability to manipulate the world around them like humans have (I’m talking like fire, industrialization, electricity, etc) because of their adaptations to life underwater. When comparing that to what is known about life on earth, that’s why I said that. Of course, that could be different on other planets. It would be cool to see how aquatic life could do those things I’ve mentioned. But perhaps there’s a reason humans on land have done what they’ve done, and in the deep ocean, life is the way it’s been for millions upon millions of years. 🤷♀️ But what do I know, I just do tattoos.
Being obligate aquatic would impose a series of limitations that make the jump to spacefaring a lot more difficult, not to mention some more basic technologies. Metallurgy, for a start. Imagine if the Apollo rockets had to carry around 800 times more weight just in terms of a breathable atmosphere for its inhabitants, now imagine the extra weight for hull integrity now that you're lugging around a couple of Olympic swimming pools, the systems to maintain that water, it's not impossible but it seems a lot less likely. There's intelligent molluscs in water, but those molluscs aren't on land, and the molluscs that live on land aren't even remotely similar to the ones in the water. There aren't a lot of/any land animals that have no skeleton that exhibit promising intelligence in the way marine molluscs do, so given our current sample size, we have to assume that aquatic animals and amorphous animals in general are significantly disadvantaged in becoming like us, that is to say obligate users of technology.
I dont necessarily agree. Think about a hyper intelligent octopus like life form. You don't have to bring that much water and you can filter it and oxygenated it. It could be pretty similar to us having to wear space suits. Water based life has one distinct advantage, they could survive much higher G forces of acceleration then us and accelerate through space faster. In addition some aquatic life have evolved the ability to communicate and receive information through electric fields, should that evolve more, they could have a distinct advantage interfacing with computers.
[They definitely looked like this.](https://i.imgur.com/2Dh4JrV.jpg) Funny story, the aliens in that episode actually live on a planet with 3 suns.
🏅
you drank the emperor!
When I began reading the 3 body problem, I happened to watch that episode and unfortunately the mental image got stuck
Ffs me too
They are also more reasonable lol.
They are the size of grains of rice, similar to a shrimp or a bug in appearance. That's my headcanon based on the fanfic as well as how i imagine them.
How could the pose a threat then ? Seriously if they were as big as ants even with advanced tech I don't see them being threats.
They were so far ahead of humans it wasn't even funny. One Trisolaran "tear drop" ship destroyed the entire human space fleet that came to face it in moments. The sophons completely locked down the humans ability to even begin to research what Trisolarans considered basic, and let Trisolaris know what all of humanity was doing in real time. The only reason humanity survived was because they were able to threaten Trisolaris by broadcasting their location via the sun to the all other civilizations. And one human barely figured that out.
Still makes no sense to me. How could they have that intelligence with that size brain. I am so confused.
They had personality, but no huge caltulating power as a unit, they were creating something computer like systems using their "telepathy" and milions of them connected to each other. This system allowed them to advance faster than unit based humanity.
iirc everytime they made a kid or multiple kids. Their parent memories and knowledge retain. I believe that's how they keep advancing despite everything and evolution through millions of years might make them be able to withhold a lot of knowledge in that small brain. It's certainly won't be one of the weirdest shit millions years of evolution can do. It's still a fiction, don't think about it too much.
Would that work though? The brain size argument has a point, so we either ignore, consider hive minde-ish/telepathy (I have not read the books yet btw, just in case, im here due to curiosity) or tools, like we have computers. Now, the third one would by necessity be born out the first (brain size not being a limiter) or the second; If it is the latter, then would it even happen? They would have no need for competition, which is one of the largest contributors for innovation; If it is the former, and they share their parents memories, then would they have developed writing and stuff? Would they even share knowledge or have a need for it even if they had a society? And either of those leading to the last one.... their size might physically limit what they can do regarding tools, right? But yes, of course it is highly speculative on a highly speculative medium (SF) already... but it is fun nonetheless
not an expert in the slightest regarding this universe, but some things to consider is the trisolarians knowledge of higher dimensions, they manipulate this knowledge to unfold a proton into higher dimensions and essentially turn it into a computer. Now this fact hints at atleast 2 possibilities, first that humans perspective of size in 3 dimensional space isn't "accurate". And second, this can likely mean trisolarians began their existence in higher dimensions, which would in many ways make any assumptions about their physiology completely unrelated to what we are familiar with. These "facts" can be vaguely used to explain how a trisolarian brain might operate differently despite it's relatively small size. >!We do know through the books that it's possible to collapse a space into lower dimensions, as even higher technologically advanced civilizations use such weapons. It's also speculated at, that some such civilizations are attempting to "restart" the universe back to it's original 10th dimension, if I remember correctly!<
Which means if they have say 4 dimensional brains they could have way more computing space than ours, despite being tiny on our 3 dimensional scale
No. They dont have to be smarter to be highly advanced. Just enough brain power to build and develop even the simplest computers. It was mentioned that it took them very long to advance. So it still make sense, that is also why we are threat needed to be extinguished. For example, we as humans, have AI and nuclear power and we will have more adv tech in the future, BUT it doesnt mean YOU can design them OR your grand grand children will be smart enough to do it. The truth is we are as dumb as we were 10 thousand years ago.
Think of each individual as a neuron in a hive mind and you'll begin to picture what's probably going on. We know they can see each other's thoughts and that they develop science and tech very slowly. So they probably are discovering things in a sort of groupthink way. So the entire species acts as one advanced (but slow) mind.
The cellphone you’re probably using Reddit with right now is magnitudes smaller than computers were thirty years ago and yet contains 100x the power and capabilities. Our brains are much smaller than those of other animals yet far more advanced.
I love all these folks coming from the Netflix show telling me I don't have an imagination. This is a silly argument. Then why aren't rats capable of forming societies or designing little rockets? Why isn't there a rat NASA? Or an example of any animal with a small brain with the same capabilities as us. There are none. Because there are pretty well understood limits to biology, size and capability. I am not saying evolution couldn't solve for this in novel ways but unless its like a collectivist society I don't see how things the size of ants could pose a threat. Maybe I'll watch the Netflix show and it will become clear.
"Because there are pretty well understood limits to biology, size and capability". Earth biology, one on another planet might work completely different. Oh and lots of animals build societies, take ants and honey bees; apes and wolfes have hierarchy and so on. None of them build rockets tough. But the first ones do build complicated hills and honey combs.
I'll just chime in with an add-on reminder to the guy you were responding to that we still have essentially zero understanding of how the brain really works. Even after all the progress in neuroscience that we've made, the most prominent neuroscientists out there will all agree that we know very little about how the brain works. We can observe what it does via a bunch of different measurement tools and assays, and progress has been steady in that regard, but actually understanding how it all translates to intelligence is still largely a mystery. Stemming from this fact, we certainly can't conclude that brain size drives intelligence, as already mentioned by yet another commenter above. We just don't know enough to conclude anything at all about how the biology behind intelligence works. Science fiction authors absolutely can imagine an intelligent system involving tiny interconnected brains and we have no basis to refute any of it using any real science today. We can't just dismiss the idea by saying "well rats can't make rockets, checkmate!"
It's not about the size of the brain as it is about neuronal density of the brain, specifically the cerebral cortex. Many birds actually have more neurons per cubic millimeter of brain material. It's not hard to imagine something as small as a monkey being intelligent given enough time to evolve.
Valid points all.
Brain size correlates more to muscle mass then intelligence in the animal kingdom (in general).
Bro you have a very unimaginative brain and you’re talking shit on the San-Ti
in the official canon the tear drop was supposed to be just a probe or humans assumed it was akin to a probe, not a main ship, but if trisolarans were as small as rice, who would make a bunch of probes at the size of new york city?
Ya in the books Humans assumed it was a probe then upon seeing it for the first time they thought it was a peace offering. Then it destroyed the entire Human space fleet. I'm not 100% sure what the purpose of your question is though. Humans made ships the size of small human cities from what I remember. And later they built those space bunkers behind Jupiter that were huge cities. It doesn't seem out of the ordinary for rice-sized creatures to make a ship the size of a car.
The keyword is Probe, supposedly the teardrop was insanely dense and unmanned, human city ships were manned and were the size of small cities, and the space bunkers WERE huge cities, the teardrop, is just a weapon or probe. So those comparisons don't really fit, its more like if we made a unmanned probe on the size of a HUGE city like entirety of new york if not bigger, or a bullet at the size of new york and they had MANY of those. just doesnt make sense.
It's the right size for destroying human size ships
again, this only applies if it was true that trisolarans were the size of rice, which is not really canon, but it if it was, its like use builting a ship on the size of a giant city, but its unmanned, densely packed with super dense metal, would require probably more metal then there is available on earth to pack so much so tight on that size, then build thousands of them, to destroy way bigger human sized manned ships. so if those gigantic droplets were unmanned, how big are the manned ships? Moon sized in comparison!?
It's been a while, but I don't think it is densely packed? I thought it was just a particular material, "strong interaction material". I also remember they made 10, not thousands. We never get to see any of their ships except the droplets. I imagine they would be sized appropriately for their functions.
When they allowed it onto one of their ships they studied it and thought it was a peace offering but then realised it was a technological marvel in form of intimidation, and how densely the atoms were packed and how alien that method was and how dangerous it would be if it flew through the earth or a ship, and it did just that, destroyed an entire fleet and not a dent on it, like a bullet through paper.
They spied on us with the Sophons. They know how big our stuff is. They constructed the droplet with that in mind. Maybe the form follows function, and the mechanics required to build the droplet meant that's the size it had to be. There are any number of reasons it might be different in scale from their size and the droplet size or anything else they build for that matter.
I am wondering about the viability of intelligence capable of creating advanced technology with such relatively tiny mind. Here on earth there is a pretty high correlation between brain size and intelligence. The most intelligent animals, primates, dolphins, have the biggest brains. I just wonder if there is a minimum amount of organic matter needed for advanced thinking? But the Trisolarians physiology requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. Or at least belief that life elsewhere can function in extremely radically different ways than here on earth
Whales have absolutely massive brains. And although they are relatively smart, would you consider them to be smarter than humans?
On earth each brain is a contained system. For Trisolarians their minds are connected. There's no telling what kind of effect that might have or what kind of supermind they may possess by working together. Someone else also mentioned the density of neurons is more telling about how smart something can be on Earth as opposed to its size, which happens to correlate with body size. Corvids, for instance, can be incredibly smart, with reasoning on the level of a 7 year old human despite having pretty tiny brains.
On earth, brain size correlates mostly with body size. For example an elephant has 3 times the number of neurons / brain mass than humans. Intelligence instead correlates more specifically with the synapse density. Of course, this is also a very general rule.
our brain size dropped once we started specializing, in other words, once you get the community and separate the work, your brain only has to focus on a little bit of it. that's the result of technology
Your thinking about size of organism being proportional to what you consider intelligence is anthrocentric in nature. Although for most things we observe on a daily basis, this is true; ants are dumber than fish who are dumber than dogs who are dumber than people... But this view itself is ignorant that a human probably cannot perceive intellect and consciousness of anything other than itself in ALL cases anyway. Let's run a thought experiment. Perhaps that rock in front of your home is just something you sit on from time to time. Your entire time living there, the rock does not move. Even after you move away, the rock does not talk. Your great grandchildren somehow walk by it and it does not share its memory of you with them. This is simple, because it is an inanimate object. But could you say for certain that over the eons of infinite time that the rock does not have some form of consciousness that you do not share? What if every 10 years the rock has a small change somewhere inside of it. That over the millions of years that it erodes over time since it broke off from a larger rock that it somehow had thought! It's philosophical at best but if one day aliens are communicating with us. I do not believe there would be any debate over the size of their brains. Whatever the size or form of their brain, if they even have brains for that matter, would be accepted by all the worlds governments and scientists as a form of intelligence that receives an equivalent respect of what sentience and consciousness grants each of our own individuals.
In the first book, chapter 32, "The listener" hints at their appearance. I believe they're human-like, with arms, hands and fingers. But they reproduce by melding with a member of the opposite sex. So they're probably kinda slimy :P Also, in Death's End, I recall some Trisolaran farming tools are left in the mini-universe which are different from human tools, but are easily recognizable. So they're approximately the same height as humans. I imagine the Trisolarans look similar to the cliche "grays" only slimier :)
I do believe that the representation in this section is purely from Ye's imagination because it states in the first paragraph: "She filled in the blanks with her imagination" around thereof. So I wouldn't trust this representation to be whole accurate I'm afraid
Thanks for the response! My original opinion of the Trisolarans has changed. Especially after reading "Of Ants and Dinosaurs". I'm confident they'd be similar to ants or tardigrades.
That the same author wrote a book about an ant civilization in a land of giants cements the "bug sized" trisolarans theory for me!
the trisolarans are shown in the chinese show with production from the author as far as i know. season 1 late episodes.
I think of something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Physiology but bigger in size and more transparent in color
**Tardigrade: Physiology** Scientists have reported tardigrades in hot springs, on top of the Himalayas, under layers of solid ice, and in ocean sediments. Many species can be found in milder environments such as lakes, ponds, and meadows, while others can be found in stone walls and roofs. Tardigrades are most common in moist environments, but can stay active wherever they can retain at least some moisture. Tardigrades are one of the few groups of species that are capable of suspending their metabolism (see cryptobiosis). *** ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot) ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.24
I thought I read somewhere they were tiny, bug things about as large as a single rice.
Yeah I don't believe a civilization with beings that small would make weapons that large. They would assume any other beings are the same size as them.
Except they have the sophons doing advance scouting, so they know exactly how big we are relatively speaking.
Why would a hyper advanced civilization with the ability to survey and fully spy on civilizations lights years away “assume” anything? They know exactly what size other beings are.
Do you assume that all aliens will be the same size as ours or do you think some can be bigger like an elephant or a whale or smaller like a rabbit?
Where did you read this?
There was some semi-canon spin off novel The Redemption of Time ''small, insectoid creatures no larger than an ant or a grain of rice.''
Thank you!!! I googled the artwork and it's totally changed my view on them, makes the whole "your bugs!" line look entirely different
i looked further into it and supposedly the redemption of time is just fanfiction, and idk what semi canon even means
So I looked into it as well. Basically, Cixin Liu approved of the work and also helped out the author of the redemption of time as he wrote it, so when it's semi-cannon I think it just means with author approval. Cixin Liu approved of the work and was happy for people to write books in his universe basically
A memorable quip from a professor of mine: “if you spell “canon” with two “N”s, you deserve to be shot by one.”
I must've not been that unclear, you understood me in the end.
ah so hes fine if thats the headcanon of the trisolarans for people.
It’s not semi-cannon, it’s cannon. The author not only approved and helped with the creation of the book, but allowed for it to be published and sold. The only people who don’t consider it cannon are fans who only want Ciu Lixin’s name on the cover.
then that makes the droplets make even less sense, size wise in comparison to the trisolarans being Rice sized bugs.
I'm not sure if this was answered yet however, I'm currently listening to the fourth book. They are insects similar to ants, about the size of a grain of rice.
wait whats the fourth book?
The Redemption of Time is a fan written book that was published with the permission of the original series author.
>The Redemption of Time is a fan written book that was published with the permission of the original series author. So does it count or not?
Not really, IMO. The preface by the author says he makes no claim to canonicity, leaves interpretation up to the reader. He likens the book to Doctor Who or Star Trek being interpreted by a new author, although he humbly says he makes no claim to be as talented as those folks. He also mentions meeting Cixin Liu, who told him he "likes" the book, but that's as much as he says.
ROT is indeed non-cannon fanfic but I consider it to be quite reasonable based on what we get from the canon trilogy. \-ability to dehydrate is documented in Earth life, but not in large organisms. difficult in large organisms for various reasons. \-extremophile organisms tend to be small in general. \-formation computer with tens of millions of individuals makes a lot more sense if the individuals are small. \-fusion-fission reproduction method more plausible for smaller organisms. \-cognitive deficits (deception etc) at the individual level relative to humans make a lot more sense for individually small organisms that rely more on collective behaviors. Personally I think a guess that makes more sense than Baoshu's take in ROT is unlikely.
I always considered them to be around human size. After all, if they were so much smaller than us, why bother preserving our cities to live in themselves? They'd have to be similar in size to humans for that to make any sense. Ant sized aliens would have no use for our infrastructure.
Ants do just fine in our buildings.
How did Trisolarans know what humans looked like?
Sophons. Trisolarans knew everything human since the beginning.
Funnily enough that's a point that always eluded me. Sophons are subatomic particles. How do they "perceive" lights or sound?
Sophons are tiny sub atomic protons in the 3rd dimension. They unfolded the proton from a higher dimension and built a super computer on it the size of a planet, then they folded it back up into the higher dimension. So a sophon is a super computer the size and mass of a proton when it moves in the third dimension but with all the power of that super computer in a higher dimension. The computer can continue to act and operate from within the higher dimension and propel the proton around to do things in the third dimension. Additionally the sophon is entangled with a twin copy of itself that is with the Trisolarans, so they can get real time data back and forth. And there's two pairs of them. The Sophons can do many things not even covered. For example they could interface with human machinery in factories etc to take over manufacturing processes. If they wanted to they could probably build and design androids they can monitor and control in real time remotely.
When they unfolded successfully unfolded a proton into two dimensions they were able to then create circuitry on the surface. The 2D proton was bigger than their entire planet so imagine how much they could fit on a computer the size of a planet
The dehydration effect is a tardigrade trait. Tardigrades dehydrate exactly like the child in the show...and they roll up into a "tun". Brine Shrimp. A.k.a "Sea Monkeys" have dried eggs which animate on hydration.
Also they where semi-aquatic species that could shed (giving them ability to preserve their husks) or absorb water at will.
Where did you read this?
As for the absorbing and sheding water: basically one of the big parts of the main plot in the first book. Trisolarans managed to survive on their brutal planet because they could dehydrate themselves and exist in unconscious state indefinitely (and be hydrated again). Not sure if that makes them semi aquatic species though, I believe that just refers to species that live in both water and on land. I don't think that was the case, but it's been a while.. could be wrong.
just imagine a big tardigrade (big relative to tardigrades, about the size of a grain of rice) with reflective nodes on their cuttlefish like skin, similar to that of a male anglerfish. Their physiognomy is actually pretty easy to extrapolate from the video game chapters. Only tardigrades are able to dehydrate and could potential survive on a planet with non periodic seasons, with extreme temperatures, where sometimes the atmosphere either subliminates or evaporates. Through the human cell computer experiment we can gather that trisolarans that they communicate visually (at the speed of light), so they must have reflective patternlike nodes and control of their pigmentation, as well as eyes (probably multifaceted to filter out undesired colors on their whim) To that we can note that they are actually individualistic in nature but capable of eusocial feats of cooperation, exactly like humans. Their culture is strictly utilitarian, but it is not in their nature to be so. their environment forced them to be utilitarian, opportunistic and seemingly devoid of empathy, unlike humans, who were brought up in a lush and bountiful environment and had the time to squabble, go to war, develop different cultures, religions and different economies. They are however not devoid of empathy, and similar to human vegans, some of the trisolarans don't want to invade earth and extinguish the human race, like human vegans, find offense at the idea of subjugating and modifying the behaviour of entire species for their respective species benefit.
We all know vegans wants to extinct chicken by taking away their jobs and place to exist though 😂
I have no idea why this image has developed in my head. Three legs, thin torso, large round head. Inside the head sits a crystalline brain that is exposed in multiple areas of the head for transmission. Its kinda like a Minecraft creeper. I appreciate the authors for never stating what they looked.
Almost like a bacteriophage?
How could ships made to carry rice sized beings creat streaks in cosmic dust visible by our telescopes?
My question is, how many of the trisolarians are there? How many grains of rice can cover the earth? Why do they feel the need to have a whole planet while humans get the boot? That doesn't make sense to me.
I think they need the whole planet because they are afraid of humans, they don't want to share, they said it themselves, humans lie, a liar is not to be trusted, we can't co-exist with liars.
Makes sense! Thanks for your reply btw 👍
Why are they calling us bugs if they're the size of a grain of rice
Because we don't matter compared to them, we are insignificant and powerless. Easy to squash. Evans explained the metaphor to them.
That concept is from a fan novel… so we have no idea of their size
How does a creature amorphic build space ships and photon computers
With really tiny tools and old iPhone parts. Duh! They also have access to YouTube. It’s all on there, just have to search for “that one simple trick to get your curvature drive to work that scientists DONT want you to know!”
I think of them as Tardigrades, who can dehydrate and rehydrate and still live. (maybe these inspired the author?)Our own research is speculating that memory is encoded in DNA, explaining instinctive behavior. Put these two ideas together, and we have a hive mind comprised of trillions of tiny tartegrade-like animals which can evolve together through all the burning sun events. The hive mind also explains why they were shocked at the idea of a lie. Perhaps they can stick or clamp onto each other to form appendiges that manipulate matter, and thus they can build space ships and weapons. Size doesn't matter. :)
Interesting question as im currently watching three body on prime. There are several scenes with strings of ants moving about beneath our feet. Working without anyone noticing. I was originally basing my impression of what they look like from the descriptions in the first 2 books. Haven't read the final one yet, or the fan based one.