The Three Body Problem

The Three Body Problem

Author: Cixin Liu

This was a really interesting science fiction book. It combines the topic of theoretical physics, along with philosophy. For example:

When the members of the Frontiers of Science discussed physics, they often used the abbreviation “SF.” They didn’t mean “science fiction,” but the two words “shooter” and “farmer.” This was a reference to two hypotheses, both involving the fundamental nature of the laws of the universe.
In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe.
The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.

One cool aspect of the book is there is the story takes place in reality, but there is also a video game that was made by a group within the book that acts as a way to drive the story. The video game showcases an alien civilization and the planet they live on that has a “three body problem” of 3 suns that orbit in completely random and unpredictable ways. This civilization desperately tries to predict the movement of the suns so it can determine if it is heading into a stable or a chaotic era. A chaotic era is an era where a sun is too close or too far and everything dies, and a stable era being one where it is in a location that facilitates life. When the planet is headed into a chaotic era, the people are able to dehydrate themselves and essentially survive until a stable era comes along. The entire civilization progresses in stable eras and tries to learn enough to pick up where it left off after its wiped out from the chaotic era.

It turns out this civilization is real, and is now heading to invade earth because they have learned that earth has just one sun, and easily facilitates life. I won’t give too much else away.

This book is part of a trilogy and is very worth reading in my opinion. I know its science fiction, but there is a lot of advanced physics topics discussed in the book that the everyday author couldn’t write with much coherence about, so Kudos to Cixin, whose clearly done his research,.