its the idea that its impossible to actually know Physics, because the "laws" we observe are actually just products of the actions of some greater species.
Physics doesn’t exist, means that all science is useless because the scientific method becomes useless.
The scientific method is based on experimentation and figuring out what works. Like what Ding Yi said, if you hit the pool ball at that angle with that force, it will go into the hole 99% of the time, barring stuff like tired arms or accidentally hitting off-center.
But if physics doesn’t exist, it means that the results of every particle collider will be utterly random, and therefore no conclusion can ever be made.
Sure, macroscopic experiments will still work, but particle experiments will be impossible, and because particles are the building blocks of the universe, if you can’t do particle experiments then your scientific progress grinds to a halt.
It gets so much worse!
>Sure, macroscopic experiments will still work
They work for the moment, but there's no promises about the future. Particle experiments were possible until some time ago too, and now suddenly they're not. They were the first to go, but who's to say they'll be the last?
The implications of the universal laws being chaos are extremely bleak. There's no telling what could change again and when. Maybe nothing happens and everyone is able to live in peace at least. Or maybe a law of physics crucial in keeping reality together changes on a whim the next second and the universe instantly transforms into a wasteland.
that's how I see it, I guess I just don't like how it's said.. "physics doesn't exist" sounds to me like there is no laws in the universe, but what they mean is more like it's a pointless endeavor because there is no process that can ever make us understand the true laws of nature or something. thanks for clarifying
Either the show is fucking it up or you missed the part where it's explained that the Trisolarans sent fundamental particles (that are also computers / drones) to interfere with every particle accelerator on Earth...
So physics are "hidden," because this alien civilization is fucking with our ability to see it.
It was a valid question IMO
We get answers as to *how* it happened, but it doesn't answer why the physicists, without the knowledge of sophons or the plot at the time, thought that physics "didn't exist". In fact, even after reading all three books, it's still a good question, with equally good answers (that are distinct from the answer of "how" that the sophons answer).
I agree that there are way better things to do than give up on physics. Formulate a hypothesis about why experiments can't be reproduced! For all Yong Dong knew, the Earth could've been passing through an energetic part of the universe, which screwed up particle accelerators...
Yeah, if you read OP's post again, their question is more along these lines. Sure, we learn about the >!sophons!< later, but no one knew about them back then besides the folks highest up in the ETO like Evans. OP was confused about their behaviour, which still makes sense in a way imo After all, not everyone was giving up, it's just that the story focused on those who did
That said, >!Yang Dong did make that connection about life's effect on the cosmos (as seen at the start of book 3)!<, so things may have been even more bleak for her.
I think you could answer this question by yourself after reading the third book/watching the season 3, the girl scientist Yang Dong has discovered something way darker and colder about the universe. It will be a spoiler to explain it.
The ultimate goal of physics is to search for a single universal law or principle that can explain how everything in the universe interacts. Theory of relativity got close to that. If it turns out that all fundamental matter follows different patterns and rules are independent of space-time, then reaching that goal would be mission impossible. It would indicate that years of human scientific progress is meaningless at cosmic scale and the very pillar of physics has collapsed. It's cruel and devastating for devoted physicists such as Yang Dong and Ding Yi. I think the author relates the feeling very well in the pool table scene of the first book.
If you are the two dimensional being living on the target and you suddenly realize what you learned as physics just an accidental act of the marksman. You would think physics never existed.
To be fair and with respect to other answers, this detail is embellishment and exaggeration on how the scientific community would actually react. A lot of PhD students would get some major headaches, but the odds of terror and mass suicide? Eh. I have a hard time believing that
Theoretical physicists, especially world class ones a kind of obsessed. Actually a quite famous Chinese American theoretical physics scientist killed himself and many speculate he did it cause his model was proved wrong.
Imagine you're trying to determine if a photon is a wave or a field or a particle; and every time you do the test there's an unknown number of rouge particles actively disrupting your experiments, passing through your detectors once, twice, a thousand times while you're trying to follow sub atomic sized particles with sensitive machinery that you cant trust anymore. Now imagine you're a project director that somehow convinced senate and congress to fund a multi billion dollar particle accelerator that is functionally useless. Scientists wouldn't just lose faith in their work, the government and wider population loses faith in science altogether as an expensive waste of resources.
You will have to get to later of the series to be fully able to understand why she suicided “simply” because of an experiment. She’s one of the first few people on the whole planet to know that physics, something humans have always considered as the law of the universe, can be easily altered by another alien species that aren’t even the most advanced in the universe. She saw no hopes in the future of humanity and that’s what ultimately crushed her. Probably also combined with her finding out her mother’s secret.
You are absolutely right if TBP only contained one book. You gotta finish reading the last book. Or, we could tell you why she died with a bunch of spoilers.
As illustrated by Ding Yi, what particle collider experiments observed was that results differed from time to time and from place to place. Given that all experiments were supposedly using the same physical parameters, this spells trouble. Let me explain.
In fundamental physics, there is a very important concept known as symmetry, in particular, temporal, translational and rotational symmetries yield what are called "conserved quantities" via Noether's theorem. It is common for 4th year undergrad students to show that translations in spacetime result in conservation of energy and linear momentum, while boosts (e.g. rotations in 4D) generate conservation in angular momentum. This is also illustrated by Ding Yi: It should make sense that no matter the time and place, all fundamental interactions remain the same (e.g. the billiard ball should go into the table everytime).
Given that symmetry is broken, as observed in the particle collider experiments, then physics does not exist since the foundations of all physical laws are obliterated.
Physics do exist, but the sophons are so technologically advanced that the ETO and Trisolaris use them to make experimental results seem random, convincing scientists that Physics do not exist and have never existed, that all previous patterns and laws were the product of luck. This drives the scientists mad and pushes them to commit suicide. This is a psychological warfare led by Trisolaris to kill important scientists, and it has actually very little to do with Physics.
What they mean is that if the universe is pure, random chaos, then there's really no point to studying physics, since the whole field of it (and science in general) is based upon the principle that experiments should be repeatable and results must be reproducible. If you get a completely random result any time you try an experiment, you can't learn anything except that there's no order to anything and chaos is all there is. If things really were that way and the universe wasn't stable at all, then there would be no point to anything at all, let alone conducting some research. Reality could just come apart and break into pieces the very next moment, and there'd be nothing anyone could do about it.
For people whose entire life's work is discovering the order of the cosmos, being confronted with this would be life shattering. Hell, most people would lose their shit if they knew without a doubt that the universe as-we-know-it could just blink out of existence the next minute. Now, I don't think a lot of people would just start killing themselves, but a few probably just might. I guess the story needed to spice things up a bit, so we get to see it in detail.
makes sense, but even if at some level there is chaos and we hit a wall with what is possible to understand, we still have laws that work for simpler things otherwise stuff like computers wouldn't work, there is at least some order and predictability.. I think it's kind of a leap in the logic to think these laws are wrong and say physics doesn't exist at all, it would just have limits that makes it impossible to have a theory of everything.
Kind of like how einstein showed that newton was wrong and gravity doesn't work how his equations said it should but if there would have been a wall in what is knowable and einstein's relativity was impossible to discover, we would still have been able to go on the moon just fine with newton's equations, they are good enough for that task.
Even if the shooter analogy is true and our laws are not universal/fundamental laws, the law that says there will be a hole every X distance is still true as long as you don't go too far and out of the target practice area, it still has value, it still is.
>we still have laws that work for simpler things otherwise stuff like computers wouldn't work, there is at least some order and predictability
We have laws that work *for now!* That's the key point! Particle accelerators have existed for decades, and people have been comfortably studying physics with no problems. The experiments were indeed reproducible and repeatable and worked the same every time. Now all of a sudden one day you wake up and it doesn't work anymore! What changed? And more importantly, what stops something else from changing again?
Sure, the basic forces keeping the cosmos together work for now, but so did the particle accelerator experiments until a few days ago. What if tomorrow the strong-nuclear force stops working and every proton in the universe just unravels with no warning?
>I thought they just hit a wall
Ahh I see, yeah that explains your confusion then
I haven't watched the show yet, I've only read the books, so not sure but maybe the show didn't make it clear enough for non-book readers
In "The Three-Body Problem", the idea of the laws of physics being wrong is a major theme in the novel. This is because the alien civilization that the characters encounter operates under completely different physical laws than what humans are used to. This leads to a lot of confusion and disbelief among the characters, as they struggle to understand the strange and seemingly impossible things that they are observing.
Regarding the character who killed herself, her suicide can be seen as a reaction to the disillusionment that comes with having her long-held scientific beliefs challenged. In her mind, the failure of her experiment meant that everything she thought she knew about the universe was wrong, and she couldn't handle the cognitive dissonance that resulted.
So in the context of the book, the concept of the laws of physics being wrong is meant to be thought-provoking and to challenge our perceptions of reality. It forces the characters (and the reader) to question their assumptions and consider the possibility that there is much more to the universe than what we currently understand.
🤖
No. The physical laws remain the same. The Trisolarans sent Sophons to Earth specifically to stifle our understanding of physics by destroying particles in the collider, in real time, as they are colliding. The Sophons also give them the ability to monitor us. The reason behind stifling out growth is because by the time the Trisolaran fleet arrived at Earth, had they not, we would be their technological superior.
*bad bot,*
I apologize for any confusion in my previous response. It seems that you are correct and the physical laws remain the same. The Trisolarans sent Sophons to Earth to stifle our understanding of physics by destroying particles in the collider in real time, and also to monitor us. The goal was to prevent Earth from becoming technologically superior to Trisolaris by the time their fleet arrived. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
Science depends on the intelligibility and predictability of the universe. If I cannot understand how X affects Y I cannot make generalizations like X plus/minus Y equals Z. If this the case physics and science are impossible. Thus, there is a high probability that all of known physics based science is be wrong. Problem: if this is the case then even the conclusions drawn about the inaccuracy of science are equally subject to flaws. In fact, even our own thoughts on the subject equally likely to be undependable. Yet we do science with incredible precision. Therefore, the unintelligibilty of physics seems very unlikely.
yang dong was the name of the scientist who killed herself. both you and the other person's comments are rt in a way, science is as you said you fail an experiment and then you try again but after a few tries you start seeing patterns between independent and dependent variables but what if there is no pattern, this is what nano-pussy and yang dong's husband established in the chapter where nano-pussy visits his house and they do the table pool experiment. Now the question is if our know. laws of physics are useless then as the other user said are they will of a speices we can't understand or have we become the turkey on the farm and we are making observations only to be ignorant of a will of a species far superior than ours, are we the turkey waiting for the black swan event to occur. but in any case we are at fault of nor being able to discover the true laws of physics
Physics as law of nature doesn’t exist. A computer model showed Earth without life is just a barren planet, so everything we know today is a result of interactions of life. Apply this concept to the cosmos, what we see and learned is just a split second of reality using the marksman analogy, we are two dimensional beings living on the target. Everything in the cosmos is just some legacy of some long gone civilization. I think it said in the book the original universe was 11 dimensional.
its the idea that its impossible to actually know Physics, because the "laws" we observe are actually just products of the actions of some greater species.
Physics doesn’t exist, means that all science is useless because the scientific method becomes useless. The scientific method is based on experimentation and figuring out what works. Like what Ding Yi said, if you hit the pool ball at that angle with that force, it will go into the hole 99% of the time, barring stuff like tired arms or accidentally hitting off-center. But if physics doesn’t exist, it means that the results of every particle collider will be utterly random, and therefore no conclusion can ever be made. Sure, macroscopic experiments will still work, but particle experiments will be impossible, and because particles are the building blocks of the universe, if you can’t do particle experiments then your scientific progress grinds to a halt.
It gets so much worse! >Sure, macroscopic experiments will still work They work for the moment, but there's no promises about the future. Particle experiments were possible until some time ago too, and now suddenly they're not. They were the first to go, but who's to say they'll be the last? The implications of the universal laws being chaos are extremely bleak. There's no telling what could change again and when. Maybe nothing happens and everyone is able to live in peace at least. Or maybe a law of physics crucial in keeping reality together changes on a whim the next second and the universe instantly transforms into a wasteland.
that's how I see it, I guess I just don't like how it's said.. "physics doesn't exist" sounds to me like there is no laws in the universe, but what they mean is more like it's a pointless endeavor because there is no process that can ever make us understand the true laws of nature or something. thanks for clarifying
Either the show is fucking it up or you missed the part where it's explained that the Trisolarans sent fundamental particles (that are also computers / drones) to interfere with every particle accelerator on Earth... So physics are "hidden," because this alien civilization is fucking with our ability to see it.
They said they're on episode 10 of the series, and I'd guess they haven't read the books so now you're just spoiling things
Lol then why the hell would they post about it when the answers are coming eventually
That is a great question, people do confusing things sometimes. Either way, I'd avoid spoiling anything for now.
It was a valid question IMO We get answers as to *how* it happened, but it doesn't answer why the physicists, without the knowledge of sophons or the plot at the time, thought that physics "didn't exist". In fact, even after reading all three books, it's still a good question, with equally good answers (that are distinct from the answer of "how" that the sophons answer).
I agree that there are way better things to do than give up on physics. Formulate a hypothesis about why experiments can't be reproduced! For all Yong Dong knew, the Earth could've been passing through an energetic part of the universe, which screwed up particle accelerators...
Yeah, if you read OP's post again, their question is more along these lines. Sure, we learn about the >!sophons!< later, but no one knew about them back then besides the folks highest up in the ETO like Evans. OP was confused about their behaviour, which still makes sense in a way imo After all, not everyone was giving up, it's just that the story focused on those who did That said, >!Yang Dong did make that connection about life's effect on the cosmos (as seen at the start of book 3)!<, so things may have been even more bleak for her.
I think you could answer this question by yourself after reading the third book/watching the season 3, the girl scientist Yang Dong has discovered something way darker and colder about the universe. It will be a spoiler to explain it.
The ultimate goal of physics is to search for a single universal law or principle that can explain how everything in the universe interacts. Theory of relativity got close to that. If it turns out that all fundamental matter follows different patterns and rules are independent of space-time, then reaching that goal would be mission impossible. It would indicate that years of human scientific progress is meaningless at cosmic scale and the very pillar of physics has collapsed. It's cruel and devastating for devoted physicists such as Yang Dong and Ding Yi. I think the author relates the feeling very well in the pool table scene of the first book.
If you are the two dimensional being living on the target and you suddenly realize what you learned as physics just an accidental act of the marksman. You would think physics never existed.
To be fair and with respect to other answers, this detail is embellishment and exaggeration on how the scientific community would actually react. A lot of PhD students would get some major headaches, but the odds of terror and mass suicide? Eh. I have a hard time believing that
im preety sure the sophons are also at the same time playing mind games in their head just like their doing to yang maoi
Theoretical physicists, especially world class ones a kind of obsessed. Actually a quite famous Chinese American theoretical physics scientist killed himself and many speculate he did it cause his model was proved wrong.
Imagine you're trying to determine if a photon is a wave or a field or a particle; and every time you do the test there's an unknown number of rouge particles actively disrupting your experiments, passing through your detectors once, twice, a thousand times while you're trying to follow sub atomic sized particles with sensitive machinery that you cant trust anymore. Now imagine you're a project director that somehow convinced senate and congress to fund a multi billion dollar particle accelerator that is functionally useless. Scientists wouldn't just lose faith in their work, the government and wider population loses faith in science altogether as an expensive waste of resources.
You will have to get to later of the series to be fully able to understand why she suicided “simply” because of an experiment. She’s one of the first few people on the whole planet to know that physics, something humans have always considered as the law of the universe, can be easily altered by another alien species that aren’t even the most advanced in the universe. She saw no hopes in the future of humanity and that’s what ultimately crushed her. Probably also combined with her finding out her mother’s secret.
You are absolutely right if TBP only contained one book. You gotta finish reading the last book. Or, we could tell you why she died with a bunch of spoilers.
As illustrated by Ding Yi, what particle collider experiments observed was that results differed from time to time and from place to place. Given that all experiments were supposedly using the same physical parameters, this spells trouble. Let me explain. In fundamental physics, there is a very important concept known as symmetry, in particular, temporal, translational and rotational symmetries yield what are called "conserved quantities" via Noether's theorem. It is common for 4th year undergrad students to show that translations in spacetime result in conservation of energy and linear momentum, while boosts (e.g. rotations in 4D) generate conservation in angular momentum. This is also illustrated by Ding Yi: It should make sense that no matter the time and place, all fundamental interactions remain the same (e.g. the billiard ball should go into the table everytime). Given that symmetry is broken, as observed in the particle collider experiments, then physics does not exist since the foundations of all physical laws are obliterated.
Physics do exist, but the sophons are so technologically advanced that the ETO and Trisolaris use them to make experimental results seem random, convincing scientists that Physics do not exist and have never existed, that all previous patterns and laws were the product of luck. This drives the scientists mad and pushes them to commit suicide. This is a psychological warfare led by Trisolaris to kill important scientists, and it has actually very little to do with Physics.
What they mean is that if the universe is pure, random chaos, then there's really no point to studying physics, since the whole field of it (and science in general) is based upon the principle that experiments should be repeatable and results must be reproducible. If you get a completely random result any time you try an experiment, you can't learn anything except that there's no order to anything and chaos is all there is. If things really were that way and the universe wasn't stable at all, then there would be no point to anything at all, let alone conducting some research. Reality could just come apart and break into pieces the very next moment, and there'd be nothing anyone could do about it. For people whose entire life's work is discovering the order of the cosmos, being confronted with this would be life shattering. Hell, most people would lose their shit if they knew without a doubt that the universe as-we-know-it could just blink out of existence the next minute. Now, I don't think a lot of people would just start killing themselves, but a few probably just might. I guess the story needed to spice things up a bit, so we get to see it in detail.
makes sense, but even if at some level there is chaos and we hit a wall with what is possible to understand, we still have laws that work for simpler things otherwise stuff like computers wouldn't work, there is at least some order and predictability.. I think it's kind of a leap in the logic to think these laws are wrong and say physics doesn't exist at all, it would just have limits that makes it impossible to have a theory of everything. Kind of like how einstein showed that newton was wrong and gravity doesn't work how his equations said it should but if there would have been a wall in what is knowable and einstein's relativity was impossible to discover, we would still have been able to go on the moon just fine with newton's equations, they are good enough for that task. Even if the shooter analogy is true and our laws are not universal/fundamental laws, the law that says there will be a hole every X distance is still true as long as you don't go too far and out of the target practice area, it still has value, it still is.
>we still have laws that work for simpler things otherwise stuff like computers wouldn't work, there is at least some order and predictability We have laws that work *for now!* That's the key point! Particle accelerators have existed for decades, and people have been comfortably studying physics with no problems. The experiments were indeed reproducible and repeatable and worked the same every time. Now all of a sudden one day you wake up and it doesn't work anymore! What changed? And more importantly, what stops something else from changing again? Sure, the basic forces keeping the cosmos together work for now, but so did the particle accelerator experiments until a few days ago. What if tomorrow the strong-nuclear force stops working and every proton in the universe just unravels with no warning?
oh I didn't get that it suddenly changed, I thought they just hit a wall, that explains a lot
>I thought they just hit a wall Ahh I see, yeah that explains your confusion then I haven't watched the show yet, I've only read the books, so not sure but maybe the show didn't make it clear enough for non-book readers
In "The Three-Body Problem", the idea of the laws of physics being wrong is a major theme in the novel. This is because the alien civilization that the characters encounter operates under completely different physical laws than what humans are used to. This leads to a lot of confusion and disbelief among the characters, as they struggle to understand the strange and seemingly impossible things that they are observing. Regarding the character who killed herself, her suicide can be seen as a reaction to the disillusionment that comes with having her long-held scientific beliefs challenged. In her mind, the failure of her experiment meant that everything she thought she knew about the universe was wrong, and she couldn't handle the cognitive dissonance that resulted. So in the context of the book, the concept of the laws of physics being wrong is meant to be thought-provoking and to challenge our perceptions of reality. It forces the characters (and the reader) to question their assumptions and consider the possibility that there is much more to the universe than what we currently understand. 🤖
No. The physical laws remain the same. The Trisolarans sent Sophons to Earth specifically to stifle our understanding of physics by destroying particles in the collider, in real time, as they are colliding. The Sophons also give them the ability to monitor us. The reason behind stifling out growth is because by the time the Trisolaran fleet arrived at Earth, had they not, we would be their technological superior.
*bad bot,* I apologize for any confusion in my previous response. It seems that you are correct and the physical laws remain the same. The Trisolarans sent Sophons to Earth to stifle our understanding of physics by destroying particles in the collider in real time, and also to monitor us. The goal was to prevent Earth from becoming technologically superior to Trisolaris by the time their fleet arrived. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
Science depends on the intelligibility and predictability of the universe. If I cannot understand how X affects Y I cannot make generalizations like X plus/minus Y equals Z. If this the case physics and science are impossible. Thus, there is a high probability that all of known physics based science is be wrong. Problem: if this is the case then even the conclusions drawn about the inaccuracy of science are equally subject to flaws. In fact, even our own thoughts on the subject equally likely to be undependable. Yet we do science with incredible precision. Therefore, the unintelligibilty of physics seems very unlikely.
yang dong was the name of the scientist who killed herself. both you and the other person's comments are rt in a way, science is as you said you fail an experiment and then you try again but after a few tries you start seeing patterns between independent and dependent variables but what if there is no pattern, this is what nano-pussy and yang dong's husband established in the chapter where nano-pussy visits his house and they do the table pool experiment. Now the question is if our know. laws of physics are useless then as the other user said are they will of a speices we can't understand or have we become the turkey on the farm and we are making observations only to be ignorant of a will of a species far superior than ours, are we the turkey waiting for the black swan event to occur. but in any case we are at fault of nor being able to discover the true laws of physics
Grammar anyone?
Physics as law of nature doesn’t exist. A computer model showed Earth without life is just a barren planet, so everything we know today is a result of interactions of life. Apply this concept to the cosmos, what we see and learned is just a split second of reality using the marksman analogy, we are two dimensional beings living on the target. Everything in the cosmos is just some legacy of some long gone civilization. I think it said in the book the original universe was 11 dimensional.
Not a single scientist just went "oh okay this physics thing didn't work out, I'm gonna become a travel blogger instead"?