The 3 Body Problem it’s not there Divine Comedybut it has at least a feature in common with Dante’s work, also famous for the various levels of interpretation and understanding that can be achieved depending on one’s abilities. Cixin Liu’s novel does more or less the same: “There are two levels of reading, that of the ordinary person and that of the physicist”, Carlo Canali explained to uswho is in fact a physicist and within the Italian Institute of Technology deals with inspection robotics in the industrial and aerospace sectors.
We asked him for help because The 3 Body Problem it is a beautiful, interesting and enormously successful book, but It’s not an easy book. It isn’t at all, and anyone who says otherwise is lying. Or she didn’t understand it. And it is precisely to understand it better that we talked about it with Canali, both because of his academic training and because he is also a science fiction enthusiast: “We physicists are a somewhat complicated audience for writers, because we tend to be very precise and demanding”, he told us with a smile.
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youtube: the trailer of The 3 Body Problem
What is the 3-Body Problem about?
The Chinese author’s work is the first of a trilogy set in the past, present and future, in which humanity comes into contact with an alien species that lives on a planet at the mercy of 3 stars (the bodies in the title are celestial bodies) whose orbits are influenced by each other: it has become a TV series for Netflix, coming out on March 21st and which we were able to preview.
The book takes place in a virtual world It is in the real worldin a video game and on Earth, on more intertwining timelines and they overlap, describing the China of the Cultural Revolution (the Sixties, in short) and that of today and tomorrow and the attempts to establish contact with aliens: “It’s an interesting book, with lots of food for thought on scientific topics that are true and real and they are really addressed by scientists – Canali told us after reading it – That is, precisely the problem of the 3 bodies, the search for extraterrestrial life, communication with deep space”. Again: “It is a work of science fiction, but it is a work of science fiction that in some way invites us to think.” In what sense? “It is not Star Warsthat you look at it and tend not to think, you don’t ask yourself how spaceships or lightsabers work, why force exists, what the scientific basis of various things is. Here it makes you think a little. It makes you wonder if what is being said is possible.”
WARNING: SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT
Carlo Canali, IIT researcher
The science of the 3-Body Problem
And are the things told in the book possible? And also: the 3-body problem Is it explained well and displayed appropriately? Yes and no, according to Canali: “In physics, the 3-body problem is a well-known, unsolved and unsolvable problem, the concepts of which seemed to me to be a bit pushed and exaggerated in the novel, taken to the extreme for the purpose of the narrative – there Canali clarified – It’s difficult to actually do that develop life in a solar system like this and that the Trisolarians (as they are called in the book, ed.) can really exist. However, it is true that in such a solar system there would actually be a continuous alternation between order and chaos, like a constantly repeating cycle. Although the timing is left unclear, and the suddenness, again, was perhaps a little accentuated.” Which is something that Canali demonstrated to us with a short animation made in preparation for our chat, as if to reiterate that “we physicists tend to be very precise and demanding”.
Beyond this, according to Canali the important point (and perhaps where it is hidden one of the main difficulties of the book) lies in the fact that the problem of the 3 bodies “in the book it is used in the title but in the text it is then kept a little hidden, a little implicit, not explained, almost taken for granted” and that “you need a little familiarity with the principles of gravity and mechanics to understand everything well”. And this is where we come back to discussion of the “two levels of reading”because Liu’s work may indeed be understood differently by different readers.
What’s wrong and what’s done right
Among other things, both the book and the series (which actually includes the first two volumes of the trilogy) become in some way more complex and less beautiful as you progresswhich is a feeling that we clearly had and that Canali confirmed to us: “The second part of the novel seemed more rushed and less pleasant to me, while the first is more credible and compelling and also builds a lot of anticipation with some interesting ideas, like the countdown one.”
More: the ending, with the appearance of aliens and the use of so-called picotechnology (a level of miniaturization beyond nanotechnology, “a concept that is not currently known and does not exist in physics”), is “definitely more science fiction than science”. According to Canali, in fact, “it is very unlikely that we will be able to enclose an artificial intelligence in a proton (in the book it is called sophon, ed.) and use it to influence life on Earth”, as instead happens in the book. Said more precisely: “The idea could also have a some sense from a scientific point of viewit’s how it’s done in the novel that doesn’t make scientific sense.”
The things that instead make sense, that Canali liked a lot and also exist correct from a scientific point of viewthey are above all two: “I really appreciated the beginning, in which the first contacts with aliens and the times of connections between Space and Earth are also respected, because years pass between one interaction and another. Some passages are obviously fictionalized, but that part is done really well, it’s realistic and remember the Seti Project and the history of the Arecibo Message and precisely it addresses issues that science really addresses.” And the other? “I also found the idea of the human computer very beautiful, in which people (who in reality are not people, ed.) are used to replicate the computational capacity of a computer and to reproduce the logic gates of the processors – Canali explained to us – Again, a bit of knowledge of basic electronics is needed to grasp the concepts well and to appreciate the idea, to understand how the inputs arrive and give the various output, but that part is written really effectively.”
The human computer imagined in the 3-Body Problem
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Science fiction between Aristotle and Newton
What is certain is that Liu’s work addresses many of the themes dear to science fiction fanswhich is perhaps one of the reasons for its success: “Even the part in which the inhabitants of Trisolaris dehydrate themselves and then rehydrate themselves to survive the eras of chaos, however incorrect from a biological point of view (it is not something that can really do, ed.), touches on one of the classic topos of sci-fi, that of hibernation and finding a way to survive long periods of stasis.”
In conclusion, according to the IIT researcher, the one told in Three-Body Problem it’s a “very rich” story and which “lends itself well to becoming a serial”, despite the drops in pace that the novel has by its nature: “There are some passages that are a bit slow and explanatory, with the author taking his time to do reflect on some concepts, such as physics, ethics, communication with extraterrestrials and so on – was the reflection of our interlocutor – I am moments when the pace slows down a lotand I honestly don’t know how they can be transferred to the series without boring the viewer.”
In fact, some passages (such as that of fable of Little Red Riding Hood) are objectively a bit slow, but the series is really well done, perhaps easier and more accessible than the book and really has, as Canali imagined during our chat, “the possibility of having a important visual impact in many stages, including those in virtual reality with Aristotle, Newton and other thinkers famous people of the past.” All that remains is to wait for an inevitable second season to understand if all these expectations will be satisfied.
@capoema