Time for a good, old-fashioned Livejournal poll
I'm not sure I'm going to get on with The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixan. I started reading it this morning and I'm already frustrated with it.
Poll Pretend you are a scientist day
In chapter 5 of TBP, "A game of pool" two scientists (one applied and one theoretical) do some rudimentary experiments where they move a pool table around and sink the eight ball with the cue ball and as expected, in all cases the eight ball goes in the pocket.
“Come on, let’s celebrate. We’ve discovered a great principle of nature: The laws of physics are invariant across space and time. All the physical laws of human history, from Archimedes’ principle to string theory, and all the scientific discoveries and intellectual fruits of our species are the by-products of this great law. Compared to us two theoreticians, Einstein and Hawking are mere applied engineers.”
“I still don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“Imagine another set of results. The first time, the white ball drove the black ball into the pocket. The second time, the black ball bounced away. The third time, the black ball flew onto the ceiling. The fourth time, the black ball shot around the room like a frightened sparrow, finally taking refuge in your jacket pocket. The fifth time, the black ball flew away at nearly the speed of light, breaking the edge of the pool table, shooting through the wall, and leaving the Earth and the Solar System, just like Asimov once described. What would you think then?”
“Ding watched Wang. After a long silence, Wang finally said, “This actually happened. Am I right?”
[...]
These high-energy particle accelerators raised the amount of energy available for colliding particles by an order of magnitude, to a level never before achieved by the human race. Yet, with the new equipment, the same particles, the same energy levels, and the same experimental parameters would yield different results. Not only would the results vary if different accelerators were used, but even with the same accelerator, experiments performed at different times would give different results. Physicists panicked. They repeated the ultra-high-energy collision experiments again and again using the same conditions, but every time the result was different, and there seemed to be no pattern.”
“What does this mean?” Wang asked. When he saw Ding staring at him without speaking, he added, “Oh, I’m in nanotech, and I also work with microscale structures. But that’s orders of magnitude larger than the scale at which you do your work. Please educate me.”
“It means that the laws of physics are not invariant across time and space.”
And that's where Liu loses me. I don't think he's earned that conclusion in any way. They are doing a classic Newtonian mechanics setup. It's easy to see that the second and third results could be achieved by using a pool ball with an iron core and applying different EM fields. So your model isn't broken, it's just not considering all the right variables.
This seems to me the logical conclusion from the above - there are things you haven't accounted for in the experiments and you need to discover what that is. But Wang passively accepts this conclusion from Ding rather than attempting to rebut him at all.
I do not find this believable. I do not find it believable that scientists are running around committing suicide because they think physics is broken. And I'm pretty sure that the answer to this problem will be aliens. And if this is meant to be a central mystery of the book, I'm left with pretty much no tension at all.
Poll Pretend you are a scientist day
In chapter 5 of TBP, "A game of pool" two scientists (one applied and one theoretical) do some rudimentary experiments where they move a pool table around and sink the eight ball with the cue ball and as expected, in all cases the eight ball goes in the pocket.
“Come on, let’s celebrate. We’ve discovered a great principle of nature: The laws of physics are invariant across space and time. All the physical laws of human history, from Archimedes’ principle to string theory, and all the scientific discoveries and intellectual fruits of our species are the by-products of this great law. Compared to us two theoreticians, Einstein and Hawking are mere applied engineers.”
“I still don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“Imagine another set of results. The first time, the white ball drove the black ball into the pocket. The second time, the black ball bounced away. The third time, the black ball flew onto the ceiling. The fourth time, the black ball shot around the room like a frightened sparrow, finally taking refuge in your jacket pocket. The fifth time, the black ball flew away at nearly the speed of light, breaking the edge of the pool table, shooting through the wall, and leaving the Earth and the Solar System, just like Asimov once described. What would you think then?”
“Ding watched Wang. After a long silence, Wang finally said, “This actually happened. Am I right?”
[...]
These high-energy particle accelerators raised the amount of energy available for colliding particles by an order of magnitude, to a level never before achieved by the human race. Yet, with the new equipment, the same particles, the same energy levels, and the same experimental parameters would yield different results. Not only would the results vary if different accelerators were used, but even with the same accelerator, experiments performed at different times would give different results. Physicists panicked. They repeated the ultra-high-energy collision experiments again and again using the same conditions, but every time the result was different, and there seemed to be no pattern.”
“What does this mean?” Wang asked. When he saw Ding staring at him without speaking, he added, “Oh, I’m in nanotech, and I also work with microscale structures. But that’s orders of magnitude larger than the scale at which you do your work. Please educate me.”
“It means that the laws of physics are not invariant across time and space.”
And that's where Liu loses me. I don't think he's earned that conclusion in any way. They are doing a classic Newtonian mechanics setup. It's easy to see that the second and third results could be achieved by using a pool ball with an iron core and applying different EM fields. So your model isn't broken, it's just not considering all the right variables.
This seems to me the logical conclusion from the above - there are things you haven't accounted for in the experiments and you need to discover what that is. But Wang passively accepts this conclusion from Ding rather than attempting to rebut him at all.
I do not find this believable. I do not find it believable that scientists are running around committing suicide because they think physics is broken. And I'm pretty sure that the answer to this problem will be aliens. And if this is meant to be a central mystery of the book, I'm left with pretty much no tension at all.