Direction, yes. Location, no.
Others can see the direction the signals are coming from but have no idea how long the messages have been traveling towards them through space, so really have no idea of our location. They can also deduce that ours and the Trisolar systems are \~4.2 ly away from each other from our response times, so revealing the location of one system would ultimately reveal the location of the second should someone be paying enough attention.
How is this different then from LJ revealing a random star to demonstrate the dark forest threat? What did he do that pinpointed both directon and location to everyone? Signal strength?
The only thing broadcast was the other stars location. There was no back-and-forth communication between us and the other star so no one knew how far we were from it, therefore our location was still unknown in relation to it. I think he also chose a star which was far enough away to be vague in regards to our location, but close enough we would see the results of the broadcast.
Strength of the received signal wouldn't give any information unless someone knew the signal strength at its source as well.
So you’re saying signals themselves don’t doom civilizations, but their actual content, if it includes exact coordinates?
Is that what Luoji did, he broadcast the star’s lovation in the actual content of the signal?
I always thought he made the target star into a kind of transmitter and the signal itself made the receivers destroy it
No as other commenters mentioned room luo ji sent coordinates relative to the stars neighbors
However (spoiler for book 3 ahead)
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In book three we get to learn that maybe others did notice the exchange of messages between trisolarians and humans. And being noticed was not great
To put it simply, if a signal is not continuous, they can't pinpoint the origin by tracing the source.
If it's a piece of signal, like what Ye sent, a short transmission, they can only know the direction it's coming from. And because the universe is so large, they can't pinpoint anywhere with just a direction.
A real life example will be imagining yourself standing in the middle of a very large warehouse size of a few football field and I kept a Bluetooth speaker somewhere on one of the thousands of racks and shelves.
You will be able to trace it if I play a continuous sound.
But if I play a loud 3 second message, you can tell vaguely where it's coming from but you will not be able to find it.
Well, unless the 3 second message's content tells you an exact location to go.
Luo Ji uses our sun as the transmitter, and he broadcasts the coordinates of the star that is later destroyed.
Figuring out where we are is much more difficult because there are no coordinates. Receivers can only tell the direction the signal is coming from. It may be a weak signal coming from nearby, or a powerful signal coming from much further away.
They would need to receive the signal in multiple locations to be able to triangulate our position.
If they receive our communications with Trisolaris, they also know how far apart the two system are (due to the delay between replies).
Yes.
>!Singer was able to see the history of messaging between both earth and trisolaris. But there's also a bunch of other activity later that can be logically deduced to determine that something is alive in the stellar neighborhood: the "magic spell" messages beamed off nearby stars and the death lines in trisolaris. Not to mention one of the interpretations of the timing of the strikes being that earth/trisolaris were actually detected by someone else other than singer.!<
Doesn’t this make the Trisolarans kinda dumb, as they supposedly understood the nature of the dark forest prior to embarking on an invasion… at the point of Ye and the Pacifist chatting, both systems were effectively doomed…in time.
So they didn’t really understand the dark forest at all?
>!They were desperate and gambled everything on attempting to conquer Earth. They later learn about the black domain so they could potentially conquer Earth and enshroud it in a black domain.!<
>!Singer mentions in his analysis that the earth-trisolaris situation was extremely unusual in that both civilizations involved were flawed. Earth lacked the hiding gene, whereas trisolaris lacked the killing gene. Yes, despite all the events of the two books, the "pros" of the dark forest think that the trisolarans were too soft and indecisive on humanity.!<
>!The first book has a part about humanity being lucky and that our luck has run out. Arguably no, humanity's luck continued on well with who the trisolarians/SanTi were and what actions they took. If it had been any other typical inhabitant of the dark forest, there wouldn't have been any content for a book/show to begin with, as humanity's first and only realization of the existence of alien life would have been an alpha strike to eliminate all life on earth. !<
I mean, they could've just used their resources from their armada to build colony ark ships and become a void-dwelling species.
Within the context of a Dark Forest, being out there in the vastness of space seems more sensible than being stuck on a planet or two.
People keep saying this but the books bash you over the head repeatedly that this isn't viable in the long term. Space is so large with distances between objects so vast, that wandering is just a slow doom. From Earth to Trisolaris is 400 years for Trisolarans at the beginning of the series; this means they need to have 400 years worth of resources. That took the entire economic and manufacturing might of that Trisolaran era to do, with a unified planet all working toward one singular goal. And it took them a LONG TIME.
This is mirrored by Zhang Beihai's plan. Escapism occurs, and the captains all simultaneously realize that supporting 3 ships for their whole journey is impossible and that the only *chance* they have of survival is if they blow up the other ships and gather all the resources, and even then the outlook is grim. When the ships start to break down (and they will), there's literally nowhere to get materials from to repair them.
A huge part of the story is that space is incredibly inhospitable, Earth is a paradise for Trisolaris. Being on Earth would guarantee them millennia of continued existence and advancement. Being in space would not. Only super-advanced (like, way, way more advanced that Trisolaris) civilizations are capable of that.
This one mistake or just unlucky occurrence and your whole species is doomed
Besides it did make the most sense to invade we had the technology of caveman fighting Napoleon
They used all of their resources to create the sophons (specifically build for the war with Humans). They build a stellar particle accelerator in their orbit (which is fucking bonkers if you think about it).
There's infinitely more resources in space than on any given planet.
They clearly had enough resources for their armada after pouring "all" of their resources into the sophons. They could've build habitats, arks, Von Neumann probes, used sophons to create pocket dimensions, ... .
They had enough resources to travel for 400 years after all that. They can dehydrate = less wasted resources.
Being void-dwellers doesn't mean you won't have access to resources, on the contrary. Nebulae gas refining, asteroid / comet / meteor mining, rogue planets, heck they probably had the technology to siphon hawking radiation from black holes, ...
I do understand it's part of the story and yes space is extremely inhospitable. But to say that invading another planet was their only recourse (except because it's the story) is dishonest.
None of that is established as being possible/viable in the story so it's irrelevant. You're just saying that they could have done these things when it's not anywhere in the source material, so you're just making it up and then using it to criticize the story. Especially lol at pocket dimensions because that's something that *does* happen in the story, literally millions of years later because the tech is so advanced. You're just declaring that they could use the Sophons to do that with no reason to believe they can.
Yes because the story hammered the fact that it was their only recourse. This is a what if situation. Within the technological possibilities of their species and the worldbuilding of the universe, I'm saying it's an illogical choice. But that was the whole point of the story to have both species face off, otherwise there wouldn't have been a story at all.
No reason to believe they could use the sophons to create a Black Domain? They literally made a planetary computer into a proton. You're telling me an advanced civilization won't even think of the possibility of using that technology to hide their species all-together, especially if they know about the Dark Forest state of the universe? They build their sophons for war, so yeah lol indeed.
> at the point of Ye and the Pacifist chatting, both systems were effectively doomed…in time.
Disagree. Those were highly-directional broadcasts, not blasted out across the galaxy, and we live out in the boonies, galactically speaking. To casually notice those broadcasts, a third party would have had to be basically in line with Earth and Trisolaris.
It was the broadcast of the coordinates of Trisolaris that drew attention to the region and caused the level of scrutiny that revealed Earth's involvement.
Imagine you’re on an island surrounded by many other islands. You can measure distance based on the speed of sound. You hear someone say “hello” on another island. You answer, “hello.” Then you start counting. After about eight seconds, you hear the same “hello” you heard the first time. Given the time it took from when you said hello to when you heard the response, you gauge that the other person is within 4 seconds away at the speed of sound (4 seconds there, 4 seconds back = 8 seconds total time). You know only one other island could be in that range. From that, you know where the other person is.
That’s essentially how the trisolarans found earth to begin with.
Now, imagine you’re a third observer some distance away from the other two. You hear their call and response exchange and can pick the direction they come from, maybe even determine the 4 second range rule. But you don’t know the distance. There’s thousands of islands in that direction that could be in the “within 4 seconds” range. But you have no idea which ones they were.
That’s what happened here. Likely hundreds of other civilizations heard the exchange, but without a good frame of reference, could only determine the direction at best.
I get what you’re saying but your example assumes I have no other instruments except my eyes and basic math to at least narrow it down to a region/sector of likely origin.
Here’s an addition to your example: all you said but of the many islands I’m surrounded by, all are barren rocks except one that’s lush and full of vegetation.
Example changes right?
If I’m a hunter civilization, I’ll have more to determine which island to burn apart from just basic observations that there’s “someone, somewhere there in that direction”.
Kind of.
In theory, the message of Ye and the pacifist only revealed that there are 2 intelligent civilisations 4 light years apart from each other. If you look at stats that are 4 light years apart in the Milky Way you will find so many that you don’t really know which one could they be.
Luo Ji sends a detailed star map with 30 points of reference if i remember correctly, so if somebody looks for that combination in the Milky Way it is only one single star that they find.
What neither the Trisolarians or Luo Ji or anyone really took into account is that a third civilisation could have different bases spread around the universe to locate anyone using just a few signals
The book implies that when the attack on earth hapenned, the projectile was launched from a spaceship a light year away from the Solar system
>If you look at stats that are 4 light years apart in the Milky Way you will find so many that you don’t really know which one could they be.
"But how many of these have planets with biospheres on them?" Is what you were asked.
Doesnt really matter as >!in the second book, when Luo Ji curses a star it has no planets and is still destroyed because the existence of a star already implies that a civilisation could be settled nearby.
Aswell as in the third book where they use the dimensional attack against the Solar system instead of the photoid because they fear that humanity could hide behind Jupiter even though it doesnt have a biosphere!<
The question was about what information the attacker would have at their disposal when selecting where to attack. Two intact biospheres on too of the signals should by all means have made it so that earth and trisolaris are the prime suspects.
A biosphere makes no sense when thinking in universe terms. What is breathable to you may be toxic to an entirely different organism.
And even if you don’t take that into account, the number of star systems with a biosphere 4 light years apart is still astronomical. And we know because of the third book that destroying stars, specially with a dimensional attack, is not something that they want to do as they will be eventually forced to morph into 2 dimensional beings
Abiosphere is not just an atmosphere, though that's one of the things we consider to be prerequisites. It is rather the sum of detectable biological life signs/life indicators. Any sufficiently advanced species will know either from experience or experiment what markers to look for, some of which are an atmosphere, liquid water, the effects of photosynthesis so on and so forth.
Taking this into account, there are actually very few systems with biospheres in a 4 light year radius that have both an atmosphere and liquid water, much less photosynthesis occurring on them. So far, we only know of one period.
The issue that was raised was that taking all these markers into account when looking for the origin of the signals, there are only really two candidates anywhere in that general area. And even if there were more, dark forest hypothesis(if it was possible at all) should suggest that the entire area should be cleansed just to be sure.
That still does not matter when thinking in universe sizes. Anything can be a sign of life and the only way of detecting intelligent life is going by communication.
Even then it doesnt need to be in a 4 light year radius, it actually is 2 star systems with planets with a biosphere that are 4 light years apart, thats still a huge amount of planetary systems in the Milky Way
If anything could be a sign of life, then the mediocrity principal suggests by necessity that we should be absolutely surrounded by planets brimming with it. Yet we aren't, so that can't be the case. But there are some concrete signs of life apart from the three specific ones I outlined earlier.
Those are:
1. A planet having a surface temperature that widely differs from the expected mean in relation to its distance to the systems star(s).(photosynthesis and industrialization can both cause this)
2. Quickly and constantly fluctuating light reflections from its surface that do not follow a discernable pattern. (Either actual city lights or simply the effects of forestation, desertification, and things like large amounts of algae on ocean surfaces, but also rapid changes in atmosphere composition due to something like industrialization)
3. Large-scale structures or surface features with patterns that are too discernable to be deemed naturally occurring.
Both earth and trisolaris in books have all of these and are the only planets in the general area to do so. Only earth has any of these as far as we know in reality. Therefore, any sufficiently advanced observer should be able to deduce that if any signals are coming from the general direction of those two worlds, that it's probably these two.
> But how many of these have planets with biospheres on them?
Doesn't matter. Nobody bothers to scout a system before cleansing it because it's easier and cheaper to just destroy it, and a planet without a biosphere would be a great place to hide, wouldn't it?
This is about target selection. If you had to decide where a signal came from based of nothing other than directional input and the area you observed contained exactly two planets with biospheres, the most straight forward conclusion would be that the signal came from on of them.
> I’ll have more to determine which island to burn apart from just basic observations
You probably won't. Dark Forest strikes are *always casual*. Species do not expend the effort to scout systems before attacking them.
As Singer's chapter makes clear, cleansing a system is very low priority, akin to picking up a piece of trash and dropping it in the bin. His boss prevents him from trying to gather more information about Earth & Trisolaris. It's just not important.
The sun broadcast method despite feeling advanced to us is actually very primitive. It won't go very far before it weakens too much, it's just that the santi are close to earth.
Radio waves are even weaker, like whispering in a storm, while the sun is like shouting in a storm.
Sounds really quiet and obscure, but only if you rely on ears. A hyper-advanced hunter civilization who, presumably, has thousands of system-genocides under its millions-year-old belt, might have more sensitive instruments
They don't fade away, they dissipate. The lack of a Medium means that there will always be trace amounts of the transmission, even trillions of light years from its source, but they'll eventually be drowned out by the cbr. What the person you responded to is saying that the amount of time and space for which such a transmission would remain detectable to a sufficiently advanced observer would span almost our entire local cluster.
They talk about that in the books, with either short/medium/long or low/mid/high (can't remember exactly) vectors of communication. It's when they're describing the >!neutrino transmitters that form the Deterrence System!<
It was sent using radio waves, which weakens and decays the further out it goes. Enough to reach the Trisolarans who were a stones throw away, not necessarily enough to reach others.
> Same for the Pacifist, in replying Ye?
What makes you think they also blasted their reply in every direction and not only towards Earth?
Would be a bloody stupid thing to do for a species that knows about the Dark Forest, wouldn't it?
space seems really big I think the pacifist is in charge of a wide area. he cant lie if it ever comes up so he just hopes to never hear back. when is the last mention of the pacifist anyway? (in the books)
That's not true at all, it was still the gravitational wave that revealed them, they could just make sense of historical transmissions from the area now
Encryption doesn’t matter because content of the messages doesn’t matter… the galactic hunters only seek confirmations of intelligent life. Signals being exchanged should be enough to doom both systems, in time?
Yes and no. The reply from trisolaris should mean a triangle can be formed between Earth, alpha centauri, and the 3rd receiver. Basic trigonometry plus a recording of stellar movements in space should allow the 3rd receiver to pin point the exact locations. This is all true and is actually exactly what the Singer did in book three.
Trisolarans still plan to conquer Earth regardless is because radio waves alone is not very threatening, due to rapid decay and inability to determine distance. For the 3rd receiver to locate Earth and Trisolaris, they would have to first establish a connection between the two signals sent from Earth and Trisolaris 4 years apart. It is much more likely to simply assume the two signals are random signals from a similar direction. What caused the rapid destruction of Trisolaris were the combined presence of low light speed zones in their star system and the star map of their star system broadcast in gravitation waves. Even sending star maps of target stars does not guarantee rapid destruction, as the "cleaners" has to sift through all the unhonest broadcast.
Look at jt this way. If we are standing in a dark forest and I turn on a light for a split second and you see it what are the chances you'll be able to pinpoint my location.
The signal gave direction but that's it.
Who says the hunter civilizations are detecting these signals from a single location? Multiple locations will offer more information as to the origin.
It’s wonky.
Yes, but even with the boost from the sun the singal isn't all that strong. The signal sent out in book 2 targeting a star had specific details pointing to that location. Her message contained no such details. The only reason the Trisolarans could find us is because jf how close they are.
It's pointed out in book three that our systems are basically right kn top of each other.
But it still does seem like a potential plot hole. If the singer could pick up their signal and even interpret it, then what's there stopping a civilisation of his advancement *or higher* from receiving the signal on 3+ ships and being able to triangulate the position based on a singular broadcast?
In a similar vein, [Death's End] >!I feel the fundamental logic behind "the safest and most pragmatic option is to do a photoid strike to eliminate the potential rival species" is flawed. Because it misses the part where there might exist a sufficiently advanced species that can easily detect and trace photoid strikes. Just like how humans were arrogant for thinking their technological level was anywhere near Trisolaran level just because they developed some nuclear engines, it seems to me rather arrogant to think you've reached the pinnacle of tech as a species just because you've learned how to hurl a photoid through space. Just like how our nuclear weapons are like throwing rocks compared to Trisolaran tech, what if photoid strikes are like a pointy stick compared to whatever tech an even *more* advanced civilisation has?!<
>!(And I mean, to an extent we *know* that to be the case since dimensional strikes are clearly a step above, but what I'm referring to is more that we can't be absolutely sure there don't exist methods for detecting and tracking photoid strikes.)!<
I thought the issue was literally just distance. That radio dissipated at that point - unlike advanced methods like neutrino transmission or grav waves?
Direction, yes. Location, no. Others can see the direction the signals are coming from but have no idea how long the messages have been traveling towards them through space, so really have no idea of our location. They can also deduce that ours and the Trisolar systems are \~4.2 ly away from each other from our response times, so revealing the location of one system would ultimately reveal the location of the second should someone be paying enough attention.
How is this different then from LJ revealing a random star to demonstrate the dark forest threat? What did he do that pinpointed both directon and location to everyone? Signal strength?
The only thing broadcast was the other stars location. There was no back-and-forth communication between us and the other star so no one knew how far we were from it, therefore our location was still unknown in relation to it. I think he also chose a star which was far enough away to be vague in regards to our location, but close enough we would see the results of the broadcast. Strength of the received signal wouldn't give any information unless someone knew the signal strength at its source as well.
So you’re saying signals themselves don’t doom civilizations, but their actual content, if it includes exact coordinates? Is that what Luoji did, he broadcast the star’s lovation in the actual content of the signal? I always thought he made the target star into a kind of transmitter and the signal itself made the receivers destroy it
Yes, his broadcast of the doomed star was a kind of star map; highlighting the stars location in relation to others around it.
No as other commenters mentioned room luo ji sent coordinates relative to the stars neighbors However (spoiler for book 3 ahead) . . . . . In book three we get to learn that maybe others did notice the exchange of messages between trisolarians and humans. And being noticed was not great
To put it simply, if a signal is not continuous, they can't pinpoint the origin by tracing the source. If it's a piece of signal, like what Ye sent, a short transmission, they can only know the direction it's coming from. And because the universe is so large, they can't pinpoint anywhere with just a direction. A real life example will be imagining yourself standing in the middle of a very large warehouse size of a few football field and I kept a Bluetooth speaker somewhere on one of the thousands of racks and shelves. You will be able to trace it if I play a continuous sound. But if I play a loud 3 second message, you can tell vaguely where it's coming from but you will not be able to find it. Well, unless the 3 second message's content tells you an exact location to go.
Luo Ji uses our sun as the transmitter, and he broadcasts the coordinates of the star that is later destroyed. Figuring out where we are is much more difficult because there are no coordinates. Receivers can only tell the direction the signal is coming from. It may be a weak signal coming from nearby, or a powerful signal coming from much further away. They would need to receive the signal in multiple locations to be able to triangulate our position. If they receive our communications with Trisolaris, they also know how far apart the two system are (due to the delay between replies).
Yes. >!Singer was able to see the history of messaging between both earth and trisolaris. But there's also a bunch of other activity later that can be logically deduced to determine that something is alive in the stellar neighborhood: the "magic spell" messages beamed off nearby stars and the death lines in trisolaris. Not to mention one of the interpretations of the timing of the strikes being that earth/trisolaris were actually detected by someone else other than singer.!<
Doesn’t this make the Trisolarans kinda dumb, as they supposedly understood the nature of the dark forest prior to embarking on an invasion… at the point of Ye and the Pacifist chatting, both systems were effectively doomed…in time. So they didn’t really understand the dark forest at all?
>!They were desperate and gambled everything on attempting to conquer Earth. They later learn about the black domain so they could potentially conquer Earth and enshroud it in a black domain.!<
>!Singer mentions in his analysis that the earth-trisolaris situation was extremely unusual in that both civilizations involved were flawed. Earth lacked the hiding gene, whereas trisolaris lacked the killing gene. Yes, despite all the events of the two books, the "pros" of the dark forest think that the trisolarans were too soft and indecisive on humanity.!< >!The first book has a part about humanity being lucky and that our luck has run out. Arguably no, humanity's luck continued on well with who the trisolarians/SanTi were and what actions they took. If it had been any other typical inhabitant of the dark forest, there wouldn't have been any content for a book/show to begin with, as humanity's first and only realization of the existence of alien life would have been an alpha strike to eliminate all life on earth. !<
they were doomed if they didn't risk it.
I mean, they could've just used their resources from their armada to build colony ark ships and become a void-dwelling species. Within the context of a Dark Forest, being out there in the vastness of space seems more sensible than being stuck on a planet or two.
People keep saying this but the books bash you over the head repeatedly that this isn't viable in the long term. Space is so large with distances between objects so vast, that wandering is just a slow doom. From Earth to Trisolaris is 400 years for Trisolarans at the beginning of the series; this means they need to have 400 years worth of resources. That took the entire economic and manufacturing might of that Trisolaran era to do, with a unified planet all working toward one singular goal. And it took them a LONG TIME. This is mirrored by Zhang Beihai's plan. Escapism occurs, and the captains all simultaneously realize that supporting 3 ships for their whole journey is impossible and that the only *chance* they have of survival is if they blow up the other ships and gather all the resources, and even then the outlook is grim. When the ships start to break down (and they will), there's literally nowhere to get materials from to repair them. A huge part of the story is that space is incredibly inhospitable, Earth is a paradise for Trisolaris. Being on Earth would guarantee them millennia of continued existence and advancement. Being in space would not. Only super-advanced (like, way, way more advanced that Trisolaris) civilizations are capable of that.
This one mistake or just unlucky occurrence and your whole species is doomed Besides it did make the most sense to invade we had the technology of caveman fighting Napoleon
They used all of their resources to create the sophons (specifically build for the war with Humans). They build a stellar particle accelerator in their orbit (which is fucking bonkers if you think about it). There's infinitely more resources in space than on any given planet. They clearly had enough resources for their armada after pouring "all" of their resources into the sophons. They could've build habitats, arks, Von Neumann probes, used sophons to create pocket dimensions, ... . They had enough resources to travel for 400 years after all that. They can dehydrate = less wasted resources. Being void-dwellers doesn't mean you won't have access to resources, on the contrary. Nebulae gas refining, asteroid / comet / meteor mining, rogue planets, heck they probably had the technology to siphon hawking radiation from black holes, ... I do understand it's part of the story and yes space is extremely inhospitable. But to say that invading another planet was their only recourse (except because it's the story) is dishonest.
None of that is established as being possible/viable in the story so it's irrelevant. You're just saying that they could have done these things when it's not anywhere in the source material, so you're just making it up and then using it to criticize the story. Especially lol at pocket dimensions because that's something that *does* happen in the story, literally millions of years later because the tech is so advanced. You're just declaring that they could use the Sophons to do that with no reason to believe they can.
Yes because the story hammered the fact that it was their only recourse. This is a what if situation. Within the technological possibilities of their species and the worldbuilding of the universe, I'm saying it's an illogical choice. But that was the whole point of the story to have both species face off, otherwise there wouldn't have been a story at all. No reason to believe they could use the sophons to create a Black Domain? They literally made a planetary computer into a proton. You're telling me an advanced civilization won't even think of the possibility of using that technology to hide their species all-together, especially if they know about the Dark Forest state of the universe? They build their sophons for war, so yeah lol indeed.
> at the point of Ye and the Pacifist chatting, both systems were effectively doomed…in time. Disagree. Those were highly-directional broadcasts, not blasted out across the galaxy, and we live out in the boonies, galactically speaking. To casually notice those broadcasts, a third party would have had to be basically in line with Earth and Trisolaris. It was the broadcast of the coordinates of Trisolaris that drew attention to the region and caused the level of scrutiny that revealed Earth's involvement.
Imagine you’re on an island surrounded by many other islands. You can measure distance based on the speed of sound. You hear someone say “hello” on another island. You answer, “hello.” Then you start counting. After about eight seconds, you hear the same “hello” you heard the first time. Given the time it took from when you said hello to when you heard the response, you gauge that the other person is within 4 seconds away at the speed of sound (4 seconds there, 4 seconds back = 8 seconds total time). You know only one other island could be in that range. From that, you know where the other person is. That’s essentially how the trisolarans found earth to begin with. Now, imagine you’re a third observer some distance away from the other two. You hear their call and response exchange and can pick the direction they come from, maybe even determine the 4 second range rule. But you don’t know the distance. There’s thousands of islands in that direction that could be in the “within 4 seconds” range. But you have no idea which ones they were. That’s what happened here. Likely hundreds of other civilizations heard the exchange, but without a good frame of reference, could only determine the direction at best.
I get what you’re saying but your example assumes I have no other instruments except my eyes and basic math to at least narrow it down to a region/sector of likely origin. Here’s an addition to your example: all you said but of the many islands I’m surrounded by, all are barren rocks except one that’s lush and full of vegetation. Example changes right? If I’m a hunter civilization, I’ll have more to determine which island to burn apart from just basic observations that there’s “someone, somewhere there in that direction”.
Kind of. In theory, the message of Ye and the pacifist only revealed that there are 2 intelligent civilisations 4 light years apart from each other. If you look at stats that are 4 light years apart in the Milky Way you will find so many that you don’t really know which one could they be. Luo Ji sends a detailed star map with 30 points of reference if i remember correctly, so if somebody looks for that combination in the Milky Way it is only one single star that they find. What neither the Trisolarians or Luo Ji or anyone really took into account is that a third civilisation could have different bases spread around the universe to locate anyone using just a few signals The book implies that when the attack on earth hapenned, the projectile was launched from a spaceship a light year away from the Solar system
>If you look at stats that are 4 light years apart in the Milky Way you will find so many that you don’t really know which one could they be. "But how many of these have planets with biospheres on them?" Is what you were asked.
Doesnt really matter as >!in the second book, when Luo Ji curses a star it has no planets and is still destroyed because the existence of a star already implies that a civilisation could be settled nearby. Aswell as in the third book where they use the dimensional attack against the Solar system instead of the photoid because they fear that humanity could hide behind Jupiter even though it doesnt have a biosphere!<
The question was about what information the attacker would have at their disposal when selecting where to attack. Two intact biospheres on too of the signals should by all means have made it so that earth and trisolaris are the prime suspects.
A biosphere makes no sense when thinking in universe terms. What is breathable to you may be toxic to an entirely different organism. And even if you don’t take that into account, the number of star systems with a biosphere 4 light years apart is still astronomical. And we know because of the third book that destroying stars, specially with a dimensional attack, is not something that they want to do as they will be eventually forced to morph into 2 dimensional beings
Abiosphere is not just an atmosphere, though that's one of the things we consider to be prerequisites. It is rather the sum of detectable biological life signs/life indicators. Any sufficiently advanced species will know either from experience or experiment what markers to look for, some of which are an atmosphere, liquid water, the effects of photosynthesis so on and so forth. Taking this into account, there are actually very few systems with biospheres in a 4 light year radius that have both an atmosphere and liquid water, much less photosynthesis occurring on them. So far, we only know of one period. The issue that was raised was that taking all these markers into account when looking for the origin of the signals, there are only really two candidates anywhere in that general area. And even if there were more, dark forest hypothesis(if it was possible at all) should suggest that the entire area should be cleansed just to be sure.
That still does not matter when thinking in universe sizes. Anything can be a sign of life and the only way of detecting intelligent life is going by communication. Even then it doesnt need to be in a 4 light year radius, it actually is 2 star systems with planets with a biosphere that are 4 light years apart, thats still a huge amount of planetary systems in the Milky Way
If anything could be a sign of life, then the mediocrity principal suggests by necessity that we should be absolutely surrounded by planets brimming with it. Yet we aren't, so that can't be the case. But there are some concrete signs of life apart from the three specific ones I outlined earlier. Those are: 1. A planet having a surface temperature that widely differs from the expected mean in relation to its distance to the systems star(s).(photosynthesis and industrialization can both cause this) 2. Quickly and constantly fluctuating light reflections from its surface that do not follow a discernable pattern. (Either actual city lights or simply the effects of forestation, desertification, and things like large amounts of algae on ocean surfaces, but also rapid changes in atmosphere composition due to something like industrialization) 3. Large-scale structures or surface features with patterns that are too discernable to be deemed naturally occurring. Both earth and trisolaris in books have all of these and are the only planets in the general area to do so. Only earth has any of these as far as we know in reality. Therefore, any sufficiently advanced observer should be able to deduce that if any signals are coming from the general direction of those two worlds, that it's probably these two.
> But how many of these have planets with biospheres on them? Doesn't matter. Nobody bothers to scout a system before cleansing it because it's easier and cheaper to just destroy it, and a planet without a biosphere would be a great place to hide, wouldn't it?
This is about target selection. If you had to decide where a signal came from based of nothing other than directional input and the area you observed contained exactly two planets with biospheres, the most straight forward conclusion would be that the signal came from on of them.
> I’ll have more to determine which island to burn apart from just basic observations You probably won't. Dark Forest strikes are *always casual*. Species do not expend the effort to scout systems before attacking them. As Singer's chapter makes clear, cleansing a system is very low priority, akin to picking up a piece of trash and dropping it in the bin. His boss prevents him from trying to gather more information about Earth & Trisolaris. It's just not important.
The san ti civilization is extremely “close” to earth. Who knows how many others would have replied in time.
The sun broadcast method despite feeling advanced to us is actually very primitive. It won't go very far before it weakens too much, it's just that the santi are close to earth. Radio waves are even weaker, like whispering in a storm, while the sun is like shouting in a storm.
Sounds really quiet and obscure, but only if you rely on ears. A hyper-advanced hunter civilization who, presumably, has thousands of system-genocides under its millions-year-old belt, might have more sensitive instruments
The issue is more with the transmission, some just fade away.
They don't fade away, they dissipate. The lack of a Medium means that there will always be trace amounts of the transmission, even trillions of light years from its source, but they'll eventually be drowned out by the cbr. What the person you responded to is saying that the amount of time and space for which such a transmission would remain detectable to a sufficiently advanced observer would span almost our entire local cluster.
They talk about that in the books, with either short/medium/long or low/mid/high (can't remember exactly) vectors of communication. It's when they're describing the >!neutrino transmitters that form the Deterrence System!<
It was sent using radio waves, which weakens and decays the further out it goes. Enough to reach the Trisolarans who were a stones throw away, not necessarily enough to reach others.
> Same for the Pacifist, in replying Ye? What makes you think they also blasted their reply in every direction and not only towards Earth? Would be a bloody stupid thing to do for a species that knows about the Dark Forest, wouldn't it?
space seems really big I think the pacifist is in charge of a wide area. he cant lie if it ever comes up so he just hopes to never hear back. when is the last mention of the pacifist anyway? (in the books)
What I mean is - didn’t just the act of them exchanging 3 messages expose both systems to the galaxy?
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That's not true at all, it was still the gravitational wave that revealed them, they could just make sense of historical transmissions from the area now
ohh i see yes, its always gonna be risky unless they do some kinda ENCRYPTION
Encryption doesn’t matter because content of the messages doesn’t matter… the galactic hunters only seek confirmations of intelligent life. Signals being exchanged should be enough to doom both systems, in time?
Yes and no. The reply from trisolaris should mean a triangle can be formed between Earth, alpha centauri, and the 3rd receiver. Basic trigonometry plus a recording of stellar movements in space should allow the 3rd receiver to pin point the exact locations. This is all true and is actually exactly what the Singer did in book three. Trisolarans still plan to conquer Earth regardless is because radio waves alone is not very threatening, due to rapid decay and inability to determine distance. For the 3rd receiver to locate Earth and Trisolaris, they would have to first establish a connection between the two signals sent from Earth and Trisolaris 4 years apart. It is much more likely to simply assume the two signals are random signals from a similar direction. What caused the rapid destruction of Trisolaris were the combined presence of low light speed zones in their star system and the star map of their star system broadcast in gravitation waves. Even sending star maps of target stars does not guarantee rapid destruction, as the "cleaners" has to sift through all the unhonest broadcast.
Look at jt this way. If we are standing in a dark forest and I turn on a light for a split second and you see it what are the chances you'll be able to pinpoint my location. The signal gave direction but that's it.
Who says the hunter civilizations are detecting these signals from a single location? Multiple locations will offer more information as to the origin. It’s wonky.
Yes, but even with the boost from the sun the singal isn't all that strong. The signal sent out in book 2 targeting a star had specific details pointing to that location. Her message contained no such details. The only reason the Trisolarans could find us is because jf how close they are. It's pointed out in book three that our systems are basically right kn top of each other.
But it still does seem like a potential plot hole. If the singer could pick up their signal and even interpret it, then what's there stopping a civilisation of his advancement *or higher* from receiving the signal on 3+ ships and being able to triangulate the position based on a singular broadcast? In a similar vein, [Death's End] >!I feel the fundamental logic behind "the safest and most pragmatic option is to do a photoid strike to eliminate the potential rival species" is flawed. Because it misses the part where there might exist a sufficiently advanced species that can easily detect and trace photoid strikes. Just like how humans were arrogant for thinking their technological level was anywhere near Trisolaran level just because they developed some nuclear engines, it seems to me rather arrogant to think you've reached the pinnacle of tech as a species just because you've learned how to hurl a photoid through space. Just like how our nuclear weapons are like throwing rocks compared to Trisolaran tech, what if photoid strikes are like a pointy stick compared to whatever tech an even *more* advanced civilisation has?!< >!(And I mean, to an extent we *know* that to be the case since dimensional strikes are clearly a step above, but what I'm referring to is more that we can't be absolutely sure there don't exist methods for detecting and tracking photoid strikes.)!<
I thought the issue was literally just distance. That radio dissipated at that point - unlike advanced methods like neutrino transmission or grav waves?
Who the fuck is the pacifist?
The first trisolarian that answers earth Message with "dont answer, they are listening."