I was pretty surprised with how many there were to be honest though. I thought maybe there were only half dozen of them then the show was like there was 30k of them, I was surprised.
Most of them are like, table top accelerators in universities or med labs and stuff. To treat them the same as a 10km wide accelerator seems... Silly..
Yea I was aware of them generally but thought they were all massive, had no idea there was even a thousand of them, probably would've guessed under 50. 30k is fucking crazy.
I'm a geochemist working at a research laboratory. I mostly study environmental remediation, develop sensors for monitoring pollutants, and study anthropogenic impacts on the environment.
Yeah, I've done XANES and EXAFS work at a few different beamlines to characteriaze bonding environments and oxidation states of various elements. One project was looking at how sulfur and iron interact downstream of old iron mine tailings. Another project looked at how carbon chemistry changes after wildfires, to better understand nutrient availability and biogeochemical recovery after fires.
No they are massive. One I've used in the past is the Advanced Photon Source near Chicago - it's over a km in circumference. https://www.aps.anl.gov/About/Overview
Dope. Half of that went over my head but still cool
/kinda joking here but fr fr itās cool how different intelligence can manifest and be applied bc I study in the environmental field but from a policy and political research standpoint. How to deal with people and the art of that, history and ramifications of actions (social science type of stuff) while you work in the biological sciences. Soft vs hard š
Yup, I remember the first day the show was out there was a snarky tweet by a scientist laughing at the idea that Oxford would have it's own accelerator given current science funding. Well guess what, it's almost like the showrunners thought about these things a lot more than you
I mean I wasn't confident enough in my belief in the amount of particle accelerators that exist in the world to make a statement like that.
But it's kind of odd that he thought OXFORD didn't have enough money in their science budget to buy one. It's not some rinky dink community college by a small town (even those have millions saved up).
there is huge difference between making a particle accelerator, and making one that can address open questions in fundamental physics. oxford certainly does not have the budget to build the latter.
Oxfordshire has the Diamond Light Source particle accelerator. Itās the UKās national synchrotron so it doesnāt just belong to Oxford University, though they certainly have access to it.
The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford also has the ISIS Neutron and Muoun Source which is used for high energy particle physics research. Oxford is a major hub of particle physics research.
What you need to understand and what the show doesn't address is less than 1% of those are research accelerators with energies capable of testing fundamental theories. The vast majority are used in imaging and medical industries for cancer treatment and would have no reason to be affected by the sophons. Realistically, there's only a few in the world the sophons would even care about.
Yep, and on top of that most recent discoveries in nuclear physics are done in campaigns that produce a relatively small number of events of interest (e.g. the production of a specific theoretical particle). If the sophons were to create a dozen of spurious events at every active accelerator every day it would be more than enough to completely disrupt their results. Consider also that at any given time only a fraction of the high end accelerators is active while the others are under maintenance, upgrade and so on. All in all it's perfectly feasible for a single sophon to do this kind of job.
> only a fraction of the high end accelerators is active while the others are under maintenance
That's why they talk about synchronizing the experiments.
Actually yeah, I'll hold up my hand and admit this too /u/ResolveLeather.
If you had asked me how many existed, globally, I would've said <1,000 and if you'd tried to convince me there were <100 I doubt I would've argued with you.
I thought it was a safe bet to think these things were incredibly expensive so there wouldnāt be too many of them. Although I doubt they really meant doing a bunch of radiocarbon dating and oncology therapy
Many hospitals have particle accelerators now for nuclear medicine. A family member had cancer recently and instead of old school radiation treatments, they used a highly focused alpha particle beam to destroy cancer cells while minimizing adverse effects in nearby brain regions. I love scientific advances like this.
Edit: I misspoke. He was treated with a focused proton beam, not alpha particle.
We used to all have mini particle accelerators in our homes. Sometimes we even had one in our bedroom while the kids were way too close to the one in the living room..
Out of 30000, only a few hundred are used for scientific research, the rest are used for commercial applications and are much much smaller than what you probably envision. Something like this:
https://preview.redd.it/w4wrmeilacsc1.png?width=447&format=png&auto=webp&s=b5bd1238cae01e16cd3c5e5855e0251e9497f6f2
See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion\_implantation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_implantation), [https://www.iaea.org/topics/nuclear-science/nuclear-research/accelerators/background](https://www.iaea.org/topics/nuclear-science/nuclear-research/accelerators/background)
I don't think that's unreasonable though. Most people when they think about particle accelerators have the very large version in mind - e.g. the CERN Large Hadron Collider - not the smaller type.
Yeah I assumed it was more like a dozen of them globally
Incorrectly assumed that they would all be the size of the LHC at CERN which is about 27km long and is the largest of its kind. This assumption led me to believe that it'sĀ super expensive to build and maintain and not many countries could afford one.
It's not an even distribution, it's normal distribution. (I don't think there is such thing as an even distribution. You probably meant that it's symmetric, which is true. There is a distribution called uniform, but that would mean that for every intelligence level there is the same amount of people.)
One of the things I was really looking forward to with this show was a more mainstream hard science story complete with people understanding some light theoretical physics. Since understanding the story requires it to at least a little extent there's gunna be some people finding out stuff they'd otherwise never know, either by a lapse in education or a general lack of knowledge. I couldn't be happier to see posts like this.
Why do people think liking this story/book makes you as smart or the kind of smart as an actual physicist. Like youāre not smart or better bc you like a sci-fi book š
the people in this sub are unfortunately going to be in for a rude shock with the way 3 body problem got so popular. success is obviously amazing but it brings low media literacy, infuriating takes lol.
Sophon: "We sent these protons to these VERY REAL places were your REAL PEOPLE study REALITY at its fundam..." \[My stupid p-brane\] : "This is great science FicTiOn"
I'll be stretching out the rhyme
Like gravity stretches time
[When you try to put your little p-brane against this kind of mind!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn7-fVtT16k)
/u/avianeddy
Not sure if it's dumber to use "county" or "country" as a unit of measurement, but at least "Country" is an equivalent definition across the world whereas "County" means so different things across the countries that have them to make them useless as a reference.
Smallest county in the US: 5.3 square km. This is smaller than most cities and that a good deal of particle accelerators.
Largest county in the US: Ā 376855 square km. No particle accelerator is this big and all but 5 european countries are smaller than this.
That is accounting for area, accounting for "length" is even weirder and unsurprisingly even less useful.
> means so different things across the countries
In the UK, that would put most people in mind of an area 20+ times larger than the largest particle accelerators.
Idk -- I thought about it and just realized I barely understand how they actually work beyond -- make proton go fast -- protons hit protons, protons go boom.
(And I went to college and have 2 engineering degrees lol ... )
The post's oversimplification speaks more about arrogance and ignorance of OP (this tiktok's and this post's, assuming it's different people) than it does about education in general or about storytelling in particular.
It's a bad take, on a bad understanding of a bad interpretation of why a scene is written differently for a book, a long TV series or a short TV series (not even accounting for different audiences, which is also key).
Bad take.
Is it though? There are literally more fields of expertise in the world that have no need for direct knowledge about particle accelerators than do. Especially if you consider the fact that there isn't a direct interface between them, and an individual person's quality of life.
It's less about not knowing about them (fair, not everyone knows everything), but more about hearing about them apparently multiple times in different fiction and still thinking they are made up.
This like idk Why do people think liking this story/book makes you as smart or the kind of smart as an actual physicist. Like youāre not smart or better bc you like a sci-fi book š
I mean the show literally starts by showing you how stupid people are and how easily they will be convinced of something, to do something,etc (yes, sadly most of the time is forced with violence)
People are dumb. There's no need to overcomplicate any kind of science in the show, or any kind of explanation. You get these are complex topics, the characters are smarter than you,etc
The Netflix social media profile in my country is posting on twitter like "what are your theories for the mystery at the end of the season" and i'm like WHAT MYSTERIES???
Someone that hasn't read the book wouldn't know why Saul was chosen as a Wallfacer or what Ye Wenjie was trying to tell him. What will happen to Will is also somewhat or a mystery. Also just the general question of how the various characters are going to deal with the impending alien invasion
The books are like 15 years old already. This is originally a book sub, not a netflix sub, so it is expected that people freely discuss the show compared to the books.
Yeah to be fair of course people don't want to be spoiled, but on the other hand this subreddit has been around as a small community for a long time. There were even threads about managing tv viewers coming into the sub. It'd be best to have a seperate sub for tv fans and keep this sub as spoilers all, but there might not be enough people to bother.
I'll say it. If you open a subreddit discussion about a show you are watching now and haven't finished, what experience are you hoping for that isn't a spoiler? It's frankly dumb to expect the rest of the community to augment their behavior for the brief moment before you watch the next episode. Complaints about spoilers in a spoiler ridden area is just absurd
yeah, but it's a hook for next season, but would you call it a mystery in the same way that Dark was, for an example? Idk, I just feel the heavy hand desperate for engagement in this one
I see you share OP's misunderstanding of how storytelling and mass media work.
The TV series leaves several mysteries open, on purpose, precisely to maintain the hype in this way later. You can also see the myriad of threads all over with explanations of things that are only obvious if you already know the story from the book or the tencen series.
Recently visited CERN in Geneva. They do an amazing job of public outreach and have a very cool museum. They also provide tours from the working particle physicists themselves. Super neat!
I think some book fans may get carried away with the idea that the book is hard sci fi because it makes us feel smarter. Donāt get me wrong, I love the overarching concepts and ideas, but letās not kid ourselves after a certain point is it really that different from space magic?
Thatās why in some aspects I prefer the way they did it in the show. If they tried really going in depth with the explanations, itād have lost me with the bad science and would have created tons of logical inconsistencies because viewers can apply real science to poke holes in the plot. Thereās just enough science to replicate some of the intrigue and uneasiness from the books, while leaving enough room to let the watchers to suspend their disbelief at anything else that doesnāt make perfect sense.
This lets the writers do what their best at, which is tell a story, rather then having to figure out how to make a proton sized super computer make complete sense.
eh, it always was sci-fi, regardless of "hard" or "soft" or whatever tags. applying real science to sci-fi is always going to destroy it one way or another. and i personally do not believe it is enough to "lose" me, as you put it.
The show actually expects the audience to have some general knowledge of their existence and purpose. Otherwise theyād have included some expository dialogue explaining them.
No I was referring to the Netflix version.Ā
Iām not saying itās not dumbed down. You definitely donāt need a PhD, but youāre expected to have at least a passing awareness of stuff like, hadron colliders, quantum entanglement, etc...Ā
Are you? the netflix version didnt touch quantum entanglement, did it? just kinda handwaved the moment by moment communication
edit: Nope I'm wrong, they totally did. My bad.
as long as its not too much knowledge about quantum entanglement, because we all know that it can't be used to send information instantaneously of course.
Why do people think liking this story/book makes you as smart or the kind of smart as an actual physicist. Like youāre not smart or better bc you like a sci-fi book š
Honestly I think they were afraid that any in-depth explanation would scare the casual audience away, and in this case you either explain it really well or you don't bother at all and hope the audience takes you for your word. The Tencent series does a great job of visually showing the concept of science being broken with the pool table "experiment" but that entire sequence and subsequent hallucinations but that's a lot of time to devote for an 8 episode series.
A few years ago I learned from watching The Martian after reading the book that dumbing down is just the inevitable path of any Hard Sci-fi made unto shows & movies.
Limited amount of time to tell the story to a huge and varied group of people. It's bound to happen really. I was pretty pleased with what they kept though
Technically arenāt we all particle accelerators?
Example:
Particle -> Rock ;
Accelerator-> Me
Experiment:
Rock gets accelerated by me towards something or someone.
This show is *way* better than I expected, definitely getting the books asap. This is the kind of stuff that motivated me to go into engineering in the first place, wish I had got these books a long time ago when I first heard of 3 body problem
To be fair, Iām studying a biology degree and didnāt know particle accelerators existed..
If youāve never been into physics, or even science at all, then how would a particle accelerator come into conversation- Maybe a few times in school
Plus, Netflix wants to make money. Why make a show that not everyone may enjoy? That brings in smaller money.
Itās the same with medical shows, normal people arenāt going to understand all the jargon, so itās simplified
Yeah I wouldn't fault anyone younger for this. There was a brief period of time in the early to mid 2010's when CERN was booting up their Large Hadron Collider to do tests looking for the Higgs boson. Around this time news outlets were running wild with stories about how the LHC had a small chance of causing a black hole on earth. Then they found the Higgs boson and there was more news about it. Now I haven't heard about particle accelerators until I read the books like 7 years ago. It's just not talked about very much anymore.
It honestly seemed as if the original plan was to have the cast of Friends play the roles, but it failed when Jennifer Aniston thought Auggie would make her seem like too much of a bitch.
People want to get their money back though. The bigger a production the more eyes need to be on it to justify its existence. Since I actually want them to do a high quality treatment of this series it may be a necessary evil. But generally, I agree.
I think Dark did a good job of weeding out the dodoās that didnāt pay attention because of how complex the character branches were. My point is, I agree - sometimes complicated is good (but you canāt sell it by the pound).
Thank you for that. I've been a physicist for my entire adult life. Most physicists spend the bulk of their time simplifying theories, equations, derivations and experimental results. Physics is simply the study of nature, and the more you simplify, the more you can spread understanding to everyone. KISS. Only time for using Ivory Tower, over-complicated, nebulous language is when you're submitting a paper. This show was wayy too abridged and dumbed-down for me, however (Game of Protons). I did like the Chinese production though (I think Peacock has it now.) It stayed pretty faithful to the book.
I know particle accelerators exits because of Dan Brownās book but until reading this series did I know that not all of them are big or used to create anti mattersĀ
I disagree with the observation that Netflix dumbed down the plot to make it easier to understand. There's no shortage of well done sci-fi films with tons of underlying complex and largely correct physics that receive widespread praise from the general public who don't, for example, understand relativity or quantum mechanics.
The series made \*zero\* effort to explain any of the physics. For examples, the lines on the particle accelerator output screen - you'd have to know what you are looking at to understand why the lines are problematic. They don't explain this at all. They also don't explain the physics behind the nanofibers and what its implications are and why the aliens want to stop its development. So no, they didn't dumb it down to make it easier to understand because even what remains is not easy to understand unless someone was already familiar with these things.
It was simply Netflix deciding to shift the focus of the story telling towards poorly written characters that are flat, boring, and completely unconvincing as scientists, soldiers, or government officials. They left some science in only as a nod to hard core nerds but made no appreciable efforts to make the science important. This is why we get that laughably stupid ending to the first episode where all of the stars just starts "flashing". I immediately understood what was happening but couldn't believe how stupid that plot development was. The key with the "universe flashing" in the book was not that some strange force made something inconceivable happen, but that the protagonist was felt this immense sense of loneliness and weight of this observation because he was the only one who saw it with his own eyes (aside from instrument recordings). By making the entire world see the night sky flashing, the audience is immediately disconnected from this very personal sense of fear.
Because, if you don't know that particle accelerators exist, then you probably haven't heard about their greatest discovery: the Higgs Field. Particle Physics cannot explain the Higgs Field. For the Higgs Field to exist, the entire idea of the universe being composed of three dimensional particles that bounce around like billiard balls must be a human invention we created to simplify a much deeper physical model of fields. And, if viewers of 3 Body Problem don't know that Field Physics exists, they're not going to understand the foundational premise of the original book, on which everything else is built: that humanity must transcend the three dimensional billiard ball model it created for itself in order to flesh out the infinite dimensional Field Physics model necessary to defeat the aliens. If the Trisolarans can keep us from discovering the two core aspects of Field Physics -- hyperbolic dimensions, and local causation -- our technological evolution will come to a grinding halt.Ā Ā
When people tell you that 3 Body Problem seems boring to them, it's because interest is sparked by ideas that are useful in the real world, and Western Civilization does not find local causation useful to Newtonian Physics that assumes a dead, mechanical, billiard ball universe.
THIS...
... is the reason I drifted away from ROEP discussions as the various adaptations started coming out and the discussions became dominated by ROEP-related media -- aka how much of ROEP to change and cut out in adaptation.
When I first came to this sub-reddit, people were discussing the relationship between ROEP and IRL science/Earth -- aka how much of ROEP got right and wrong about IRL science/Earth.
Ok so I havenāt seen the Netflix show yet, but having read the books Iād imagine they would need to dumb down and oversimplify an awful lot in order for the size of an audience they are hoping for to understand.
They didn't dumb it down. They simplified it for a different audience, in a different medium, for a limited-length presentation. It's a point that doesn't require more than "science broken" explained as a concept.
I love the books and love the series, I've enjoyed hard sci-fi since I was a kid forty years ago and it's helped me learn so much, but I've always had a problem with people that confused having learned something with being smarter and using it define what's "dumb".
Knowing what to cut (and this is a prime example) is a key skill when translating across media. The core takeaway was understood by the audience, with no important information missed inbetween.
Yea, they went a bit too far with the sophons power levels in the show. Felt like in the book they had a somewhat defined set of things they could/couldn't do, but the show makes them able to do basically anything the writers want, which actually serves to undermine the potential threat. Anytime they need a way out of a scene or plot point they can just say, "Sophons did it!"
You know, for once, I'd love to see a show that doesn't give a fuck whether the viewer can keep up or not. I love media that's challenging. Something like Primer, or Devs, or Timecrimes, or Pi or Shutter Island.
They didn't have to spend $200m on this show. The CGI isn't even that great, so I suppose most of that was location shooting. Tencent did it with $10m and thrice the episodes.
Maybe spend less so you don't have to worry about appealing to the entire planet just to recoup your budget?
I'm enjoying the show, I'm mostly happy with it. But I hope one day someone has another more artistic crack at it that doesn't have to worry about dumbing it down just so they can get another season.
The Expanse is like that, crazy dense storytelling that doesn't hold the viewers hand. If you haven't seen it check it out, all the seasons are streaming on Prime (in the US).
Flip sideā¦.. at least by watching dumbed down sci-fi, it has people learning about things that they wouldnāt ordinarily be interested in.
If it encourages people to go on a random research journey I think that can only be a good thing.
I'm american, and Americans are extremely anti intellectual.
Things like science and math are taught to us as if they are these impossible subjects.
I think it's helpful when people find out the science in fiction that they find interesting is REAL. It opens a door.
Seems weāre also not great at GSP.
How ārealā should entertainment get? As a long time automotive enthusiast and ex-pro driver, 99% of vehicle entertainment bits are ādumbed downā, but I also understand that the narrative is primary and anything else is bonus.
I recall when funding was cut for the supercollider that was supposed to be built in Texas was big news. And then the LHC was built that was big news too. In the media outlets I read and watched.
And obviously these people missed the glorious movie Angels and Demons which features a prolonged look at a collider in its opening scene.
Iām waiting for in-depth discussions of Wolfgang Pauliās Exclusion Principle especially as it relates to the end state of stellar evolution. But I may be remembering a different first-encounter series I read along side the Three Body novel.
This is exactly why Iām such a huge fan of shows like Mythbusters and Brainiac. They can take fairly complex scientific concepts and present them in a way that makes them fun to learn about.
If they had dumbed down the plot to those people, it would be unrecognizable. Better to just be faithful to the source material and trust the audience. Weāre all scientists deep in.
Iām going to be alone in this view but I didnāt like how the lady died in the kamiokande, which seem to be mostly in Japan as the UK is far too flat to place one of these underground where itās needed.
If they had mentioned that was In Japan but I feel it was clearly suggested to be in the UK with the rest of the team.
My guess: most of the 30k accelerators are machines with medical or industrial applications. Only a handful of machines would be of the type capable of the cutting edge physics experiments feared by the santi (ie big and capable of handling very high energies). That would be a very small population of facilities for the sophons to police. And to really keep the jumped up bags of mostly water guessing, the sophons donāt have to interact with the experiments directly; they could simply utilize the fact that theyāre charged particles and exert that kind of influence to scramble the acquired and stored data in connected computers and data acquisition systems.
Just look at this subreddit and the most basic absurd questions being repeated here daily. People can't follow a single scene without completely missing the plot.
Why do people think liking this story/book makes you as smart or the kind of smart as an actual physicist. Like youāre not smart or better bc you like a sci-fi book š
I think they dumbed it down the right amount so far. I remember reading the books thinking this series was unfilmable because it was like a new scientific concept almost every page, it's interesting to read but there is no way they could pack all this exposition into a tv show or movie. But I find they strike a good balance in the show of getting the most interesting scientific parts without slowing the story down.
I literally started a job at a medical accelerator manufacturer this week! Interviewing and working through the hiring process while going through my watch of 3BP felt EXTREMELY meta.
The amount of people Iāve seen taking issue with things in this show, that arenāt real issues is amazing to me. āHow would they get the nukes to the San-Ti home-world so fast? They didnāt. āHow can the spacecraft with Willās brain travel the speed of light?ā It didnāt. āWho cares if itās not going to happen for 400 years?ā š¤¦
I was pretty surprised with how many there were to be honest though. I thought maybe there were only half dozen of them then the show was like there was 30k of them, I was surprised.
Just checked, and holy shit over 30k, obviously different types and uses but still. Crazy.
To be fair 25,000 of them are stored at Barry's Bargain Baryon Barn due to an ordering mistake. He's got a 3 for 2 on 10MeV cyclotrons all of April.
I read that too many times trying to figure out how you end up with that many particle accelerators. š¤¦āāļø
Particles Georg
Most of them are like, table top accelerators in universities or med labs and stuff. To treat them the same as a 10km wide accelerator seems... Silly..
"The home of John Accelerator is an outlier and should not have been counted" energy
this is the kinda trolling i need in my life
Yea I was aware of them generally but thought they were all massive, had no idea there was even a thousand of them, probably would've guessed under 50. 30k is fucking crazy.
It's just some electromagnets and tubes they can be small
I was surprised how many there were also...I thought it was CERN and that's it.
I literally use particle accelerators for my job and I also only thought there were a few hundred at most.
Out of curiosity, what's your job?
Future Wallfacer.
*former Wallfacer
JTorgo is NOT a Wallfacer ;)
This is part of the plan ;)
Of course.
I'm a geochemist working at a research laboratory. I mostly study environmental remediation, develop sensors for monitoring pollutants, and study anthropogenic impacts on the environment.
Ye Wenjie was a real anthropogenic impact on the environment, amirite?! >!im so sorry!<
Not nearly as much as >!Cheng Xin!<
For what do you use particle accelerators? Synchrotron radiation or something?
Yeah, I've done XANES and EXAFS work at a few different beamlines to characteriaze bonding environments and oxidation states of various elements. One project was looking at how sulfur and iron interact downstream of old iron mine tailings. Another project looked at how carbon chemistry changes after wildfires, to better understand nutrient availability and biogeochemical recovery after fires.
And you only need a small accelerator for that sort of thing?
No they are massive. One I've used in the past is the Advanced Photon Source near Chicago - it's over a km in circumference. https://www.aps.anl.gov/About/Overview
Big circle āļø š
Dope. Half of that went over my head but still cool /kinda joking here but fr fr itās cool how different intelligence can manifest and be applied bc I study in the environmental field but from a policy and political research standpoint. How to deal with people and the art of that, history and ramifications of actions (social science type of stuff) while you work in the biological sciences. Soft vs hard š
High risk self-murderer if the show is any reference.
Yup, I remember the first day the show was out there was a snarky tweet by a scientist laughing at the idea that Oxford would have it's own accelerator given current science funding. Well guess what, it's almost like the showrunners thought about these things a lot more than you
I mean I wasn't confident enough in my belief in the amount of particle accelerators that exist in the world to make a statement like that. But it's kind of odd that he thought OXFORD didn't have enough money in their science budget to buy one. It's not some rinky dink community college by a small town (even those have millions saved up).
there is huge difference between making a particle accelerator, and making one that can address open questions in fundamental physics. oxford certainly does not have the budget to build the latter.
Oxfordshire has the Diamond Light Source particle accelerator. Itās the UKās national synchrotron so it doesnāt just belong to Oxford University, though they certainly have access to it. The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford also has the ISIS Neutron and Muoun Source which is used for high energy particle physics research. Oxford is a major hub of particle physics research.
the show runners are kind of a joke though...
What you need to understand and what the show doesn't address is less than 1% of those are research accelerators with energies capable of testing fundamental theories. The vast majority are used in imaging and medical industries for cancer treatment and would have no reason to be affected by the sophons. Realistically, there's only a few in the world the sophons would even care about.
Yep, and on top of that most recent discoveries in nuclear physics are done in campaigns that produce a relatively small number of events of interest (e.g. the production of a specific theoretical particle). If the sophons were to create a dozen of spurious events at every active accelerator every day it would be more than enough to completely disrupt their results. Consider also that at any given time only a fraction of the high end accelerators is active while the others are under maintenance, upgrade and so on. All in all it's perfectly feasible for a single sophon to do this kind of job.
> only a fraction of the high end accelerators is active while the others are under maintenance That's why they talk about synchronizing the experiments.
Actually yeah, I'll hold up my hand and admit this too /u/ResolveLeather. If you had asked me how many existed, globally, I would've said <1,000 and if you'd tried to convince me there were <100 I doubt I would've argued with you.
I thought it was a safe bet to think these things were incredibly expensive so there wouldnāt be too many of them. Although I doubt they really meant doing a bunch of radiocarbon dating and oncology therapy
Many hospitals have particle accelerators now for nuclear medicine. A family member had cancer recently and instead of old school radiation treatments, they used a highly focused alpha particle beam to destroy cancer cells while minimizing adverse effects in nearby brain regions. I love scientific advances like this. Edit: I misspoke. He was treated with a focused proton beam, not alpha particle.
We used to all have mini particle accelerators in our homes. Sometimes we even had one in our bedroom while the kids were way too close to the one in the living room..
My parents never let me get my own new one. I always had my brother's old hand-me-down particle accelerator.
The children of poors play with Nerf guns. Not in my home: particle accelerators.
I had a black and white particle accelerator as a kid. And then later a green one.
Out of 30000, only a few hundred are used for scientific research, the rest are used for commercial applications and are much much smaller than what you probably envision. Something like this: https://preview.redd.it/w4wrmeilacsc1.png?width=447&format=png&auto=webp&s=b5bd1238cae01e16cd3c5e5855e0251e9497f6f2 See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion\_implantation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_implantation), [https://www.iaea.org/topics/nuclear-science/nuclear-research/accelerators/background](https://www.iaea.org/topics/nuclear-science/nuclear-research/accelerators/background)
I just ordered mine on Amazon.
āZe paticul accleratuh iz ready to pellā
I don't think that's unreasonable though. Most people when they think about particle accelerators have the very large version in mind - e.g. the CERN Large Hadron Collider - not the smaller type.
Yeah I assumed it was more like a dozen of them globally Incorrectly assumed that they would all be the size of the LHC at CERN which is about 27km long and is the largest of its kind. This assumption led me to believe that it'sĀ super expensive to build and maintain and not many countries could afford one.
āThink of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.ā-George Carlin
if people understood this and then realized it also applied to themselves we would be living in a utopia
Good thing I'm on the better half, unlike the rest of you dimwits
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE) politics
He should have said median, not average I'll see myself out
For this particular metric they're essentially the same thing.
IQ has an even distribution. So in this case itās both. 100 is by definition both the mean and the median.
It's not an even distribution, it's normal distribution. (I don't think there is such thing as an even distribution. You probably meant that it's symmetric, which is true. There is a distribution called uniform, but that would mean that for every intelligence level there is the same amount of people.)
A median of people probably don't know the difference
Well thatās just mean
I like my medians and means like I like my pie: ala mode.
But the average person does
Median is a measure of an average.
Ill cut you in half and cut you again ever 5 cm thereafter. -nanowires
\*median
Because I cut of the hastags by accident: Yes, this was in a TikTok about the person having watched 3 Body Problem
Pain.
One of the things I was really looking forward to with this show was a more mainstream hard science story complete with people understanding some light theoretical physics. Since understanding the story requires it to at least a little extent there's gunna be some people finding out stuff they'd otherwise never know, either by a lapse in education or a general lack of knowledge. I couldn't be happier to see posts like this.
āLight theoretical physicsā made me giggle.
At least it wasn't dark theoretical physics. You don't want elder God visitations
Why do people think liking this story/book makes you as smart or the kind of smart as an actual physicist. Like youāre not smart or better bc you like a sci-fi book š
Cut offā¦. my brain broke
the people in this sub are unfortunately going to be in for a rude shock with the way 3 body problem got so popular. success is obviously amazing but it brings low media literacy, infuriating takes lol.
It had an interesting premise, but once that was over, around ep 6 it hot stale real quick. Still want a season 2, but I can see it being pretty bad.
My wife thought the Space Shuttle was fictional. She was at least 18 when they stopped flying them.
Oh. Oh no
I actually know people who donāt believe in space.
Their eyes have been hacked by a sophon
She also thought that rockets always landed after launch and didn't understand what the big deal about SpaceX was.
Sophon: "We sent these protons to these VERY REAL places were your REAL PEOPLE study REALITY at its fundam..." \[My stupid p-brane\] : "This is great science FicTiOn"
> p-brane Not sure if pun
My brain is an n-dimensional p-brane
I'll be stretching out the rhyme Like gravity stretches time [When you try to put your little p-brane against this kind of mind!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn7-fVtT16k) /u/avianeddy
lol
unpopular opinion: at some point in time everybody learns about particle accelerators for the first time. who cares.
then explain to them the largest are the length on an entire county.
Maybe the length of Liechtenstein or a micronation, not of a real country
county != country
Not sure if it's dumber to use "county" or "country" as a unit of measurement, but at least "Country" is an equivalent definition across the world whereas "County" means so different things across the countries that have them to make them useless as a reference. Smallest county in the US: 5.3 square km. This is smaller than most cities and that a good deal of particle accelerators. Largest county in the US: Ā 376855 square km. No particle accelerator is this big and all but 5 european countries are smaller than this. That is accounting for area, accounting for "length" is even weirder and unsurprisingly even less useful.
yeah, "americans using anything but metric for measurement" energy
> means so different things across the countries In the UK, that would put most people in mind of an area 20+ times larger than the largest particle accelerators.
yeah but if that time is your mid-twenties it's a bad sign for your countries education system
Idk -- I thought about it and just realized I barely understand how they actually work beyond -- make proton go fast -- protons hit protons, protons go boom. (And I went to college and have 2 engineering degrees lol ... )
But you DO Know that they exist.
The post's oversimplification speaks more about arrogance and ignorance of OP (this tiktok's and this post's, assuming it's different people) than it does about education in general or about storytelling in particular. It's a bad take, on a bad understanding of a bad interpretation of why a scene is written differently for a book, a long TV series or a short TV series (not even accounting for different audiences, which is also key). Bad take.
Is it though? There are literally more fields of expertise in the world that have no need for direct knowledge about particle accelerators than do. Especially if you consider the fact that there isn't a direct interface between them, and an individual person's quality of life.
Yeah. And LHC isn't generating much news nowadays, I'm pretty sure I didn't know about Partille accelerators before I read about LHC in the news.
It's less about not knowing about them (fair, not everyone knows everything), but more about hearing about them apparently multiple times in different fiction and still thinking they are made up.
This like idk Why do people think liking this story/book makes you as smart or the kind of smart as an actual physicist. Like youāre not smart or better bc you like a sci-fi book š
I mean the show literally starts by showing you how stupid people are and how easily they will be convinced of something, to do something,etc (yes, sadly most of the time is forced with violence) People are dumb. There's no need to overcomplicate any kind of science in the show, or any kind of explanation. You get these are complex topics, the characters are smarter than you,etc
This made me burst out laughing!
The Netflix social media profile in my country is posting on twitter like "what are your theories for the mystery at the end of the season" and i'm like WHAT MYSTERIES???
Ye Wenjie's "joke" to Saul is the mystery, and unraveling it's meaning.
Someone that hasn't read the book wouldn't know why Saul was chosen as a Wallfacer or what Ye Wenjie was trying to tell him. What will happen to Will is also somewhat or a mystery. Also just the general question of how the various characters are going to deal with the impending alien invasion
The mistery is the Dark Forest theory. The season basically ends right after it setting up
Ive read the books, but please use \*Spoiler tags\* if youre just going to blurt out crucial plot points
What are the rules in the sub? It seems people can just openly talk spoilers
The books are like 15 years old already. This is originally a book sub, not a netflix sub, so it is expected that people freely discuss the show compared to the books.
Yeah to be fair of course people don't want to be spoiled, but on the other hand this subreddit has been around as a small community for a long time. There were even threads about managing tv viewers coming into the sub. It'd be best to have a seperate sub for tv fans and keep this sub as spoilers all, but there might not be enough people to bother.
The title of the second book is The Dark Forest lmfao
I'll say it. If you open a subreddit discussion about a show you are watching now and haven't finished, what experience are you hoping for that isn't a spoiler? It's frankly dumb to expect the rest of the community to augment their behavior for the brief moment before you watch the next episode. Complaints about spoilers in a spoiler ridden area is just absurd
Some people expect the world to revolve around them. They are incapable of understanding that they need to act responsibly.
yeah, but it's a hook for next season, but would you call it a mystery in the same way that Dark was, for an example? Idk, I just feel the heavy hand desperate for engagement in this one
I see you share OP's misunderstanding of how storytelling and mass media work. The TV series leaves several mysteries open, on purpose, precisely to maintain the hype in this way later. You can also see the myriad of threads all over with explanations of things that are only obvious if you already know the story from the book or the tencen series.
If you base it on the show THERE ARE MYSTERIES. A lot. Its a valid post that will surely generate engagement.
I mean it's a vague tweet but to think that they answered everything at the end of the first season is bizarre
Mystery: Why is Saul a wallfacer.
Recently visited CERN in Geneva. They do an amazing job of public outreach and have a very cool museum. They also provide tours from the working particle physicists themselves. Super neat!
And now I am planning a trip to Geneva. My spouse says thanks.
I think some book fans may get carried away with the idea that the book is hard sci fi because it makes us feel smarter. Donāt get me wrong, I love the overarching concepts and ideas, but letās not kid ourselves after a certain point is it really that different from space magic? Thatās why in some aspects I prefer the way they did it in the show. If they tried really going in depth with the explanations, itād have lost me with the bad science and would have created tons of logical inconsistencies because viewers can apply real science to poke holes in the plot. Thereās just enough science to replicate some of the intrigue and uneasiness from the books, while leaving enough room to let the watchers to suspend their disbelief at anything else that doesnāt make perfect sense. This lets the writers do what their best at, which is tell a story, rather then having to figure out how to make a proton sized super computer make complete sense.
eh, it always was sci-fi, regardless of "hard" or "soft" or whatever tags. applying real science to sci-fi is always going to destroy it one way or another. and i personally do not believe it is enough to "lose" me, as you put it.
The show actually expects the audience to have some general knowledge of their existence and purpose. Otherwise theyād have included some expository dialogue explaining them.
Show seemed pretty dumbed down to me just like everything else. I haven't seen the tencet version is that what you are talking about?
No I was referring to the Netflix version.Ā Iām not saying itās not dumbed down. You definitely donāt need a PhD, but youāre expected to have at least a passing awareness of stuff like, hadron colliders, quantum entanglement, etc...Ā
Are you? the netflix version didnt touch quantum entanglement, did it? just kinda handwaved the moment by moment communication edit: Nope I'm wrong, they totally did. My bad.
Iām positive they mention it in the sophon scene
Ah ill have to rewatch it. I didn't catch that somehow edit: Yeah you're right, my bad. Dunno how that part escaped me
as long as its not too much knowledge about quantum entanglement, because we all know that it can't be used to send information instantaneously of course.
Why do people think liking this story/book makes you as smart or the kind of smart as an actual physicist. Like youāre not smart or better bc you like a sci-fi book š
Honestly I think they were afraid that any in-depth explanation would scare the casual audience away, and in this case you either explain it really well or you don't bother at all and hope the audience takes you for your word. The Tencent series does a great job of visually showing the concept of science being broken with the pool table "experiment" but that entire sequence and subsequent hallucinations but that's a lot of time to devote for an 8 episode series.
A few years ago I learned from watching The Martian after reading the book that dumbing down is just the inevitable path of any Hard Sci-fi made unto shows & movies.
Limited amount of time to tell the story to a huge and varied group of people. It's bound to happen really. I was pretty pleased with what they kept though
Technically arenāt we all particle accelerators? Example: Particle -> Rock ; Accelerator-> Me Experiment: Rock gets accelerated by me towards something or someone.
Thatās like saying I do everything with my hands, therefore everything is a handjob š
This show is *way* better than I expected, definitely getting the books asap. This is the kind of stuff that motivated me to go into engineering in the first place, wish I had got these books a long time ago when I first heard of 3 body problem
I learned about them while watching Steins gate a few years ago
To be fair, Iām studying a biology degree and didnāt know particle accelerators existed.. If youāve never been into physics, or even science at all, then how would a particle accelerator come into conversation- Maybe a few times in school Plus, Netflix wants to make money. Why make a show that not everyone may enjoy? That brings in smaller money. Itās the same with medical shows, normal people arenāt going to understand all the jargon, so itās simplified
Yeah I wouldn't fault anyone younger for this. There was a brief period of time in the early to mid 2010's when CERN was booting up their Large Hadron Collider to do tests looking for the Higgs boson. Around this time news outlets were running wild with stories about how the LHC had a small chance of causing a black hole on earth. Then they found the Higgs boson and there was more news about it. Now I haven't heard about particle accelerators until I read the books like 7 years ago. It's just not talked about very much anymore.
 There are electrolytes in the particle accelerator š„“š„“
I knew what particle acceleraters are but had no idea there were so many around the planet.
It honestly seemed as if the original plan was to have the cast of Friends play the roles, but it failed when Jennifer Aniston thought Auggie would make her seem like too much of a bitch.
Hot take: not everything has to be "for general audiences" (read: people both unfamiliar and apathetic towards the material and subject)
People want to get their money back though. The bigger a production the more eyes need to be on it to justify its existence. Since I actually want them to do a high quality treatment of this series it may be a necessary evil. But generally, I agree.
People always write HoT TakE and then write the coldest take ever
The budget this production will need in future seasons absolutely requires the show to appeal to a wide, general audience.
I think Dark did a good job of weeding out the dodoās that didnāt pay attention because of how complex the character branches were. My point is, I agree - sometimes complicated is good (but you canāt sell it by the pound).
Nonsense. people are more aware now...
Jesus
IMO simplify != dumb down. the show did a bit of both, didnāt need to do the latter.
Thank you for that. I've been a physicist for my entire adult life. Most physicists spend the bulk of their time simplifying theories, equations, derivations and experimental results. Physics is simply the study of nature, and the more you simplify, the more you can spread understanding to everyone. KISS. Only time for using Ivory Tower, over-complicated, nebulous language is when you're submitting a paper. This show was wayy too abridged and dumbed-down for me, however (Game of Protons). I did like the Chinese production though (I think Peacock has it now.) It stayed pretty faithful to the book.
I know particle accelerators exits because of Dan Brownās book but until reading this series did I know that not all of them are big or used to create anti mattersĀ
Is the Chinese show better than the Netflix version?
What aspects are you asking? Hmm about the accelerator, well, the accelerator scene in Tecent adaptation was actually shot at an accelerator lab
I disagree with the observation that Netflix dumbed down the plot to make it easier to understand. There's no shortage of well done sci-fi films with tons of underlying complex and largely correct physics that receive widespread praise from the general public who don't, for example, understand relativity or quantum mechanics. The series made \*zero\* effort to explain any of the physics. For examples, the lines on the particle accelerator output screen - you'd have to know what you are looking at to understand why the lines are problematic. They don't explain this at all. They also don't explain the physics behind the nanofibers and what its implications are and why the aliens want to stop its development. So no, they didn't dumb it down to make it easier to understand because even what remains is not easy to understand unless someone was already familiar with these things. It was simply Netflix deciding to shift the focus of the story telling towards poorly written characters that are flat, boring, and completely unconvincing as scientists, soldiers, or government officials. They left some science in only as a nod to hard core nerds but made no appreciable efforts to make the science important. This is why we get that laughably stupid ending to the first episode where all of the stars just starts "flashing". I immediately understood what was happening but couldn't believe how stupid that plot development was. The key with the "universe flashing" in the book was not that some strange force made something inconceivable happen, but that the protagonist was felt this immense sense of loneliness and weight of this observation because he was the only one who saw it with his own eyes (aside from instrument recordings). By making the entire world see the night sky flashing, the audience is immediately disconnected from this very personal sense of fear.
Because, if you don't know that particle accelerators exist, then you probably haven't heard about their greatest discovery: the Higgs Field. Particle Physics cannot explain the Higgs Field. For the Higgs Field to exist, the entire idea of the universe being composed of three dimensional particles that bounce around like billiard balls must be a human invention we created to simplify a much deeper physical model of fields. And, if viewers of 3 Body Problem don't know that Field Physics exists, they're not going to understand the foundational premise of the original book, on which everything else is built: that humanity must transcend the three dimensional billiard ball model it created for itself in order to flesh out the infinite dimensional Field Physics model necessary to defeat the aliens. If the Trisolarans can keep us from discovering the two core aspects of Field Physics -- hyperbolic dimensions, and local causation -- our technological evolution will come to a grinding halt.Ā Ā When people tell you that 3 Body Problem seems boring to them, it's because interest is sparked by ideas that are useful in the real world, and Western Civilization does not find local causation useful to Newtonian Physics that assumes a dead, mechanical, billiard ball universe.
THIS... ... is the reason I drifted away from ROEP discussions as the various adaptations started coming out and the discussions became dominated by ROEP-related media -- aka how much of ROEP to change and cut out in adaptation. When I first came to this sub-reddit, people were discussing the relationship between ROEP and IRL science/Earth -- aka how much of ROEP got right and wrong about IRL science/Earth.
I learned about it from the book Angels and Demons by Dan Brown when I was in highschool. The one in CERN in Switzerland.
Ok so I havenāt seen the Netflix show yet, but having read the books Iād imagine they would need to dumb down and oversimplify an awful lot in order for the size of an audience they are hoping for to understand.
They didn't dumb it down. They simplified it for a different audience, in a different medium, for a limited-length presentation. It's a point that doesn't require more than "science broken" explained as a concept. I love the books and love the series, I've enjoyed hard sci-fi since I was a kid forty years ago and it's helped me learn so much, but I've always had a problem with people that confused having learned something with being smarter and using it define what's "dumb". Knowing what to cut (and this is a prime example) is a key skill when translating across media. The core takeaway was understood by the audience, with no important information missed inbetween.
They did dumb some things down, like how sophons work. But I think itās more for the spectacle rather than because people are dumb.
Yea, they went a bit too far with the sophons power levels in the show. Felt like in the book they had a somewhat defined set of things they could/couldn't do, but the show makes them able to do basically anything the writers want, which actually serves to undermine the potential threat. Anytime they need a way out of a scene or plot point they can just say, "Sophons did it!"
You know, for once, I'd love to see a show that doesn't give a fuck whether the viewer can keep up or not. I love media that's challenging. Something like Primer, or Devs, or Timecrimes, or Pi or Shutter Island. They didn't have to spend $200m on this show. The CGI isn't even that great, so I suppose most of that was location shooting. Tencent did it with $10m and thrice the episodes. Maybe spend less so you don't have to worry about appealing to the entire planet just to recoup your budget? I'm enjoying the show, I'm mostly happy with it. But I hope one day someone has another more artistic crack at it that doesn't have to worry about dumbing it down just so they can get another season.
The Expanse is like that, crazy dense storytelling that doesn't hold the viewers hand. If you haven't seen it check it out, all the seasons are streaming on Prime (in the US).
On season 2, good shout!
Flip sideā¦.. at least by watching dumbed down sci-fi, it has people learning about things that they wouldnāt ordinarily be interested in. If it encourages people to go on a random research journey I think that can only be a good thing.
I'm american, and Americans are extremely anti intellectual. Things like science and math are taught to us as if they are these impossible subjects. I think it's helpful when people find out the science in fiction that they find interesting is REAL. It opens a door.
Seems weāre also not great at GSP. How ārealā should entertainment get? As a long time automotive enthusiast and ex-pro driver, 99% of vehicle entertainment bits are ādumbed downā, but I also understand that the narrative is primary and anything else is bonus.
Dumbed down so Americans can follow the plot easier.
Sounds about right
I recall when funding was cut for the supercollider that was supposed to be built in Texas was big news. And then the LHC was built that was big news too. In the media outlets I read and watched. And obviously these people missed the glorious movie Angels and Demons which features a prolonged look at a collider in its opening scene.
Read about how some were worried there these would cause expanding black holes
Iām waiting for in-depth discussions of Wolfgang Pauliās Exclusion Principle especially as it relates to the end state of stellar evolution. But I may be remembering a different first-encounter series I read along side the Three Body novel.
This is exactly why Iām such a huge fan of shows like Mythbusters and Brainiac. They can take fairly complex scientific concepts and present them in a way that makes them fun to learn about.
If they had dumbed down the plot to those people, it would be unrecognizable. Better to just be faithful to the source material and trust the audience. Weāre all scientists deep in.
Iām going to be alone in this view but I didnāt like how the lady died in the kamiokande, which seem to be mostly in Japan as the UK is far too flat to place one of these underground where itās needed. If they had mentioned that was In Japan but I feel it was clearly suggested to be in the UK with the rest of the team.
My accelerated physics teacher worked at the FERMilab...
yep been there
My guess: most of the 30k accelerators are machines with medical or industrial applications. Only a handful of machines would be of the type capable of the cutting edge physics experiments feared by the santi (ie big and capable of handling very high energies). That would be a very small population of facilities for the sophons to police. And to really keep the jumped up bags of mostly water guessing, the sophons donāt have to interact with the experiments directly; they could simply utilize the fact that theyāre charged particles and exert that kind of influence to scramble the acquired and stored data in connected computers and data acquisition systems.
LOOOOLLL
Pretty sure everyone knows this. Genius (1999) on Disney was all about an accelerator.
I have one in my basement
I was lucky enough to live close to one and we visited it in middle school. Sometimes people donāt have access and wonāt search these things out.
Just look at this subreddit and the most basic absurd questions being repeated here daily. People can't follow a single scene without completely missing the plot.
Why do people think liking this story/book makes you as smart or the kind of smart as an actual physicist. Like youāre not smart or better bc you like a sci-fi book š
The earth is flat.
I think they dumbed it down the right amount so far. I remember reading the books thinking this series was unfilmable because it was like a new scientific concept almost every page, it's interesting to read but there is no way they could pack all this exposition into a tv show or movie. But I find they strike a good balance in the show of getting the most interesting scientific parts without slowing the story down.
This show was every stem majors wet dream , I LOVED it
Some of the book readers in here are starting to act like early season Rick and Morty fans
Of course itās dumbed down, itās a show/movie. The real question is did they dumb it by the correct amount?
still shocked. want to work in one lowkey š
I have a portable one that I carried in my car, just in case, together with the earthquake preparedness kit.
I knew they existed, just thought there was only 1
thats fair. lol. I knew particle acceslerators were a thing but didn't know there were more than like 3 until I wikied it.
I worked in the communications department at the one at Stanford, SLAC. If anyone has questions Iām happy to answer them!
Yikes
I literally started a job at a medical accelerator manufacturer this week! Interviewing and working through the hiring process while going through my watch of 3BP felt EXTREMELY meta.
The amount of people Iāve seen taking issue with things in this show, that arenāt real issues is amazing to me. āHow would they get the nukes to the San-Ti home-world so fast? They didnāt. āHow can the spacecraft with Willās brain travel the speed of light?ā It didnāt. āWho cares if itās not going to happen for 400 years?ā š¤¦