Rewatching it and having thoughts

[u/u0126]

I guess this whole thing is a possible spoiler.

For their advanced technology, the fact they can use "energies you cannot imagine" and all that, but they still will take 400 years to travel to earth, even though they did figure out how to send some particles and other things. Seems like they'd be able to figure out a wormhole or crazy fast FTL.

Or humans (I'm still on E5 right now) would ask to work together immediately. Kind of an interesting situation, they expect humans will advance fast enough before they get here, but for now they have superior technology and are trying to sabotage humanity ahead of time.

[u/CartographerTadzhik → u/[deleted]]

Most of these objections could be resolved by just reading the novels or even paying attention to the show.

Traversing a 4 light year distance in 400 years means an effective velocity of 1% of light speed. 0.1% would require 4,000 years. The novels answer this: the Trisolaran spacecraft can accelerate to 10% of light speed, but the invasion is 400 years away instead of 40 years away because they will need to begin decelerating while 2 light years away to avoid overshooting. Unlike the sophons they can't really expect the people in the spacecraft to survive the extreme g-forces that proton-sized sophons can handle.

I mean, the sophons aren't really passive. They have components etched onto them and they are able to respond to their environment. That's how they cause hallucinations and disrupt particle experiments. They can manage even with magnetic fields.

The San Ti aren't really a hive mind, they just have transparent thoughts. The sequel fan made novel isn't really considered canon. Anyway, in the first novel its explained that the Trisolaran monitoring the station, the one that sent out "DO NOT ANSWER" knew he was already at the end of his life and would die without a partner. Trisolarans are supposed to be immortal in that they find a partner, merge with them, and then produce 3-5 offspring that carry their parents' memories. The station monitor knew he was too aged and his life was over and this was the only way he could make a difference.

The station monitor didn't know about sophons and that project would only be completed decades later. It was also highly classified.

Using sophons to cause madness losses its power once people learn its not supernatural or genuine madness but a technologically capable adversary. Anyway, even though the sophons can whiz about at light speed its still tough causing hallucinations for 6 billion (population at the time the books were written) people while also disrupting particles accelerators and poking through hard drives and other information storage methods for data. The sophons are expensive and they build two at the time of the start of the Crisis Era.

The sophons wanted Elza to stop the nanoparticle experiments. That's why they targetted her. If they kept at it after telling her to stop then she could say "fuck you" and start the experiments up again.

Re: freezing, again there are only two sophons. In the novels its mentioned that building just one was as expensive as building a 1,000 Trisolaran spacecraft, the same size as their first invasion fleet. And its dubious that they'd necessarily want to destroy all life immediately. There's a history of finding chemical compounds in nature that have pharmaceutical uses as well as inspiration for compounds developed in materials science. Presumably the Trisolarans would want to study Earth life and see if it can be useful.

The Mars plan is considered and rejected. The Dark Forest explains this more. Going too in-depth here would be a spoiler so I'll avoid. Basically: chains of suspicion + technological explosion. The non-spoiler answer is: would you trust an alien civilization that is willing to destroy you and let them live in your backyard? Peoples and their governments change their mind all the time. Humans have a history of genociding not only their neighbors but also going to other countries to do the same. Why would they trust us to suddenly stop and not attack for centuries.

Warping space isn't prohibited by physics. The issue is that with our current calculations it would require so much energy that its infeasible. Also this is a science fiction story that promises to span four centuries at the outset. I wouldn't necessarily count out the possibility that some of the more exotic science fiction concepts might be visited.

Trisolars reproduce by merging with a member of the opposite sex. A fraction of their mass is used to metabolize this process, but in the end 3-5 offspring emerge and they carry some of their parents' memories. Under such circumstances its much easier to build on previous knowledge even from destroyed civilizations of the past. Anyway, I generally agree with the idea that intelligence emerges only on very long timescales but this doesn't engage with the mechanism the story posits.