logoalt Hacker News

pavel_lishinyesterday at 7:16 PM3 repliesview on HN

No, I was referring to the human scientists' reaction to the sophons' interference.

But I thought that the Trisolarians' inability to predict their planets' path also seemed weird. Yes, the three-body problem isn't analytically solvable, but you can brute force it, and I would imagine that a species that is capable of creating sophons and starships with hulls made out of the Strong-force could calculate their planet's trajectory for the next thousand years without too many problems. (It would be academic, anyway - if you can build that kind of technology, why do you even need planets?)

And I also hated the sophons.


Replies

d0mineyesterday at 9:09 PM

The error grows exponentially. For example, for equal-mass triple with Earth sized orbit initially, the prediction limit is just a few hundreds years even if you know initial conditions up to the plank length (LLM estimate of ~135 Lyapunov times).

show 1 reply
worldthruwordyesterday at 9:08 PM

Trisolarans had advanced technology which means they knew about probability. Probability immediately implies Lying and the two types of scientific error we have. ie false positives and false negatives

show 1 reply
physicalecontoday at 3:30 AM

[dead]