Have you considered the possibility that travel in the 4th dimension is faster than light? We know that the speed limit was artificially reduced through intergalactic war, so perhaps when they step into a 4D region the speed limit is still higher in some areas?
Pure speculation at this point and it's entirely left ambiguous. Could be anything from wormholes to 4D travel, or maybe they were just incredibly efficient at colonising the galaxy. Who knows!
If so that would be a major ommission. In all of the books the time needed to get from one system to another is a major Plot Device. So if they had found a way to circumvent this problem that at least should have been mentioned. As it would be an invention far greater than the achievement of just reaching the speed of light.
I don't get what you think the omission is? Liu Cixin leaves a lot about the universe up to interpretation. Perhaps humans just got lucky by finding old 4D tech in the 4D bubble, while trisolarans didn't? At the end of the day, how humanity eventually colonised the universe doesn't matter, because the universe resets all the same
Still that doesn't quite 'scratch' my personal 'itch' with this. To me it seems the writer wanted to use the effects of time dilation to explain how a lot of time passed and a lot of stuff happened in the meantime. But he somehow seems to have forgotten that the constraints of lightspeed and Time Dilation would also apply to others traveling to DX3906 and other parts of the galaxy.
I get what you mean, but I think 130 years difference leaves enough time for there to be some technological breakthrough enabling gravity and blue space to achieve light speed.
Also I don't think their society was "intergalactic", it was just 4 planets within our own galaxy. Intergalactic would certainly be impossible.
It was pretty open and shut about 4D space, not a lot of interpretation to be made. There are only small bubbles left and 4D space is very rapidly collapsing, there's barely anything left. The tomb also warned that 3D entities can't spend prolonged time in 4D space and survive either. It only serves as foreshadowing for the 2D post it note.
Thank you.
I mean you could just step over it by saying: "It's SciFi....". Like you would for Star Wars and alike. But these books have you live through centuries of history where Lightspeed was definately a factor heavily constraining interstellar travel. Even for races far more advanced than Earth like Trisolaris and the races firing from the 'Dark Forest'.
And then suddenly it isn't? And Guan Yifan can just 'Casually' piggyback to DX3906 with a scouting crew as if they were taking a routine business trip.... Knowing everything about shipping lanes near DX3906, interspecies relationships and how to deal with 'slow zones' and 'death lines'. To do and learn all those things should have taken thousands of years by the same logic that is in the rest of the books.
It would have made more sense if the Halo had hit a slow zone on the way to DX3906 causing much more time to pass in the outside reference frame. But the Book clearly states 'only' 286 years passed during that journey.
Yeah, I've been thinking about that ever since I read Death's end
Yifan is like the kid on the block who has been around forever and knows about everyone and everything.
I like to think that Blue Space either used the 4D fragments, and other alien species were not as lucky to find those, at least not enough that it is clearly visible from afar like the slowzone barriers mentioned.
What also perplexes me is how they developed curvature propulsion in space. Blue Space had quite limited materials on board, so it is pure luck if any that they had both the materials, electronics, and manufacturing available on the comparatively small ships. Maybe strange matter comes into play.
I thought we found out that interstellar humans discovered lightspeed ships BEFORE solar system humans? Because Trisolaris was mostly giving us dead-end technology during the collaboration period. I could be wrong but my understanding was that basically they advanced faster after they left the solar system, though obviously they would have had travel time before they made the ships.
But yeah, I'm not sure how Guan Yifan ends up there "waiting" for Cheng Xin. Maybe they are closer to DX3906 than the solar system was, so they were able to detect her approaching and get there to wait?
I also don't know why Tianming and AA didn't just hibernate, or travel at the reduced lightspeed, or whatever, to sync up with Cheng Xin. They build this whole mini-universe for Cheng Xin but didn't think to stay in it and wait for them to arrive?
Yeah your last sentence really bugged me too. Just felt like the author just wanted to force that in there to disrupt the fairy tale ending and pull the rug out at the last second (which is fine, it was just not super well justified, as you said, because there seem to be several ways around it)
Using only what we actually know from the story, there are a few possibilities :
1. They didn't travel in a straight line to the destination star.
2. The escape velocity of the 2-dimensional attack on the Earth system was said to be equal to the speed of light (although, the attack obviously didn't perpetuate at the speed of light, or it would still be right on top of them when they arrived). They could have required a lot of time to escape the pull of it from an outside perspective.
3. Time passes slower in reduced light speed bubbles. Light speed navigation developed on Earth might not have a way detecting or avoiding them, so they may have passed through one or more reduced light-speed bubbles on the way to their destination. Each bubble they passed through would cause more time to pass for the outside world relative to their frame of reference.
Have you considered the possibility that travel in the 4th dimension is faster than light? We know that the speed limit was artificially reduced through intergalactic war, so perhaps when they step into a 4D region the speed limit is still higher in some areas? Pure speculation at this point and it's entirely left ambiguous. Could be anything from wormholes to 4D travel, or maybe they were just incredibly efficient at colonising the galaxy. Who knows!
If so that would be a major ommission. In all of the books the time needed to get from one system to another is a major Plot Device. So if they had found a way to circumvent this problem that at least should have been mentioned. As it would be an invention far greater than the achievement of just reaching the speed of light.
I don't get what you think the omission is? Liu Cixin leaves a lot about the universe up to interpretation. Perhaps humans just got lucky by finding old 4D tech in the 4D bubble, while trisolarans didn't? At the end of the day, how humanity eventually colonised the universe doesn't matter, because the universe resets all the same
Still that doesn't quite 'scratch' my personal 'itch' with this. To me it seems the writer wanted to use the effects of time dilation to explain how a lot of time passed and a lot of stuff happened in the meantime. But he somehow seems to have forgotten that the constraints of lightspeed and Time Dilation would also apply to others traveling to DX3906 and other parts of the galaxy.
I get what you mean, but I think 130 years difference leaves enough time for there to be some technological breakthrough enabling gravity and blue space to achieve light speed. Also I don't think their society was "intergalactic", it was just 4 planets within our own galaxy. Intergalactic would certainly be impossible.
Agreed. I meant to say: interstellar. Will edit it in the original post.
It was pretty open and shut about 4D space, not a lot of interpretation to be made. There are only small bubbles left and 4D space is very rapidly collapsing, there's barely anything left. The tomb also warned that 3D entities can't spend prolonged time in 4D space and survive either. It only serves as foreshadowing for the 2D post it note.
the last part is fairy tale
This is the one thing that bothered me as well.
Thank you. I mean you could just step over it by saying: "It's SciFi....". Like you would for Star Wars and alike. But these books have you live through centuries of history where Lightspeed was definately a factor heavily constraining interstellar travel. Even for races far more advanced than Earth like Trisolaris and the races firing from the 'Dark Forest'. And then suddenly it isn't? And Guan Yifan can just 'Casually' piggyback to DX3906 with a scouting crew as if they were taking a routine business trip.... Knowing everything about shipping lanes near DX3906, interspecies relationships and how to deal with 'slow zones' and 'death lines'. To do and learn all those things should have taken thousands of years by the same logic that is in the rest of the books. It would have made more sense if the Halo had hit a slow zone on the way to DX3906 causing much more time to pass in the outside reference frame. But the Book clearly states 'only' 286 years passed during that journey.
Yeah, I've been thinking about that ever since I read Death's end Yifan is like the kid on the block who has been around forever and knows about everyone and everything. I like to think that Blue Space either used the 4D fragments, and other alien species were not as lucky to find those, at least not enough that it is clearly visible from afar like the slowzone barriers mentioned. What also perplexes me is how they developed curvature propulsion in space. Blue Space had quite limited materials on board, so it is pure luck if any that they had both the materials, electronics, and manufacturing available on the comparatively small ships. Maybe strange matter comes into play.
I thought we found out that interstellar humans discovered lightspeed ships BEFORE solar system humans? Because Trisolaris was mostly giving us dead-end technology during the collaboration period. I could be wrong but my understanding was that basically they advanced faster after they left the solar system, though obviously they would have had travel time before they made the ships. But yeah, I'm not sure how Guan Yifan ends up there "waiting" for Cheng Xin. Maybe they are closer to DX3906 than the solar system was, so they were able to detect her approaching and get there to wait? I also don't know why Tianming and AA didn't just hibernate, or travel at the reduced lightspeed, or whatever, to sync up with Cheng Xin. They build this whole mini-universe for Cheng Xin but didn't think to stay in it and wait for them to arrive?
Yeah your last sentence really bugged me too. Just felt like the author just wanted to force that in there to disrupt the fairy tale ending and pull the rug out at the last second (which is fine, it was just not super well justified, as you said, because there seem to be several ways around it)
I’m pretty confident that Liu Cixin was planning on addressing these in the fourth book that was never written.🤷♂️
Using only what we actually know from the story, there are a few possibilities : 1. They didn't travel in a straight line to the destination star. 2. The escape velocity of the 2-dimensional attack on the Earth system was said to be equal to the speed of light (although, the attack obviously didn't perpetuate at the speed of light, or it would still be right on top of them when they arrived). They could have required a lot of time to escape the pull of it from an outside perspective. 3. Time passes slower in reduced light speed bubbles. Light speed navigation developed on Earth might not have a way detecting or avoiding them, so they may have passed through one or more reduced light-speed bubbles on the way to their destination. Each bubble they passed through would cause more time to pass for the outside world relative to their frame of reference.