- Physics world.
Hello and welcome to the Physics World Stories podcast.
I'm Andrew Gluster. And in this episode,
we're gonna be exploring the science
behind the Netflix series three Body Problem.
The American Science Fiction Television series is created
by David Benioff, DB Weiss and Alexander Wu,
and it is based on the Hugo Award-winning Chinese novel,
the Three Body Problem by Li Sing,
that if you haven't seen the series,
there will be some minor spoilers.
I do recommend watching the series, so if you want
to go away and watch, maybe you only need to watch the first
two or three episodes
before he can come back to listen to this.
Later in the podcast we'll hear
how scientists in today's world are considering
how we might communicate with aliens.
And we'll hear much more from this man.
Matthew Kenzie, the science advisor for the Netflix series.
The Three Body Problem takes its name from something
from the world of physics
- In the same way that in our solar system, we sort
of have the sun and Jupiter as our two body system,
and then the earth is a third body,
but it doesn't really exert any influence on the sun
or Jupiter 'cause it's too small,
it's not, not massive enough.
Uh, and so it's then just a sort
of a little particle traveling through the,
the gravitational field of the other two bodies.
And so I think that's the, the parallel being drawn in,
in the three body problem is there are,
there are three suns, three stars in this system,
and the planet is then just a little point, uh, that wanders
through their gravitation of field.
Um, but
because there are three bodies, that system is not stable.
It's in a chaotic di dynamic orbit.
Um, so I mean, if we, if we talk about
what the three body problem is generally, um, you know,
it refers to any system in which you have three objects,
three bodies, which are all exerting a significant
gravitational force on each other.
Now, if you have two bodies, um, they have some center
of mass point, so they have some, some minimum, right,
some stable position
because they're then just orating, uh, orbiting
around their, their center of mass.
In the three body states, you don't have
that same stability.
And so you can, you know, write down the forces on all
of these bodies, but then you can't actually solve
their equations of motion.
Um, and what you want to do
as a physicist is write down basically
the equation of motion for things.
It tells you that where they will be, uh,
after a, a given amount of time, um, so you can sort
of simulate that in the three body problem.
Um, you can write these things down,
but you, you generally don't know, uh,
where they will be at some future time
because orbits are chaotic and hard to predict.
Um, so, you know, the, the analogy is like the weather,
that's a many body system, uh, of these kind
of different clouds and structures, kind of
that exerting influence on each other.
Um, but trying to predict their behavior is, uh,
impossible on a, on a sort of particle level
or individual body level.
Yeah. So that, that, that's
what the three body problem refers to.
And that means that this system, you know, is in a,
a kind of chaotic orbit.
And I guess if you run that forever, eventually it will end
with one of the bodies being ejected
or two of those bodies colliding.
And if you live on a planet which is in that system,
that's obviously not very, not very good.
And I, I guess if you're an advanced enough civilization,
you would have to figure out a way
of getting off that planet.
- Jennifer Willett is a science writer
and a staff writer at AZ Technica in the US
several years ago now.
She wrote a review of the books
of the Three Body Problem four Physics World,
and has now watched the series on Netflix.
- The guys who did Game of Thrones,
David Benioff and David Weiss.
You know, were adapting it.
And so I, I know people got very upset at the finale,
the last couple seasons of Game of Thrones,
and you know, there's some legit criticisms there.
But what the Davids are good at is taking a really
sprawling, complex novel with multi-layers and adapting it.
And especially those big powerful,
you know, showcase scenes.
They're wonderful at bringing those to life.
And I thought all of that was very, very evident, uh,
in this, um,
I thought it was generally a very, very good adaptation.
It's a different medium, so you're not going
to get the same depth you're going
to get in a novel, and I don't expect that.
But I thought as terms of just sheer entertainment goes,
I thought that the, uh, the show was fantastic.
It was really, really well done. But
- What was it that you liked about the book?
- You know, it was such an unusual, first of all, I mean,
most of us, you know, Westerners,
what was unusual about the book is
that it was purely Chinese
and it, it, it is just like Chinese
culture past and present.
It was, there was a history, uh, element, um, back into,
you know, that we don't know a lot about in terms of,
most Americans don't know specifically,
or even Ritz know a lot about Chinese history, uh,
particularly during that era, um,
where you had those struggle sessions
and, you know, Einstein was considered, you know, uh, evil
and off limits, and it was blasphemous.
Um, we don't know much about that.
We don't know much about modern China.
So to have this, this wonderful, sprawling,
epic scope novel set entirely in China, it it,
and it, it wasn't even translated
until like seven years later
and it became this global sensation.
And that's very unusual.
And so I think the Chinese were rightly very proud ,
but what made it work was the,
was the characters and the people.
You had a wonderful murder mystery,
and it was narratively constructed in a way
that there were lots of little flashbacks and things.
So it slowly unfolded what was going on.
Um, it had wonderful scientific characters
that I thought were really well drawn
and were believable that they seemed like the scientists
that you and I would know and interact with.
And that's not always the case.
, a lot of times fictional scientists are
fictional scientists, .
So I mean, it had a lot, so much going for it in terms
of character development, narrative structure, any kind
of mystery element is wonderful.
And then this crazy twist at the very end of
what was actually going on, um, that, you know,
this was an alien invasion
and that this young woman who had grown up
during the cultural revolution revolution
and become embittered from all, from all the trauma,
actually invited them to take over earth.
You know, that's just incredible. And
- There's a different set of characters in the TV series.
Right. Did they work for you as well? Yeah,
- I know there's some criticism.
I think, uh, for the, they made a conscious choice
to expand the scope beyond China for the novel.
And I think some Chinese people were angry about that.
And then I, I get it.
Uh, I get why this is, you know,
this novel is such an unusual source of pride
and to have it be adapted
and have it be suddenly westernized, I get it.
Um, but also an alien invasion is global in scope.
And that was sort of the, uh, the, uh, rationale, I think
behind expanding it.
And, you know, they combined characters,
they gender swapped some characters
and some, I think worked better than others.
Um, but in general I thought they did a pretty good job.
I mean, the actors were fantastic.
Um, things that the Davids aren't good at is, uh, coming up
with their own, uh, storyline.
They, they can come up with a broad storyline,
but they're not great at developing characters on their own.
They're great at broad strokes,
and they're great at taking complicated material and, and,
and, uh, boiling it down and synthesizing it for television.
They're fantastic at that.
They're less good at letting a scene unfold,
letting characters breathe, get, you know,
getting those like beats that just don't seem
to move the plot forward, but they're there for a reason.
They're there to kind of enrich the, uh, the story.
I thought they did a much better job
with three body problem than they did in the latter
seasons of Game of Thrones on that. Yeah,
- I it's an interesting one though, isn't it?
Because I'm a, you know, a I think the, the series
that I would've really loved to see
wouldn't have been very popular, which would be a
really hard, almost.
Essentially, the books turned into the, into the series
with much more character development,
much more of that side of things.
And they, it's, it's really good television.
It's not as good storytelling.
And there's moments where the story is the thing
that kept me going when I was just feeling a little bit like
I was watching, you know, just another piece of television
that was being made with that five minutes at the end
where everything happens and make keeps you going
for the next, um, the next season.
But that's a, it's a minor criticism really.
'cause I did really like it, but I just,
I would really like it if we could have television series,
which did, you know, we've got so much streaming now,
can't we have some real hard sci-fi really
intense conversations, character development
of no cliffhangers.
- I do think that there is some element of that.
I mean, by the fifth episode, they have worked
through the events in the, in the Three Body problem novel.
Um, they had time, you know,
to develop that a little bit more.
They, the last three episodes are taken from portions.
There are, are accept
or accepted from the last couple of novels,
specifically the third, uh,
which jumps around in times a lot.
So they're clearly setting up a second season.
But I felt that they did have time, you know,
if they had wanted to take a little more time.
They don't really explain a lot of the science,
although they do a great job, I think summarizing the three
body problem for a general audience.
Um, and it is, I don't know
what it's like if you haven't read the novel.
I mean, I had reread the novel
before I watched the show, so I mean,
anything I'm filling in to a certain extent.
But the thing I worked,
I thought worked best were the big scenes.
Um, I thought the VR scenes were really good,
and I thought that, uh, oh my God, the scene
with the nano fibers cutting through the ship, which, um,
really was horrifying in the book
and really super horrifying.
And because when it's visualized
and you realize just how awful it is, um, so awful
that the woman who designed it ends up using them as
for water filtration to like assuage in third world
countries to assuage your conscience.
But, uh, you know, so things like
that I thought worked very, very well.
But I agree with you that they tend to rush the Davids,
they tend to wanna like move the story forward all the time
and not have those beats.
And I think that that's what you're missing.
And maybe you and I might want different beats,
but you might have wanted more time on the science.
You might have wanted more time with, uh, you know, a couple
of characters or, or something.
But letting it unfold slowly,
a slow burn is actually really good.
And you, there are some series out there that do
that successfully, but the
Davids are not among them .
- Yeah, yeah, no, completely.
I mean, I, there's, there's certain film directors
that I'd like to have seen get, I mean, de Vil nerve,
I'd like to see making this
kind of thing. I think that would be really
- Interesting.
He's very good at those beats. That
- Opening scene is so incredibly hard hitting, right.
That is just extraordinary.
And if you don't know the history
and then you find out that that sort
of thing is real, you know, that's
- Struggle session.
- Yeah. Probably one of the most real things in the series.
Mm-Hmm. that is incredibly powerful.
And I found myself wanting more
of that sort of thing.
It's not quite enough of the China thing for me, I think.
- Right. And that was, again,
what I loved most about the book was just
how deeply it delved into that era of Chinese history.
And you kind of need to understand those things
to understand her character.
You know, why she does what she does is directly tied
to the trauma of watching her father get beaten to death
for being a physicist who won't deny Einstein.
Mm-Hmm. So, and that's a scary thing.
And it, it would be traumatizing.
And, you know, again, it's, it's,
it's shortened in the, in the tv
and there's good reasons to do that.
It's not a novel, but you could have had a few more beats,
you could have spent a little more time there.
Um, because you have to understand why she did
what she did in order to see her
as even a remotely sympathetic character. Mm-Hmm.
- Yeah, absolutely. Do you think, um, you know,
in all science writing that you do, all the explorations
that you're doing, do you feel like that sort of
dangerous politicization of science is something
that is real today in the world?
- Well, I live in the us so yes, , it's, um,
everything is political now.
I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's quite distressing and,
and, you know, discouraging to, to see that, you know,
people are, you know, people put, it's, it's become,
it's political ization.
Partisanship has gotten so bad in the US that basically
anything that even, you know, you can politicize anything.
You can politicize a Tesla truck, or car.
You can politicize climate change.
You can politicize vaccines, you can politicize.
So far they haven't managed to really politicize physics,
but it could be coming, you know,
they politicized biology and evolution.
They politicized genetics, IVF all these things
that should be wonderful advances to human progress.
Um, so, and,
and people's, people's worldviews are just
so colored at this point by their politics that it's,
it's very distressing.
- Thankfully, we're somewhere away from the beating
of scientists on stage as part of a political struggle.
But clearly there are some issues still where science
and politics collide.
Returning to the science of the three body problem,
I wondered what Jennifer Ette thought
of the concept in the novel
and the TV series of Sentient Protons.
- Oh, the Soans, yes.
I mean, that's of course the thing that's purely fictional,
but I loved how they took the, this idea from,
of extra dimensions, from string theory
and then designed, you know, what an
what an ingenious concept.
It's completely impossible based on our current science,
but that's what science fiction is for,
to make you dream about what might be possible.
And oh my God, it was just wonderful to see it.
And they had to, they did it in the VR game,
which was perfect because you could then visualize it
beautifully, you know, see it, the computer like spread out
and all those dimensions and etched
and then boiled back down once it was like sentient into a
little, into a little proton again.
Um, I think that's the most genius aspect,
scientific aspect, sci-fi aspect of the novel.
And I really thought that they handled it well,
because that's a very hard thing to convey to an audience
who might not be, not, might not anything about strength
theory or, or some
of these advanced theoretical physics ideas. Mm-Hmm.
- . Yeah. And is it, does it work
for you consistency wise?
It it works for you as a, as an idea?
- It's, it's, no, I mean, it's, it's not about that.
It's, it, it works as a good storytelling
device is what it is.
Um, and Tanglement is real,
and Entanglement doesn't quite work the way it does in the
series, and that's okay.
Um, that's a, there's certain things when, when I used
to do, uh, organize, uh, consultations for Hollywood,
there's something that all the directors
and producers call a buy.
You know, there's just like one thing that this,
you're just gonna buy into that
and that's just gonna be part of the backdrop.
And sofas is the buy.
You're just going to accept that this thing exists
and it's capable of doing what it's capable of doing
because the plot really does rest on it, you know?
So, no, it does not make logically consistent sense if you
think too much about it, you know, but, and,
and it's not really, they don't spend a ton of time on it,
the series, this might be another place
where they could have developed that a little bit more,
rather than just rushing straight to the end.
As, you know, the Davids like to do .
It makes a, a certain amount of story sense.
It drives the plot forward,
and it gives, it explains how the aliens can help, can,
can create their hallucinations, how they can mess
with our physics experiments,
and also how they can spy on us and know what we're doing.
Um, it also, the entanglement aspect shows that, you know,
'cause normally a signal would take like years to get back
and forth 'cause they're 400 years away
- With science being so key to the storytelling.
In this particular series, I wanted to find out more about
what a science advisor does in these big sci-fi series.
Here's Matt McKenzie again.
- I'm an associate professor, uh,
at the University of Cambridge in physics.
I'm a particle physicist.
And I, oh, my team
and I basically, we, we analyze data
that comes from the Large Hadron Collider, uh, in order to,
you know, try and unpick some of the secrets
of our universe.
- Have you been part
of unpicking any particular secrets? ?
- Um, well, I was in,
involved in the Higgs bows on discovery as my PhD.
That was more outta fortune than, uh, particular skill.
But yeah, in the, the second year of my PhD, I was sent out
to cern, uh, for a couple of years.
And, and in that time made a discovery that was, yes,
well over 10 years ago now.
Um, and so yeah, now I work on, on sort
of matter anti-matter asymmetries in, in, um, heavy,
heavy flavor, decays heavy decay of, uh, of bottom
and, uh, charm meison.
Um, yeah, to try
and understand this, uh,
anti-matter matter asymmetry problem that we, we seem
to encounter in the universe.
- But you also are the science advisor
for the Netflix series three Body problem.
How did that come about? That's
- Really not my day job.
Um, and um, it came about
through a serendipitous connection, really, that my, uh,
father worked in the film industry.
He was a, a director of photography,
and he, um, uh, was the photographer for Game of Thrones,
um, and worked on an, uh, early series of Game of Thrones.
And so actually during the time of my PhD, it, it was,
I think I went to visit him on the set
and I met the creators of the show.
They sort of indulged me
for probably about 15 minutes whilst I was sort
of waffling on about the Higgs boats on, um,
and then, yeah, sort of cut forward 12 years or something.
I mean, it must be at least that,
'cause my, my dad died in 2012,
so it's been a long time since I had any
contact with the creators.
But they then, uh, I think were looking for a particle asist
as they were developing this show to ask a couple
of questions to, and, and, and remembered me.
And, um, and then they reached out, um, uh,
and it started like that.
And we had a few emails back and forth, uh,
and then eventually I was sort of brought on as a, uh,
advisor for the show.
- So what, what does an advisors do for a show like this?
- Well, I mean, it was a real variety of things.
So when I actually started out, um, it was really
before the scripts had been written, so it was just a,
a few emails back and forth with the, uh, the creators.
And then we, um, you know, I saw some outlines
of the script, so gave some comments.
I then saw early versions of the scripts.
And so it went from sort of, um, concept stuff
and dialogue stuff.
Um, and then as they were shooting the show,
it was more kind of practical stuff with the art department,
the props department, the, the camera department,
and, you know, visual effects about
how certain things would look.
So sometimes it could be a visual effect
or sometimes it could be something as simple as what, uh,
what what sort of mug would be in the background
or, uh, what's on the blackboard in this, in this room,
all kind of, um, stuff like that.
- Okay. But, but do they sort of come to you before
and say, okay, we need some equations on this
blackboard, what should we put on it?
Or do they do something and then ask you if it's correct?
- N no, most of the sort of calculations
or sciencey bits in it, I, um,
would've had a hand in writing, I guess,
because, you know, I, I saw such early versions
that I would, you know, I mean,
in the one case she does this calculation Jupiter
to the earth and Jupiter to the earth via the sun.
And so that calculation, you know, I did at some point,
and I was quite actually pleased to hear that.
I, I think I did a, an interview with someone
who had actually checked the calculation and it was right.
So, uh, um, yeah, I was quite pleased
that I hadn't made a mistake
or at least one that that wasn't spotted, uh, um, that time.
So yeah, I mean, things like that I
would've, I will have advised on.
And then I, I do remember for example, over a period of a,
of a month or so, taking various pictures
of different people's blackboards, uh, in their offices, uh,
just to send in as kind of, you know, an idea of the sorts
of things that are written up in academic offices,
which in my case is a lot of jumbled up diagrams
and equations and mostly nonsense. Yeah.
- And I mean, presumably they don't need
to ask you if a scientist would have Star
Wars Lego in the background.
I mean, everyone knows that that's the case, but
- Well, exactly.
I mean, they, I think they did think there was gonna be some
characteristic giveaways sort of like, you know, tell us
what a typical physicist has in their house.
Well, I mean, I dunno, , they,
they have some really cool Lego kits
of the different LHC experiments.
Yeah, that's cool. You know, you, they're sort of custom,
these sort of custom made things,
but you can sort of print the instructions online
and order the specific pieces from the, you know,
Lego factory or some supplier
and build a replica of the Atlas detector and and so on.
- Hey, that's really - Cool.
Yeah, I don't have one of those unfortunately.
- No, but I will soon.
Now I know about that . That's good. .
- I think something that the showrunners were asked, um,
early on, um, was how plausible the characters are.
You know, they're sort of, you know,
should they be portrayed as these kind, you know, how,
how is, how is a genius portrayed in the,
in the entertainment, uh, and film industry?
You know, you think of Beautiful Mind or Goodwill hunting
or something like that, but I mean, I think the reality is
that most physicists, um, if they are career physicists,
like Jin and Sola for example, you know, they have a,
some kind of ability to communicate
because you have to get your research funded somehow,
and you have to be able to convince other academics of your,
of your work and what you are doing.
And so you do have a ability, I think,
to collaborate in big teams and, uh,
and, uh, also, uh, communicate your, your research outcomes
- In those early days.
Is it anything to do with storytelling?
Is it just sort of fact checking, like, could we get away
with this sort of thing?
Is that the sort of question? Well, I
- Think that, I mean, the show first is, you know,
it's based on a book, very, very successful book series.
Um, and so, you know, you already have some constraints
to go on in particular, the big picture physics stuff.
Um, you know, there are some things which are very crucial
to the plot line, and
so you can't avoid having these scenarios where you need
to think about the science explanation.
And also the book does make a, a very, um, serious attempt
to explain lots of the science in, in it, it tries, tries
to, you know, figure out ways
that these phenomena can occur.
Uh, and so you sort of have a, a basis, uh, in that.
Um, and yeah, so a lot
of the stuff we talked about really early on, like
that was kind of trying
to find plausible explanations, right?
There's a difference between something that's real
and plausible and then impossible.
And, you know, you,
you can't help straying away from something which is real
because of, of the story, uh,
but you tried to come up with plausible
and explanations for various things,
even if they're not conveyed necessarily on the screen.
Um, but they're, they're discussed in, in quite a lot
of detail under underneath it,
and I think that's just a real genuine attempt from the
showrunners to, you know, get myself.
And then the other, um, advisor was a NASA guy,
um, Bobak fki.
And, um, you know, they really wanted to understand how,
how things would underpin the, the kind of, uh, the universe
that's being created in this, in this show.
Because, I mean, I think one
of the really clever things about the,
the show in the book is the fact
that this mysterious other world is displayed to you
through a virtual reality game.
You never actually see it.
You are seeing a representation of it, um, that is put on
for the benefit of, you know,
teaching humankind about this other place.
And that gives you some artistic
and creative freedom with how you portray things,
because you can speed up slow down time.
You can, you know, invert gravity
or, you know, you can do all sorts of, all sorts of things
where gravity is on for some characters
and not others, uh, because it's a game.
And so I think that's a really nice thing, you know,
that's a really nice creative kind of environment
to think about the physics as well. But
- That scene, uh, you're talking about
with the gravity being on for some
and not others, if you lined up three sons like that,
would it start to affect gravity in that
- Earth?
We're envisaging, there is a planet which is somehow
involved in a three star system,
and there is a, a where the three sons
and the planet align all in a single, uh, axis.
And so for the planet
that feels the stacks gravitational force of three suns,
and I think, you know, but the, this planet is made
of something, it's not a perfect sphere, uh, of, of rock.
Uh, it's probably spinning as,
as are the other three bodies as well.
Um, and so I think you would probably have a rip, uh, in
that situation, right?
But, uh, certainly you would, you would, you know,
rip the planet off with the people.
But um, yes, in principle, it just depends
how big the gravitational force is, right?
And, and, uh, and how close you are to the,
to the object. So
- That's kind of, yeah, there's, there's artistic license
because it's in the video game, which is, as you say,
great bit of storytelling,
- Right?
But so, so what you want for the visualization is
that the characters are still and watching this, right?
So the actual players
of the game observe this happening in the, in the universe,
in in, in some way in
- The video game, all the scientists are
played by comedians.
So like Alan Turing is played by, uh,
someone from the League of Gentlemen, I think.
- But you also have to remember it isn't
really Alan Turing, right?
In the same way that the character gin is not really
Copernicus, um, those are their,
their character names, right?
And I guess it's, it's a little kind of Easter egg
or not towards the physics community, right?
The, the people who have actually advanced in the game
to level three, I think it is by that point where you,
you kind of work out, you know, it's a three body system,
and then you have to try and figure out
how you can predict its, um, orbits, um,
that the people who have got there have decided
to call themselves in their as their characters, Turing
Newton, uh, you know,
and of course Copernicus is, is a, is is also another,
you know, nice character name
because, you know, Copernicus is credited with the discovery
that the sun is at the center of our solar system.
I quite like the fact that these, the, the sort
of comedians were given those roles there,
or, or several roles in it.
I mean, it's a good sort of British cast. The
- Human computer bit is an extraordinary scene
to look at, right?
Is that it feasible in any way?
- It's one of my favorite scenes, I think.
Um, and so yeah, I mean, it, it, the, the idea is that yes,
they, they figured these, these characters, uh, Turing and,
and, and I can't remember
who the other one is, I think it might be Newton.
They are, they are figured out it's a three body system,
and now they're trying to simulate it.
And you can, you can do that.
Uh, it's actually not, uh, you know, it's, it's a few lines
of code, maybe, you know, less than a hundred.
Uh, the, the question is how you actually then run
that code somehow in this game,
and they have to then build, uh, a computer,
but they don't have any electronics in the game.
So they, they try
and build it out of, out of human beings, then it means
that each human being just becomes a logic gate
in your circuit.
And the difficulty then is trying
to run an operating system, I think, on that,
on that circuit.
So each human kind of knows what to do.
They know if they're a not gate, an and gate
or an or gate, right?
And so they, they either have one input, one output,
or two inputs and one output,
and they're making up the little semit transistors
that are in our, uh, modern day computers.
And so, yeah, it doesn't have to be particularly advanced
or powerful, I suppose, the computer to run this simulation,
uh, depending on how accurately
and how, uh, quickly, you know, how,
how long you want it to predict for.
Um, I think the difficulty is trying
to run an operating system on
that in which you can run your code.
And then, you know,
there's also this other big dependence in a real circuit,
I guess on the clock frequency.
People need to know when they are zeros
and when they are ones,
you somehow need someone banging out a rhythm
to keep them in sync.
Otherwise, different bits of your circuit will go out
of sync with the others
and you'll have these horrible kind of problems.
So you need enough people to do it in time if one
of them makes a mistake.
I think basically your program crashes.
It's a sort of control alt, delete situation,
but you would somehow need to know to unravel that
because your prediction will, will make, will be nonsense
or your, your signal will get stuck.
But yeah, I think it could be doable if you had enough
people doing it in clock.
And of course it's a game again.
So the characters who are playing, you know, the real people
who are playing these characters, uh,
in the game have convinced this leader to get all
of his armies of people together
and maybe, you know, whoever's in control of the game
sets the parameters such that, you know,
your human beings do act like a computer.
The, the problem is, is your simulation is only, uh,
gonna last for some amount of time.
I mean, you know, that bit is possible,
I think making the computer running this code,
but then you still can't, it still can't work really,
because you have to know the exact starting conditions
of your three body system to run this simulation.
And your simulation is numerical.
It's not, uh, it's not a perfect solution to this problem.
So it will walk over time away from
where the real outcome goes.
And so, yeah, you have to measure the exact positions
of these three sons and their exact ve philosophies,
and then put those as the starting input to your program
and then run the simulation.
And then in real life, what you were doing, you would try
and have a live feedback loop, right?
That observed where these bodies were going
to then run this back through your simulation again to try
and somehow minimize the difference between
what you are predicting and, and what you are observing,
and then seeing where that goes in the future.
You know? So it's like some kind of Hawkeye, uh,
but uh, you know, that's
what you wanna run on this computer, right?
So you know where your planet's gonna be tomorrow in,
in a month, and so on.
- The one other thing that sort of
confused me slightly was using the sun
as an amplifier of the message.
Is that feasible?
- The kind of way that I thought about this,
and this is, this is mentioned a bit in the book as well,
is yeah, the amplifications of signals, right?
So I mean, the sun has, has layers
and it has these convection currents, right?
In its different layers.
And so you could certainly imagine that for some frequencies
of radiation, you know,
every time they cross a boundary basically,
where there's a different makeup of the, the, the plasma
that makes up the sun, um, you know,
there's a transition probability
and a reflection probability.
They are, they are a wave.
And so some of it will reflect off the surface, some
of it will be transmitted.
And then if you have another layer behind that of, you know,
the right number of wavelengths, if you reflect off
that layer, then the two can interfere, uh,
and they can interfere constructively.
And so whether the actual structure
of the sun is symmetric enough
and the wavelength of the, of the radiation has to be,
you know, perfectly tuned somehow.
And that might not be then practical for
what signals you can produce and so on.
But that was kind of the, the principle of the idea that,
you know, just like, like traveling through a bubble,
I guess you get some kind of, uh, interference pattern
and that could be constructive.
And that's exactly how an amplifier then, then works.
I mean, it was kind of, I was gonna say there was, you know,
part of the, the advising role, um, was a bit of time
with the, the cast, what they were.
Uh, and they, they did this, what they were going,
doing the script read throughs, which happened
through sort of three or four day period.
Um, and I was on the set at the time
and met some of the cast then
and had different conversations with different members
of the cast about various different aspects of the show.
But the character that plays the young, um, uh,
when Jay in the, in these early scenes, you know,
the character that transmits this signal, um,
she was very , very, um, kind
of interested in this exact, uh, principle
and about how this amplification could occur.
And I think, you know, I eventually convinced her that,
you know, an amplifier, you know, the,
the headphones in your, um, ears can amplify a signal.
So in principle, so could the sun,
but, uh, yes, the, it's not a phenomena
that's been observed as far as I'm aware.
- Yeah, that's really nice though
that the actor really was interested in that concept.
- Um, yeah, I mean it was, it was pretty fun.
And, and, and, and yeah, different members
of the cast had different interests in, uh, in,
in different aspects.
And you know, also aspects of what the,
what they would be like as day-to-day physicists.
The characters I think, uh, are, are kind of
hopefully well portrayed in certain, in terms of their kind
of diversity and their, their backgrounds
and you know, these, these kind of main characters that are,
um, you know, based in Oxford
or they did their PhDs together in Oxford.
And I was asked quite a bit about the characters early on
and, you know, how plausible is it that, you know, this set
of characters as, as in this situation.
And I, I found it, uh, I found it very kind of,
uh, uh, acceptable.
It seemed, uh, there was some parallels with
what I'd seen in the, in the sense that they're a bunch
of PhD students, they share the same supervisor.
So they, they spend kind of four year, five years
of their life together.
And you know, some
of them are kind of in love with each other.
Some of them are, you know, romantically involved
and there's kind of good friends, not so good friends,
and it seemed kind of quite a plausible situation.
And I think it's, it's nice that several of them are women,
uh, as well,
and sort of, yeah, diverse ethnic backgrounds gives a, a,
a nice portrayal of something,
which I think is quite a realistic, um, kind of, uh,
environment that they're
- In.
Was it a fun experience?
Would you be up for being science advisor on something
- Else?
Yeah, it was brilliant. I really enjoyed it.
It was, it was great to, uh, think about some
of this like high concept stuff as well, right?
I mean, it's a bit like interacting with, with students.
Um, you know, you really get asked some,
some questions about things.
You're like, oh, I've never, never really thought about,
never really thought about that.
Um, and so it, it's kind of really good fun to kind
of think about these different, uh, physics scenarios.
So yeah, I, I would love to do it again,
but, um, I probably won't give up the day job.
Uh, you know, I enjoy, I I enjoyed
- The research a little bit too much for that.
Well, that's certainly good news for those of us
who are interested in scientists unlocking the secrets
of the universe and also some good news
for anybody making a science fiction series
who would like a science advisor like Matt,
we can't really talk about three body problem without
considering how we might talk to aliens.
Here's Dr. Hannah Little,
- I'm a lecturer at the University
of Liverpool in the communication and media department, um,
but I'm also, um, a researcher with the UK seti,
uh, network and also Seti post detection hub
who are based at the University of St.
Andrews. And they're specifically interested in the
search forter show life.
But what happens after we make that
first discovery, uh, of a signal?
So Seti is interested in, um,
discovering signals in the universe, evidence
for intelligent life,
and the post detection hub, then ask what happens next?
- And do you think that the example of
what happens next in the three body problem is a good one?
- Uh, I mean, the simple answer, no, right?
Things don't go well
because of a lack of processes, Andrew, and
because of a lack of, um, uh, communication
between different humans who make, um, decisions on behalf
of humanity, about what messages we should be sending out
or, um, how we should be responding to, uh,
intelligent life forms.
Um, and it does actually mirror an ongoing
friction within the Seti community, uh,
specifically in relationship to Meti.
So, uh, SETI is the search for extra intelligence.
Meti is the messaging extra terrestrial intelligence.
So there's been a few instances, um, in the last, uh,
few decades since the 1960s,
others sending signals out into space.
Um, and, uh, there are quite a lot of, uh, people who think
that's a very bad idea
because we don't know how friendly any potential
aliens that we, that might be out there might be.
That's actually what the, the following novel
to the three body problems about the dark forest is this
idea that there might be many, many hundreds of,
of advanced alien civilizations out there,
but we don't know about them
because nobody's sending out signals about themselves
because that is a foolish thing to do
because if you say, hi, I am here, uh, then that invites,
uh, potential invaders to come
and do an independent day style, uh, massacre.
- We are sort of sending out messages anyway, aren't we?
I mean, I've seen contact and I've read the book of contact,
and that suggests
that our messages have been going out basically since we've
been broadcasting television.
- But that is not a direct, um,
and fast form of communication.
Um, so some of, um,
when we transmit things specifically in a deep space using
radio, uh, telescopes, then tho those signals, um,
are targeted and much,
and move much quicker than our normal radio signals.
So yes, we've, we kind of are sending signals out all
of the time, but they're not being targeted
and they're, they're much more slow than, than some
of these more targeted, uh, radio messages.
- Would you send out a message?
- Do you know? Part of me wants to say yes
because the more I think about this, but I think it's
because I'm quite an optimistic person who kind
of has a quite positive view of humanity
and the direction we're going.
But I realize that I am, uh, a bit strange in, in, in that,
in that regard, um,
because when I think about the history of, of, of humans
and, um, how we've progressed in our thought,
I don't necessarily mean in recent years,
but over the course of history, um, we've progressed more
and more towards, uh, a state of seeing other animals
or other races of human as being worthy of respect
and worthy of, of, of being, um, protected.
And I think that the environmental movement
that we're currently seeing is indicative of, of seeing,
of being respectful of, of other living creatures.
Um, but across, you know, historical time, we've also learn
to see other races of human as being equal to us,
rather than seeing as white western people
as being, uh, supreme.
We're, we're progressing towards wanting
to protect each other and seeing things like
colonialism as as bad.
And as a result of that, I think that if we were
to find intelligent aliens out there,
our first instinct would not be let's destroy them all and,
and live on their planet, right?
We'd be curious, we'd want to research.
Um, our scientific ethics would not allow us to,
um, do them any harm.
Um, and so I'd like to think
that if there's an alien species out there
who are technologically advanced
to master space travel in order to get to us,
that they would also be sufficiently advanced in, in,
in relationship to their, to their ethics and,
and their, the way
that they think about other living creatures.
So if that's the case, I don't think we've got anything
to be scared of, but of course we can never know.
And that's the problem. ,
- There are people in power in countries
around the world today.
If we had an alien, um, invasion
that was a friendly alien invasion, you can sort of imagine
that they'd be the wrong people.
So how do we go about getting the right people to talk
to aliens when they arrive?
- Um, so in the post detection help, there's like lawyers
and people who specialize in what we call scenario mapping
and working out who, you know, the key actors are
and working out what they do
and how it would change perspective and things.
Um, but really I'm just a linguist who sits at the corner
and thinks about how we'd start talking to them.
Um, so I mean,
the only answer is that I don't, I don't know.
And that's a problem in itself is, is that there's,
there's no clear hierarchy in, in who should have,
who should be in charge in
relationship to that communication.
But that's why we need kind of these processes in place
before, before it happens, if it happens.
- Okay, so I'll let you off the moral dilemma
of getting the right people in power
and who should talk to the aliens ,
but the, in terms of the linguistics, say we've got past
that and we are having a conversation,
but how do we talk to aliens?
How does, does the series kind of work in that way?
- So what the series does is actually bypass the problem,
I think is the most, um, exciting problem, which is,
um, how do you, um, start communication in the first place?
And it seems that the, the aliens in the three, uh,
body problem, the Santi, they have a very different way
of communicating than us,
but they have mastered how to communicate with us.
So there's one scene in the, in the series where
I want explain the context of this scene
'cause it is a massive spoiler,
but they send a message that everyone on earth sees
and they see it in their own language.
So in Russia, it's written in Russia
and in England it's written in, written in English
and in China it's written in Chinese.
And that indicates that they've somehow got enough
of our, enough of the, um, evidence from our planet, enough
of the communications to perhaps, um,
do statist some statistical learning to work out what all
of our languages are, what they're made up of, and and,
and how we communicate using them to be able
to send messages like that.
And that is one way to, to deal with, um, how to communicate
with, with a new species is to basically work out
how they're communicating using computational tools, um,
to then just send messages back.
And if you are sufficient, if you've got enough data
and enough com computational power, uh, you can do
that quite easily, I think.
But the problem I'm mostly interested in is if you had an
alien in a room with no technology,
how would you start that communication?
Um, but that series doesn't cover that at all.
Um, but there is some really interesting stuff in there
about, um, communication
because, um, crucially, the, the thing that results in,
in us falling out with the aliens,
and I'm not sure that this is a spoiler,
I think it might be, is that, um, the aliens can't lie
and they are very suspicious of humans because we can lie.
And this creates, uh, quite a large amount of discord.
And it seems to be that the reason that they can't lie is
because their communications very much linked
to their thought.
Um, and so there's no filter between them thinking and,
and what they end up speaking out loud.
And there's one scene where the Santi discover this, uh,
as a result of one of the humans reading,
I think it was Little Red Riding Hood,
and they were really confused about this story
and they were asking questions about it
and then realized eventually that it was fiction.
And the notion of fiction meant that we can lie
and that's alarming to them.
And in that scene, the human,
I think he's called Mike Evans, he expresses
that our ability to lie comes from, um, the fact
that we are in some way not as advanced as the aliens.
So he says that we're like Barnard animals,
so squawking at each other.
But I was thinking about this notion, um,
that having a filter between our thoughts
and what comes out of our mouth,
which is necessarily more considered and can be a lie
or we can selectively decide to say some things
and not others, is actually what separates us from a lot
of animal communication within the world.
So animals, animal communication is quite often
characterized by the fact that they don't have a filter.
Their communication is based in things like them being
hungry or them wanting to meet with each other
or something else that's based in their needs.
And so there's no filter between them expressing a need
and needing help with fulfilling that need
and producing a signal about it.
And so in, in those systems,
in those animal communication systems, it's not possible
to lie because it's their signal is very much bound up in
their biology and, and their needs at that time.
Uh, and we've gone past that
and are now a, a place where we can, uh,
lie about being hungry or send out signals about wanting
to mate when we might not want to for whatever reason.
And we, we mark that as being progress, right?
We are more advanced than than animals.
We are, we, um, have supremacy over animals.
That's how we generally think about ourselves
and our human language and our communicative abilities.
But it's interesting in the show that that's kind
of backwards, that we see ourselves as being
squawking barnyard animals rather than,
uh, an advanced species.
And it certainly sees, seems that the Santi Sea is
as potentially advanced
because then they decide that we are a great danger
because of this, this ability that we have.
- But what if maybe in season two, one
of these aliens is standing in a room with one of them,
but how do we communicate in a room
with an alien species from another planet?
- I mean, this is really tricky.
Uh, and there's no way to answer this question
that isn't highly speculative
because we don't know
how they're gonna communicate with each other.
We know because all of the scenes
of them communicating in in the first series is them sending
human language that is clearly being translated over
over radio signals.
So we have this problem where we don't know
what modality they used to communicate.
Maybe they don't open their mouths a lot at all,
all maybe it's all tele telepathic.
And there's a couple of of things
that hint at it being telepathic
communication in, in the series.
And if it is telepathic
and their brains don't necessarily allow them to have
that telepathic communication with humans,
which it's likely not to
because we don't have whatever biology they've evolved
to allow for that, that there would necessarily be no
outward indication that they're trying
to communicate in the first place.
But the first thing that a human would do would be
to outwardly try
and, uh, signal that I am trying to communicate with you.
And I always said the best way to do that is just
to say hello .
Um, because, you know, I, regardless of of of species,
um, it's a good bet that the first, or,
or you know, language
that anyone speaking across the world is a good indication
that the first thing that you say
to somebody else is, is a greeting.
- Hello. Or help maybe,
- Depending on the situation, ,
- I might not say hello if I was, you know,
drowning in an alien soup,
but I would say hello if I was standing
in a room with them, I can say,
- So the first thing I'd do is try
and work out what, what, how they take an information.
Do they have ears or
or ability to auditorially process sound?
Do they have uh, eyes, do they have smell?
Do they have touch? What, what is it?
How do they process information?
And once you've established that, you can try
and then work out how to send them a signal.
Um, and the best way to do that is probably to use iconicity
where there is correlations
between signals and, and what they mean.
So, um, the classic examples from the 1970s of the,
the pioneer plaque, um,
and the Voyager golden record going out, they've got visual,
um, images on them that represent what humans look like
and um, where the earth is, um, on a pul sail map.
And also, um, a little symbol
that it'll demonstrates hydrogen.
And the reason we did that is
because for us visual images are highly iconic.
There is a strong correlation between a picture of a human
and what a human looks like.
And so that's much more reliable as a communicative signal,
um, with someone who doesn't have the same language
as you than just using a word.
Because words are mostly quite arbitrary.
If I said to you human
and you didn't speak English, there's no way
that you'd be able to work out that human. It means human,
- Yes.
Iconography. There's also maths.
Maths seems like it would be universal.
- Yeah. And maths is quite iconic.
So when we wanna, um, kind of send the number one
and the number two and the number three,
there is a direct like correlation
between the signals and what they mean.
Um, so maths is a very iconic medium. Yeah.
And the good thing about maths is it's all about trying
to work out common knowledge with the aliens.
So what is it that they already know?
And if they're an advanced species with,
with advanced technology, they're likely
to have nailed maths.
And so we can send them things like in contact.
I think it's the frequency of hydrogen
and hydrogen's the most abundant chemical element in the
universe, which is why it's a really good kind of foundation
to say, we know about hydrogen, this is hydrogen.
Do you wanna chat or other the kind
of universal contestants like pie or,
or certain frequencies like the fon sequence.
- It feels like to me the best way that we've got
of exploring this stuff is probably
through science fiction, right?
Yeah. There's, I mean, we've already talked about
independence day contact.
There's arrival, there's three body
- Problems.
And quite a lot of the people in the post detection club are
science fiction authors
because these, they are necessarily the people who've
thought about these problems way more than,
than even scientists
because scientists are often distracted
by problems on earth, uh, before they, they start worrying.
But problems in artist space,
- Dr. Hannah Little is currently writing a book
exploring communication with aliens
through the lens of science fiction.
You can't get that just yet.
I'd like to thank Hannah, Jennifer,
and Matt for talking to me for this episode.
And I'd like to thank you very much for listening
and next month we'll be hearing about something else from
this wonderful world of physics
and we might just have a new jingle for the podcast
- Physics world.