Three bodies

Interrogator: Now begin today's investigation.Hope you can cooperate like last time.

Ye Wenjie: You all know what I know, but there are many things that I need you to tell me.

Interrogator: No, the first thing we want to know is, what is the content that the Adventists intercepted in the messages sent from the Trisolaran world to Earth?
Ye Wenjie: I don't know. Their organization is very strict. I only know that they withheld information.

Interrogator: Let's change the subject: Did you establish the third Red Coast base after the communication with Trisolaris was monopolized by the Adventists?
Ye Wenjie: There was a plan, but only the receiving part was completed, and then the construction stopped, and the equipment and base were dismantled.

Interrogator: Why?
Ye Wenjie: Because there is no information from the direction of the Centaur Samsung, not on all frequency bands.I think you guys have confirmed this.

Interrogator: Yes, that is to say, at least four years ago, Trisolaran had ceased contact with Earth, which made the information intercepted by the Adventists even more important.

Ye Wenjie: Yes, I really have nothing to say in this regard.

Interrogator: (Pauses for a few seconds) Let's find something to talk about: Mike Evans lied to you, didn't he?

Ye Wenjie: You can say that.He never revealed his deepest true thoughts to me, but only expressed his sense of mission to other species on the earth.I did not expect that the hatred of human beings generated by this sense of mission has developed to such an extreme degree that he regards the destruction of human civilization as his ultimate ideal.

Interrogator: Look at the current situation of the Trisolarans organization on Earth: the Advent faction wants to use alien power to destroy mankind, the salvation faction worships alien civilizations as gods, and the survival faction’s ideal is to betray their compatriots to survive. All of these have nothing to do with Your ideal of transforming human beings with the help of alien civilization is inconsistent.

Ye Wenjie: I lit the fire, but I couldn't control it.

Interrogator: You have a plan to eliminate the Adventists within the Trisolaran organization and have begun to take action against the Adventists.But the "Judgment Day" is the core base and command center of the Advent faction, and Evans and other core figures of the Advent faction are stationed on it. Why don't you attack this giant ship first?The armed forces of the Salvation faction are mostly loyal to you and are capable of sinking or even occupying it.

Ye Wenjie: For the intercepted message of the Lord.Those information are all stored in the Second Red Coast Base, which is a certain computer on the "Judgment Day". If that ship is attacked, the Advent faction will delete all the information when they think it is critical. Those information are too important , we cannot lose it.For Salvationists, the loss of information is like Christianity losing the Bible and Islam losing the Qur'an.I think you are facing the same problem, Adventists are holding the Lord's message as "hostage", that's why the Judgment Day still exists.

Interrogator: Do you have any advice for us in this regard?

Ye Wenjie: No.

Interrogator: You call the Three-Body World the Lord, does it mean that you also have religious feelings towards the Three-Body World like the Salvationists, or that you have converted to the Three-Body Religion?
Ye Wenjie: No, it's just a habit... I don't want to talk about this issue anymore.

Interrogator: So let's get back to the intercepted messages.Maybe you really don't know the details, but you can always hear about some aspects, some general things, right?

Ye Wenjie: Maybe it's just rumors.

Interrogator: Like?

Ye Wenjie: ...

Interrogator: Did the Trisolarans teach Adventists some technology that is higher than the current level of human technology?
Ye Wenjie: Impossible, because those technologies are likely to fall into your hands.

Interrogator: The last question is also the most important: so far, is the only radio wave that Trisolaris sends to Earth?

Ye Wenjie: Almost yes.

Interrogator: Almost?

Ye Wenjie: In this round of Trisolaran civilization, the speed of space travel has reached one-tenth of the speed of light. This technological leap occurred dozens of years ago. Before that, their space travel speed has been hovering at one-thousandth of the speed of light. The small probe they sent to Earth has not yet covered one hundredth of the distance between Centauri and the solar system.

Interrogator: Here is a question: if the Trisolaran fleet that has set out travels at one-tenth of the speed of light, it should reach the solar system in 40 years, but why do you say it will take 400 years?
Ye Wenjie: Indeed.The three-body interstellar fleet composed of large spaceships has a huge mass, and the acceleration is very slow. One tenth of the speed of light is only the highest speed they can reach. They can only cruise for a short time at this speed before they start to slow down.In addition, the propulsion power of the Trisolaran spacecraft is the annihilation of positive and negative matter. There is a huge magnetic force field in front of the spacecraft, forming a funnel-shaped magnetic cover, which is used to collect antimatter particles in space. This collection process is very slow. Time is required to obtain the amount of antimatter for the spacecraft to accelerate for a period of time, so the acceleration of the fleet is carried out intermittently, and it can only be carried out once after a long period of collection.Therefore, the time required for the Trisolaran fleet to reach the solar system is ten times that of the small probes.

Interrogator: So what did you mean by "almost"?
Ye Wenjie: Regarding the speed of space travel, we are discussing within a limited range, leaving this range, even backward human beings can already accelerate some material entities to close to the speed of light.

Interrogator (pause): By limited scope, do you mean the macroscopic scope?At the microscopic level, human beings can already use high-energy accelerators to accelerate microscopic particles close to the speed of light. Microscopic particles are the material entities you mentioned, right?

Ye Wenjie: You are very smart.

Interrogator (pointing to headset): I have the best experts in the world behind me.

Ye Wenjie: Yes, they are microscopic particles.Six years ago, in the distant Centaurus galaxy, Trisolaris accelerated two hydrogen nuclei close to the speed of light and sent them towards the solar system. These two hydrogen nuclei, namely protons, reached the solar system two years ago, and then reached up the earth.

Interrogator: Two protons?They only sent two protons?It's almost as if nothing was delivered.

Ye Wenjie (laughs): You also said "almost".The Trisolarans only have this ability, which can only make things as small as protons approach the speed of light, so they can only send two protons over a distance of four light years.

Interrogator: In the macrocosm, two protons equal nothing—even a single hair of a bacterium contains billions of protons.What's the point?
Ye Wenjie: It is a lock.

Interrogator: Lock?lock what?
Ye Wenjie: Locking up human science, four and a half centuries before the arrival of the Trisolaran Fleet, because of the existence of these two protons, human science will not be able to make any major progress.It is rumored that Evans said something like this: the day when two protons reach the earth, is the death of human science.

Interrogator: This is too bizarre, how can it be done?
Ye Wenjie: I don’t know, I really don’t know.In the eyes of the Trisolaran civilization, we may not even be considered barbarians, but just a bunch of bugs.

It was nearly midnight when Wang Miao and Ding Yi walked out of the combat center, and they had just monitored the conversation above.

"Do you believe what Ye Wenjie said?" Wang Miao asked.

"And you, do you believe it?"

"Some things are really incredible recently, but, using two protons to lock up the science of all mankind? This is also..."

"First of all, pay attention to one thing: the Trisolaran civilization sent two protons from the Centaur constellation to the earth, and they both reached the earth! From four light-years away? Dust or something, the solar system and the Earth are in motion, that's more accurate than shooting a mosquito here from Pluto, what an incredible shooter."

Hearing the word "shooter", Wang Miao's heart tightened. "What does this mean?"

"I don't know. In your impression, what do microscopic particles like protons, neutrons, and electrons look like?"

"It's almost a point, and of course this point has a structure."

"Fortunately, the image in my impression is more real than yours." Ding Yi said, throwing the exhausted cigarette butt into the distance, "Look what is that?" He pointed to the cigarette butt that fell to the ground and asked.

"Cigarette filters."

"Very well, how does it feel to see that little thing from this distance?"

"It's almost a point."

"Yes." Ding Yi walked over to pick up the filter, and tore it open under Wang Miao's eyes, revealing the sponge silk that had turned from white to yellow inside, and Wang Miao smelled a tar smell.Ding Yi went on to say, "Look, it's just such a small gadget. If its adsorption area is expanded, it will be as big as a living room." He threw the filter away with a wave of his hand as he spoke, "Are you using a pipe?"

"I don't smoke any more."

"The pipe uses another more advanced filter element, which costs three yuan each. Its diameter is similar to that of a cigarette filter, but it is longer than it. It is a small paper tube filled with activated carbon. Pour out the activated carbon inside, which is a handful like Rat-like black carbon particles, but the adsorption area formed by the micropores inside them is as large as a tennis court, which is the reason why activated carbon has super adsorption."

"What do you want to say?" Wang Miao listened attentively.

"The sponge or activated carbon in the filter is three-dimensional, and their adsorption surface is two-dimensional. It can be seen that a tiny high-dimensional structure can store a huge amount of low-dimensional structures. But in the macroscopic world, high-dimensional space The accommodation of low-dimensional space ends here, because God is very stingy and only gave the macro universe three dimensions in the creation big bang. But this does not mean that higher dimensions do not exist, there are as many as eight dimensions Being imprisoned in the microcosm, plus the three-dimensional macrocosm, there is an eleven-dimensional space in the elementary particles.”

"so what?"

"I just want to state the following facts: In the universe, an important indicator of the level of a technological civilization is the microscopic dimension it can control and use. For the one-dimensional use of elementary particles, from our hairy and naked ancestors in caves It started when a bonfire was lit, and the control of chemical reactions is to manipulate microscopic particles at the one-dimensional level. Of course, this kind of control is also from low-level to high-level, from bonfires to later steam engines, and then to later generators; now, Human beings have reached the peak level of one-dimensional control of microscopic particles, with computers and your nanomaterials. But all of them are limited to one-dimensional control of microscopic dimensions. From the perspective of a higher civilization in the universe , there is no essential difference between bonfires and computers, nanomaterials, etc., they belong to the same level, which is why they still see humans as bugs-sadly, they are right.”

"Can you be more specific, what does all this have to do with those two protons? After all, what can these two protons do when they reach the earth? As the guy just said, in a single hair of a bacterium, Both may contain billions of protons, and these two protons are [-]% converted into energy at my fingertips, and at most I can only feel like being pricked by a needle."

"If you can't feel it, they are all converted into energy on the fingertips of the bacteria, and the bacteria may not feel anything."

"Then what did you want to say?"

"I didn't want to say anything, I don't know anything, what can a bug know?"

"But you are a physicist among worms, you know more than I do, at least you are not as confused as I am about this matter. I beg you, or I won't sleep well tonight."

"If I talk too much, I'm afraid you won't be able to sleep even more. Forget it, what's the use of worrying about it? We should learn from Wei Cheng and Da Shi's philosophy, and just do our own thing well. Let's go, Let's go get a drink and then go back to sleep for the bugs."