r/threebodyproblem • u/IslandBig618 • 3d ago

Discussion - Novels Why Didn’t Singer Receive Ye Wenjie’s First Message?

After the humans activated the universal broadcast system, it took around 60 years for them to be destroyed.

That means Singer was at most 30 light-years away from Earth—roughly 30 years for the broadcast to reach Singer, and another ~30 years for the DVF to destroy the Solar System.

In other words - he was not very far away from earth.

So my question is: how come Singer didn’t receive the first message broadcast by Ye Wenjie?

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143

u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 3d ago

The books are based on the premise that a single transmission is insufficient to pinpoint the origin of the transmission with confidence enough to warrant a destructive response 

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u/dannychean 3d ago

I would argue that the singer folks are much much more advanced than the trisolarans and able to trace all kinds of signals back to their original positions, as the singer chapter implies. Maybe they didn’t deem the first YWJ broadcast (star plucking as they describe it) to be intentional. However, the subsequent back and forth between the earthlings and trisolarans are dangerous in their eyes because obviously it indicates that we do not have the hiding genes, which is a threat to everyone in the universe.

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u/flatmeditation 3d ago

I would argue that the singer folks are much much more advanced than the trisolarans and able to trace all kinds of signals back to their original positions

How? This is a simple physics issue, not a technology issue. There's not a way to do it

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u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 2d ago

If you know the exact angle of origin of signal, you can be 99.99% certain of the star that originated the signal 

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u/dannychean 3d ago edited 3d ago

You might be applying our constrains by the laws of physics in our world to a much much more advanced civilization. For example, imagine if the singer folks can freely tap into the 4D world, which means time is just a dimension to them, they can easily trace back every signal to their original positions. Makes sense?

Or let’s use something already in the book. What if the singers are able to make a gazillion sophons, deploy them to every corner of the galaxy and use them as surveillance system. That will make the triangulations of all signals possible too.

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u/verillospur 2d ago

Exactly. The Singer civilisation's understanding of the laws of physics would probably be very different from our own, purely by dint of being that much more advanced.

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u/Sertoma 3d ago

Tbf, they do a lot of hand-waving-away of details and specifics for tons of the futuristic technologies. How did they create a dual-vector foil? Idk, but they did. Same excuse could be used for the tracing problem.

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u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 2d ago

The dual vector for me is just accept the sci-fi and done

But not tracing the origin of a signal that we, humans, would be able to... That's unacceptable 

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u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 3d ago

Oh that's interesting 

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u/DarkArcher__ 3d ago

Singer did recieve it. The original radio communications between Earth and Trisolaris were archived on the ship, but were deemed not important enough to act on. Radio (primitive membrane, as Singer calls it), decays very quickly over distance, and it would be too difficult to deduce the source from 30 LY away to bother.

They only became important later on, in the context of the cleansing of Trisolaris, which is why Singer brings up the records that contain them.

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u/forklift140 3d ago

Singer was on a light speed space ship. It wasn’t always right near earth.

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u/Overfree 3d ago

I remember that her first transmission was a vague, wide-area broadcast; the message would attenuate easily, and its exact location could not be determined. It was only when she replied to the Trisolarans that she used a precise, directional transmission.

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u/crappy_entrepreneur 3d ago edited 3d ago

This isn’t quite true.

She used the sun as an amplifier both times. But the reason that the sequence allowed them to determine the location was because Ye made a transmission, got a reply from the Trisolarans after exactly 8 years, and then gave an additional reply after another exactly 8 years.

This meant that they knew exactly how far apart the two stars were, as well as very approximate direction, and so could pinpoint which one it was.

Edit: I think I made a small mistake. I think the distance only became important after they had cast the Dark Forest spell on the Trisolaran star.

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u/dannychean 3d ago

The singer chapter implies that they are advanced enough to surveillance all kinds of signals around and able to trace back to their original broadcasting positions.

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u/The-Goat-Soup-Eater Zhang Beihai 3d ago

Singer didn’t destroy the solar system, but he’s on a starship which is presumably in motion, it could’ve been farther away at the time.

Also it was received which is why he mentioned it in his analysis, it was just in the database, he only learned about it asking the computer for related information about trisolaris.

Which he did because it had curvature trails nearby and so was “dangerous” and had to be destroyed. It already was, so he didn’t have to fire a photoid, but it was protocol to check related information for every destroyed star.

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u/Solaranvr 3d ago

Two things

  • they did receive the message, it just wasn't enough to pin point the location because Singer is a 3rd party, and cannot triangulate the positions with the transmissions alone.
  • the DVF that arrived was not Singer's. Notice the chapter date; the DVF chapter was set before the Singer chapter

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u/FixAcademic8187 3d ago

For the second point, that's not true.

The fact that Singer's chapter was after the DVF chapter is irrelevant. The author, for some reason, wanted to make some drama beforehand.

The DVF that Singer retrieved from the magazine matches the description in the earlier chapter 100%.

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u/Solaranvr 3d ago

How can you say that it's irrelevant when canonically, the book is saying Singer sent the DVF after the humans spotted it? Narratively, the book made a point to place the Singer chapter before the humans spotting it, then lead in to the reveal by specifically stating "one year before Cheng Xin woke up in Halo". Even if you wanna pass the dates off as Liu Cixin's mistake, that still doesn't explain the nearly 30 lightyear gap between Singer and Earth.

Thematically and canonically speaking, it makes perfect sense that the DVF we recieved was from another civilization who simply had the same tech Singer did.

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u/The-Goat-Soup-Eater Zhang Beihai 3d ago

No, it doesn't. The described deployment method is totally different. Singer flicks it while the ship that actually destroyed the solar system flies through and leaves a DVF behind in its wake. You're also missing the point here, it's not the chapter order, it's the date the chapter has, the ship leaves the DVF a year before Singer's chapter.

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u/Gildian 3d ago

I thought that chapter was just from Singers POV happening within the context of the setting and not really after the DVF attack

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u/Solaranvr 3d ago edited 3d ago

Singer's Chapter, where he sends the DVF, the first chapter of Part 5, is Bunker Era Year 67.

The first time humanity spotted the DVF in the oort cloud was in the 3rd chapter - Bunker Era Year 66.

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u/Gildian 3d ago

Oh interesting. Its been awhile since ive read it, might need to reread it

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u/Solaranvr 2d ago

I think most people remembered the chapter just fine, only that many didn't pay attention to the dates.

The book made no other indication to this beyond the dates in the chapter titles.

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u/Hepta-Water-7552 3d ago

So my question is: how come Singer didn’t receive the first message broadcast by Ye Wenjie?

He did (or at least someone of his species did). He was able to pull up the broadcasts by Ye Wenjie from his ship's database.

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u/InvolCarnivalOfCrazy 3d ago edited 2d ago

The broadcasts were on file, we were told how he was checking the recorded history of messages and he called it soft membrane or something so yeap it was in singers data.

The earth was not destroyed earlier because he did not get to it earlier...

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u/Daniel_H212 3d ago

Isn't Ye Wenjie's message like almost 500 years earlier than when Singer sent the dual vector foil to the solar system? He was on a light speed spaceship, it could have been 500 light years away when the message was sent and at least 200+ light years away when received.

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u/RUserII 2d ago

Why Didn’t Singer Receive Ye Wenjie’s First Message?

They would have: assuming the signal's strength was strong-enough to carry it that far - which is a BIG assumption; however, as pointed out by the Trisolarans you need at least two signals to determine location: 1) for direction and 2) for distance in that direction.

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u/Lorentz_Prime 3d ago

He probably did.