S01.E03: Destroyer of Worlds

[AnimeMania]

Obsessed with their virtual reality quest, Jin and Jack race to solve a complex riddle — but advancing to the next level brings harrowing consequences.

Premiere Date: March 21, 2024    Netflix    

[Anela]

I figured Jack wasn’t going to last long, after that.

 

Edited March 22 by Anela

[PurpleTentacle]

Yeah, I figured out that there are multiple suns before the reveal. But how it is explained here makes no sense. If you had such an unstable system, the planet would be yeeted out of the system into deep space, sooner rather than later (much sooner than complex life could develop).

I guess this is the titular three body problem.

I hope this is confined to the video game and not supposed to represent reality, because man that would be some bullshit.

Also, considering a planet and three suns are involved, this would be a 4 body problem, not a 3 body problem. Did they really get the thing that the title describes wrong? Is that also wrong in the books?

-

There is no general closed-form solution to the three-body problem. But that doesn't mean that there aren't solutions for individual cases. Considering the game is supposed to represent a real system, no general solution is required, just a solution for this specific case. So not sure what the show is on about.

If this is going where I think it's going and especially since the inventor of the game seems to have highly advanced technology, you could just throw a few super computers at it and get good enough results.

But I guess the inventor of the game would have to have a solution, to accurately simulate the problem in the first place? So maybe this isn't quite going where I think it's going.

This better make sense in the end or I'm going to be mad...

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The three sun eclipse: Well that's not how gravity works... I hope that's not meant to be literal, but just a weird representation of the game. But "the planet is under the gravitational force of all three suns" as an explaination didn't sound like it...

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So if no computer can predict the three body problem, which is actually a 4 body problem, this simulation has been pretty much bullshit the entire time. K...

Also as I said above, that planet would never have enough time to even develope a civilisation in such a chaotic system. Such a small body would be slingshot into outer space pretty much immediatly. Even if it were to take a billion years (which it wouldn't), that would still not be enough time for a civilisation to develope.

So I hope this is just the aliens lying to garner sympathy? But I think the scientists should really see right through it, right away.

There is no "unstable 3 body star system 4 light years away". So are we in the realm of complete fantasy now? Again, this was sold to me as hard scifi. Of course there is a 3 star system, roughly 4 light years away. But orbits in the habitbale zones around all three stars would be stable.

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Good for John Bradley-West. He finally escaped one of D&D's shows before it completely fell off a cliff, although only barely from what I can see so far.

[marinw]

How could life evolve on a planet that unstable? Was there a super-long stable period? Did San-Ti evolve super fast? Or did they evolve on some other world?

Their calendar must be a mess. How can the San-Ti even measure days, months and years with any consistency?

Edited March 23 by marinw

[shrewd.buddha]

Things have escalated.  I wondered if Jack's murder was going to be made to look like a suicide .. but the other suicides seemed genuine. 

I appreciated when the one character (Augie?) called them crazy for interacting with advanced technology they didn't understand - - not that it stopped them.

Three episodes in, and I'm still feeling a bit detached from it all. The flashbacks to 60's, 70's China seem more grounded than the rest.

[marinw]

On 3/22/2024 at 5:32 AM, PurpleTentacle said:

Of course there is a 3 star system, roughly 4 light years away. But orbits in the habitbale zones around all three stars would be stable.

Alpha Centuri!

Edited March 23 by marinw

[iMonrey]

I'm finding this a real slog to get through. The premise of aliens coming to our planet is intriguing enough but the video game gimmick is driving me nuts. And I still don't particularly care about any of the characters either.

[aghst]

On 3/23/2024 at 3:56 PM, marinw said:

How could life evolve on a planet that unstable? Was there a super-long stable period? Did San-Ti evolve super fast? Or did they evolve on some other world?

Their calendar must be a mess. How can the San-Ti even measure days, months and years with any consistency?

 

On 3/23/2024 at 4:28 PM, shrewd.buddha said:

Things have escalated.  I wondered if Jack's murder was going to be made to look like a suicide .. but the other suicides seemed genuine. 

I appreciated when the one character (Augie?) called them crazy for interacting with advanced technology they didn't understand - - not that it stopped them.

Three episodes in, and I'm still feeling a bit detached from it all. The flashbacks to 60's, 70's China seem more grounded than the rest.

That’s my thought too.  Not only did civilization develop, they have much more advanced tech than human beings, despite an unstable environment or solar system.

They’re capable of interstellar travel yet if not for Ye Wenjie inviting them, they wouldn’t have sent ships exploring other possible homes?

 

[PurpleTentacle]

26 minutes ago, aghst said:

They’re capable of interstellar travel yet if not for Ye Wenjie inviting them, they wouldn’t have sent ships exploring other possible homes?

Especially since their star system is only 4 light years away.

Finding planets is not easy, but with their tech, they should have telescopes that can see earth directly, after they found it through indirect observation and you'd think they'd look at the nearest star system with a yellow dwarf first. Even for us the Alpha Centauri system was one of the first candidates, we just haven't found anything other than planets around Proxima Centauri yet, because double star systems are hard (technically a triple star system, but Proxima Centauri is so far away from the other two, it's like they are different systems for the purpose of planet detection). But the aliens would be looking at our single star system, with much more adancanced tech, so what is their excuse for not showing up here hundreds of thousands of years ago?

[shrewd.buddha]

6 hours ago, aghst said:

They’re capable of interstellar travel yet if not for Ye Wenjie inviting them, they wouldn’t have sent ships exploring other possible homes?

   Even with today's technology,  human scientists can scan for possible inhabitable planets; why didn't the aliens?
   Why not live underground or become a space-faring species like in Battlestar Galactica? 
   What does the "restarting civilization" and "re-hydrating" the aliens after a 'chaotic' cycle really mean? Do they lose all intellectual progress? Do they have to evolve from protozoa again? Again: build satellites and spaceships and send them to a safer place during the 'chaotic' periods: your technology and some of your species could survive to return and catch you back up.

[Tachi Rocinante]

There are 5 more episodes, so I'm just going to assume/hope that there are more layers to the story.

[Sbeetle]

So are we now to assume those suicides aren’t actually suicides now? And why would the one chain smoker’s project have anything to do with the aliens? 
 

Also, isn’t killing that one guy short sighted since he’s friends with the one you want to recruit?
 

No I haven’t figured out anyone’s names yet and I’m not interested enough to binge. 

[aghst]

I can see how they made Tatiana disappear from the security cameras, which will be revealed a couple of episodes later.

But why didn't the Benedict Wong character not see Tatiana pressing Jack against the wall to floor windows?

[Ottis]

Typical precocious logic … Auggie tells her pal she saw the numbers again after restarting her equipment, but doesn’t tell him she was threatened with deportation if she doesn’t. That leaves him to think she is nuts. Irritating.

Thankfully someone in the game figured out they could skip through stable eras as well.

Not sure how saving the planet and saving the people are two different things in the game. I assume the gravitational death also affected anything else on the planet that wasn’t tied down. I do get it is an analogy for the aliens. 

And it does seem to be aliens. Kind of a bummer. Would have preferred something human-based.

Jack was kind of a jack ass at the end. Guess he learned.

Now this is Ender’s Game combined with Squid Games, with a bit of Independence Day.

 

Edited April 7 by Ottis