Comment by Diogenesian
7 hours ago
I believe the alien scientists were depressed by the guaranteed collapse of their civilization, not the difficulty of certain differential equations. So it's more like a doctor getting weird results while working on a cure for a pandemic.
Edit: oops, see the reply below... and my grumpy response. I seriously forgot about that entire plot point.
I'm pretty sure they're referring to scientists on Earth.
Edit: Though I agree that alien scientists of Tri-Solaris probably lead more depressing lives than their counterparts on earth
I don't know if this series is yet considered far enough in the past that we don't have to worry about spoiler warnings (I feel like the house rules about this apply differently to books than to movies), but I will just say that one of the most fascinating and mind-bending considerations in the book is the idea that some civilizations progress linearly and some progress exponentially, and how mind bending it is to have to plan ahead for exponential advances.
Hmm, fair enough - I checked Wikipedia. My mind completely erased the "sophon" bit or whatever it was called, it just got erased again. Not a fan of that particular fairy dust.
I thought they were referring to the inability of the aliens to make an accurate calendar.
No, I was referring to the human scientists' reaction to the sophons' interference.
But I thought that the Trisolarians' inability to predict their planets' path also seemed weird. Yes, the three-body problem isn't analytically solvable, but you can brute force it, and I would imagine that a species that is capable of creating sophons and starships with hulls made out of the Strong-force could calculate their planet's trajectory for the next thousand years without too many problems. (It would be academic, anyway - if you can build that kind of technology, why do you even need planets?)
And I also hated the sophons.
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That's actually a great example for what it is. If I were a scientist I probably wouldn't be reacting with "yay science" to every next failure that destroys civilization, even if notionally those are building up the body of data that could eventually lead to success.
I can’t imagine aliens better suited for space travel than the Trisolarans. For them, deep hibernation is a natural state and they could easily build space ships to explore other nearby systems and seed them. Even better - their metabolism made them perfect for deep space habitats.