Earth
Names: Earthhome planetMother EarthSolar Systemhome worldSolar Space
First appears in Book 1: The Three-Body Problem, chapter 20 (20)
Appearances
What you know
Book 1: The Three-Body Problem
- Ch 32Earth has one sun and an eternally mild climate; the listener saw it as paradise.
- Ch 33Earth is only forty thousand light-hours from Trisolaris, the closest star; it responded to the Trisolaran warning after about eighty thousand hours.
- Ch 33Human technology advances at an accelerating pace, unlike all Trisolaran civilizations, whose progress is constant or decelerating.
Book 3: Death's End
- Ch 13In early November of Crisis Era Year 208, all radio transmissions from Earth suddenly stopped on every frequency, as if a lamp were switched off.
- Ch 20A leading human theory held that Trisolarans treated Earth as a 'knowledge battery', charging it with knowledge to later draw on humanity's faster scientific progress.
- Ch 22With real-time sophon communication lost, transmissions between Gravity and Earth take a year and three months each way, using neutrinos and radio.
- Ch 37Like the Trisolaran system, the exposed Solar System is now a place of death that everyone will want to escape.
- Ch 38Earth is regarded by those aboard as a world doomed to destruction, and it is uncertain whether it will still exist when the ark arrives.
- Ch 42The nearest star to the Solar System, apart from the surviving Trisolaran stars, is six light-years away, but alien ships could already be passing the Sun.
- Ch 43Sophon says Earth may have one to two centuries, since the broadcast gave only Trisolaris's coordinates and Trisolaris appeared far more dangerous.
- Ch 53After the Sun's destruction it would be a spiral nebula able to support over ten billion people comfortably.
- Ch 56If light speed in vacuum there fell below 16.7 km/s, light and everything else could not escape, sealing the Solar System off from the universe.
- Ch 59Earth has observed photoids only twice: the destruction of 187J3X1 and of the Trisolaran system, so knowledge of them is limited.
- Ch 63In Bunker Era year 11, only about five million people remain on Earth, people who chose to stay and do not fear sudden death.
- Ch 63Nature has resurged on Earth, with forests and grasslands on every continent; residents carry guns against wild beasts and are rumored to live like kings on vast estates.
- Ch 63The whole Earth is now only a single city within the Solar System Federation.
- Ch 70The flattened Earth shows rings from yellow mantle to red nickel-iron core, with its oceans frozen into a white outer ring.
- Ch 70Frozen oceans form giant hexagonal snowflakes, 4,000 to 5,000 km across, laid side by side without overlap.
- Ch 70The flattened Earth is surrounded by giant ice snowflakes formed from its ocean; sunlight from the two-dimensional Sun melted them into vapor like drifting hair.
- Ch 71The Solar System has collapsed into two dimensions and is invisible and undetectable from three-dimensional space except via its gravity, resembling dark matter.
- Ch 74The Solar System was finally destroyed, along with preceding catastrophes the narrator believes were connected to their responsibilities.
Connections
- related toBronze Agereturning toward Earth
- enemy ofOur Lord
- has memberGravityGravity is an Earth ship, sent from Earth
- includesRingier-Fitzroy Stationprotects the Solar System
- part ofSolar System FederationEarth is a single city of the Federation
Key moments
- Book 1 · Ch 32The listener receives Earth's message
The listener at Post 1379 detects and decodes Earth's transmission, learning of Earth, then dreams of it burning.
- Book 1 · Ch 32The listener sends the warning
To save Earth and his own life's meaning, the listener transmits 'Do not answer!' toward the source, hoping to keep Earth silent.
- Book 2 · Ch 6PDC hearing on Mercury tests
Rey Diaz announces underground stellar hydrogen bomb tests on Mercury and a base there, demanding a million bombs. Representatives mock him and the US, UK and France propose P269 to terminate his plan.
- Book 3 · Ch 13Bronze Age nears Earth
During final deceleration, the crew gather at the portholes, see Earth with the naked eye, and celebrate going home and the lifting of the childbirth restriction.
- Book 3 · Ch 13Earth falls silent
Fourteen years after the fleet's destruction, and after a year and a half of continued transmissions, all radio transmissions from Earth ceased in November, Crisis Era Year 208.
- Book 3 · Ch 15Recall message and confirmation
Ten days after Earth's signals stopped, Fleet Command's message ordered Bronze Age and Blue Space home. A sophon channel then confirmed it, and Bronze Age turned back.
- Book 3 · Ch 20Trisolaris transmits knowledge to Earth
Trisolaris sends complete systems of basic science to Earth, overwhelming scientists. Humans suspect Earth is being used as a knowledge battery, though sophon interference ends and the physics is verified.
- Book 3 · Ch 20Wave of cultural reflection
After the tenth year of the Deterrence Era, Trisolaris sends high-quality art imitating human culture, which becomes popular on Earth and displaces native human culture, while Trisolaris itself stays mysterious.
- Book 3 · Ch 22Loss of real-time communication with Earth
A year earlier, with the ships thirty AU apart, Gravity and its droplets entered a region where sophons lost their quantum ties to home, forcing slow neutrino and radio communication with Earth.
- Book 3 · Ch 23Blind regions taken as evidence for the dark forest
Earth and Trisolaris interpreted the blind regions as likely artificial and as indirect proof of the dark forest, since the cosmos was being kept hidden.
- Book 3 · Ch 26Transmitters reduced to four
After the attack, Trisolaris pressured Earth into strictly controlling gravitational wave technology, cutting the twenty-three stations to four.
- Book 3 · Ch 26Droplet deployment agreement
Earth agreed that four droplets stay beyond the Kuiper Belt, each accompanied by a human probe; the other six droplets' whereabouts remain unknown.
- Book 3 · Ch 28Deterrence terminated
The droplets destroy the three gravitational wave transmitters and suppress solar radio amplification, ending dark forest deterrence without attacking the Swordholder.
- Book 3 · Ch 32Second Trisolaran Fleet discovered
After deterrence ends, the observation station finds 415 trails showing a second Trisolaran fleet. Further trails reveal it travelled at lightspeed and is now decelerating, arriving in about a year rather than centuries.
- Book 3 · Ch 42Revision of the dark forest model
Since the attack came from a spacecraft, the dark forest model had to be revised to include unseen spaceships, making attack sources unpredictable and the threat to humanity more immediate.
- Book 3 · Ch 46Humanity learns of Yun Tianming
News of Yun Tianming's presence and his request to see Cheng Xin became public; people saw him as an angel of salvation, though doubts remained about his loyalties.
- Book 3 · Ch 47Sophon's withdrawal
Sophon's house and robot avatar burned as she announced all sophons would be withdrawn from the Solar System, though people doubted it.
- Book 3 · Ch 56Curvature propulsion message deciphered
Cheng Xin and AA secretly communicated via eyes and the snow-wave paper clue, concluding Tianming's story meant curvature propulsion. The IDC endorsed this interpretation and recognized Tianming's metaphor system.
- Book 3 · Ch 56Cao Bin deduces the black domain
Cao Bin realizes lowering light speed below 16.7 km/s would turn the Solar System into a black hole, solving the cosmic safety notice puzzle: a sealed, safe system.
- Book 3 · Ch 59Explanation of photoid advance warning
The excerpt explains that although photoids travel near lightspeed, their radiation outpaces them, giving roughly 24 hours' warning when the photoid is about 180 AU away, so thirty-five observation units are planned.
- Book 3 · Ch 68The slip collapses space
After the slip vanishes, the pinnace melts into a two-dimensional plane. Bai Ice explains that space is collapsing toward two dimensions and escape needs lightspeed.
- Book 3 · Ch 68Revelation is flattened
Resigned, Revelation's crew shuts off the engine and falls into the plane, where they are flattened into two dimensions, seen by Alaska.
- Book 3 · Ch 70Flattened Earth and giant snowflakes
Cheng Xin, AA and Luo Ji watch the flattened Earth, whose frozen oceans form enormous snowflakes seen by telescope from fifty AU away.