Three Body

 I came across this Eurorack module the other day.

 

 "Three Body is the latest development from Schlappi Engineering and is a triple digital FM & phase modulation FPGA-based oscillator for Eurorack. As the name suggests, it features three digital oscillators that can be cross-modulated using frequency & phase modulation (FM/PM)"

 

I wonder if the name was inspired by the famous book

"The Three Body Problem" by the Chinese Author 

Liu Cixin

This  book is part one of the “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” triology and is one of my favorite

Hard Sci Fi novels. I think its being made into a mini series on Netflix?

 

Three Body was first printed in Mandarin in 2008 and only translated into English in 2014

Without getting into too many spoilers, its basically about an alien invasion, but

its so different to all the alien invasion stories out there.

It asks some serious questions like:

 

Is humanity worth saving?

Should we be trying to make contact with alien civilizations?

 

Should philosophy guide experiments, or should experiments guide philosophy?

Is science objective?

This is relevant today (COVID & Climate Change) when science and scientists are 

often questioned and shunned by the public.

 

The book is pretty heavy. There are a lot of technicial details on AI and quantum mechanics

which you will need to wade through. And its set in China during the cultural revolution, 

(a period of history I'm not familiar with). 

This is the first Sci Fi book I've read that was translated from Chinese to English

and I wonder what it would be like to read it in Mandarin.

It won the Hugo (2015) prize.

In fact Liu Cixin was the first Chinese writer to win this prestigious award.

This cultural point wasn't lost on me as I read the book.

The world's nations  (esp China) are in a battle for control of technology which will influence our future.

So what is "the three body problem"?

According to Wikipedia:

"a three-body problem is any problem in classical mechanics or quantum mechanics that models the motion of three particles (or bodies)."

 

The motion of two bodies is relatively easy to predict.

 However, the addition of a third body makes predictions of motion very difficult.

 

 

Here is a video of the Schlappi Engineering module

 

 

 

 

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