Five years after the end of Game of Thrones, producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss teamed up with True Blood writer Alexander Woo for the English adaptation of 3 Body Problem. The Netflix sci-fi series adapts the Chinese book series Remembrance of Earth’s Past, and has already scored Season 2.
The show was a success, but that doesn’t mean the science was correct. Real-life astrophysicist Paul Sutter addressed several films and shows during Insider’s How Real Is It? podcast, including Interstellar, praising The Martian and Prime Video’s sci-fi series The Expanse, and slamming Armageddon and Event Horizon. However, 3 Body Problem was deemed “nonsense.”
The scientist addressed several scenes from the show’s Season 1, Episode 3, “Destroyer of Worlds” and Episode 5, “Judgment Day.” At the beginning of the clip, Sutter praised John Bradley’s character Jack Rooney for the usage of the word “Syzygy.” He called it “one of my favorite words in all of astronomy,” explaining that it’s “simply when more than two objects line up in a straight line.”
He continued to explain the show’s title, arguing that, “In this case, for this show, they have three suns that are all orbiting around each other in a very complicated way, and predicting how those stars are going to orbit is very challenging.”
The astrophysicist further detailed real-life three-body problems, which include calculating the trajectory of an asteroid through the solar system to figure out if it would hit the Earth. “That gets really, really complicated really quickly, which is why we’re always revising and updating our predictions of orbital trajectories of asteroids,” he explained.
Looking at another scene, Sutter confirmed syzygies do “create slightly stronger gravitational poles,” calling the scene in the show “an extreme example that would not be realistic.”
In conclusion, Sutter gave 3 Body Problem’s science a three out of ten for realism. He argued, “It started off okay with discussions of compact dimensions, but then lost some points because everything after that was nonsense.”
3 Body Problem Will Return
Netflix
Netflix officially confirmed that 3 Body Problem will return for Season 2, and the show started production in late July this year. It also teased that the series will add yet another Game of Thrones alum, Alfie Allen, who played Theon Greyjoy on the hit HBO series.
Aside from the upcoming Season 2, which doesn’t have a release date yet, Netflix already confirmed 3 Body Problem will return for Season 3, as well, which will give the creators enough time to adapt Cixin’s trilogy. The two seasons are expected to be shot back-to-back.
3 Body Problem is streaming on Netflix.
- Release Date
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March 21, 2024
- Directors
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Minkie Spiro, Derek Tsang
- Writers
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David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Alexander Woo
