There’s a lot of complicated science going on in Netflix’s new series 3 Body Problem. Aside from the math puzzle that the series is named after, there are things like solar radio amplification, near light-speed travel, nano fibers, particle accelerators, and theoretical physics, just to name a few. But among the most complicated and confusing of all these elements are the Sophons, the little San-Ti assistants that prove to be massive nuisances to humanity throughout the first season.
The Sophons are one of the most fascinating and speculative sci-fi elements of the 3 Body Problem story, so to help you get a better understanding of what exactly they are and what they can do, we’ve put together a guide on everything you need to know about Sophons.
[Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for 3 Body Problem season 1.]
What are the Sophons, exactly?
The Sophons are technically tiny proton-sized supercomputers that the San-Ti designed by folding protons out from three-dimensional objects into higher dimensions, giving them more space — where the San-Ti built the computers that they house. But that’s still a weird and complicated idea to understand, so we’re going to simplify it a little further: The Sophons are basically very tiny spy machines.
They can fly at the speed of light to anywhere on Earth and record sound and images. This allows the San-Ti to be inside essentially every room on Earth at the exact same time, able to spy on every human conversation, email, text message, phone call, and video chat. From there, each Sophon can report back its findings to the San-Ti homeworld because of a quantum entanglement it has with a sister Sophon back there (since quantum entanglement allows for instant communication, you see).
Can the Sophons interact with the world or kill people?
They can interact with the world, but only in very tiny ways. We eventually, in episode 5, see the Sophons messing up particle acceleration experiments, but only because they can bounce off the particles in order to send them off course. The Sophons can’t do things like interrupt chemical reactions to stop the rocket launch that happens near the end of the season, or anything more complex like that. They similarly can’t do something like kill a person, though they can put up pesky countdown clocks that have similar enough results, as the beginning of the series shows us.
So then what exactly is the point of the Sophons and what can they or can’t they do?
In a series as frequently complicated and scientifically dense as Remembrance of Earth’s Past, this is one of the few elements that is actually a lot less than meets the eye. The Sophons are really nothing more than a clever plot device — these are still books, after all. They’re a fun and interesting way for series author Cixin Liu to complicate the story and put humanity on the back foot, as well as introduce any fresh contrivance he needs to make the narrative work. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t function on some sort of internally consistent logic, just that we never really know what that logic is. And since no version of current science can fill us in, it’s much easier to look to storytelling to understand them instead.
For the San-Ti, the ultimate goal of the Sophons is to impede scientific progress, mostly by disrupting experiments into higher dimensions. This prevents humans from getting any sufficiently advanced technology or weapons, and ultimately it holds the technology of the series down so that it’s more recognizably close to our own than to high-tech beings like the San-Ti.