Trisolarans

About

The planet Trisolaris is inhabited by a sentient race called Trisolarans. Trisolarans communicate by expressing their thoughts using visual light. As a result, it is not possible for Trisolarans to lie or keep secrets.

Trisolaris

Trisolaris is the homeworld of the Trisolarans, the main antagonists of the Three-Body Problem sci-fi novel trilogy. It is the only planet left in the Alpha Centauri system.

The Alpha Centauri system consists of three suns orbiting each other in random and unpredictable ways. Eventually, the instability of Trisolaris' orbit will cause it to crash into one of its suns, destroying it and the Trisolaran race.

Because of this, Trisolaris is incredibly hostile to life, and the Trisolarans are desperate to leave. They set their sights on Earth, a planet existing in a perpetual Stable Era.

History

Trisolaris was the only one of the worlds in the Alpha Centauri system known to have evolved life. It was originally one of twelve planets there, but the eleven other worlds all fell into the system's suns. Eventually, Trisolarans evolved there.

Trisolaris' natives evolved hundreds of separate civilizations, but all were destroyed by Chaotic Eras. The worst of these disasters was a close passage by all three suns, literally tearing the planet in two and forming a massive moon around the main planet. Civilization did not re-emerge for 90 million years.

Eventually, the Trisolarans realized that their planet's problems could not be solved and sought to abandon it.

Discovering Earth from Ye Wenjie's radio broadcast, they directed a massive colonization fleet to the Solar System, which would take hundreds of years to arrive.

Not long after the fleet left, Trisolaran leaders constructed "sophons," sentient protons that could travel to Earth at light speed and transmit data back to Trisolaris in real time.

The Trisolaran fleet sent a deadly "droplet" probe as a vanguard, which singlehandedly wiped out Earth's entire space navy in the so-called Doomsday Battle. However, the invasion of Earth was halted by the threat of the dark forest broadcast, a signal that would call down extremely powerful and hostile aliens on both Earth and Trisolaris. The threat of this broadcast diverted the first fleet, but a second, much faster fleet was constructed and sent from Trisolaris.

A Trisolaran surprise attack briefly conquered Earth in preparation for the second fleet, but this triggered the dark forest broadcast.

The use of the dark forest broadcast ended the conflict between Trisolaris and Earth by dooming both worlds.

The world of Trisolaris was destroyed by a relativistic projectile which gouged open one of its suns, engulfing the planet in the star's contents. Only the Trisolarans aboard the invasion fleets survived.