Countdown Trivia Quiz

Answer: Theory of relativity

Albert Einstein's theory of relativity gets Professor Ye Zhetai into big trouble during the opening sequences of Netflix's "3 Body Problem". At Tsinghua University in Beijing, a crowd of bloodthirsty revolutionaries watches as the professor is accused of teaching counterrevolutionary notions. Relativity sits at the top of the list. The reason? According to the mob, Einstein's theory helped the evil American imperialists build the atomic bomb. Ye refuses to recant his scientific beliefs, and it doesn't go well for him. Welcome to the Cultural Revolution, when being an intellectual was a very dangerous occupation if you happened to live in China.

It's worth noting that Ye is also accused of teaching the Big Bang theory, which his persecutors claim leaves room for belief in God. This feels ironic in today's world where many people seem to feel that the Big Bang and belief in a deity are mutually exclusive.

Answer: Contact extraterrestrial life

I shouldn't be telling you this, but the Red Coast Project is a super-secret Chinese scientific program designed to make contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. At least in the show "3 Body Problem", it is. Its massive radio antenna is the big feature, and it's used to transmit messages into space in the hope that an alien civilization might receive them and respond. It's a little like the real-world SETI program with one big distinction. Instead of waiting for E.T. to give us a call, the Chinese scientists here are spamming the galaxy without thinking too much about who might be listening.

What's the worst that could happen?

Answer: "I Still See It"

"I Still See It" is the message investigators find at the scene of a scientist's death in the opening episode of Netflix's "3 Body Problem". Pretty freaky. The scene is part of a disturbing pattern among scientists. It turns out they're dying by suicide in alarming numbers. The investigators, led by the shrewd and jaded Clarence "Da" Shi, find themselves working on a case that seems to have wandered out of the world of ordinary investigative work and into the Twilight Zone.

The message also connects to the strange visions experienced later by physicist Auggie Salazar, but we'll get to that, I promise.

Answer: True

Welcome to the world of "3 Body Problem". The first episode introduces us to a new bizarre scientific crisis. Particle accelerators around the world are producing results that contradict established physical theories. Up is down, black is white, cats are dogs, and someone went and broke physics. Researchers are left dumbfounded by their own experiments. For scientists, reproducible results are kind of a big deal. If the same experiment produces wildly different outcomes for no apparent reason, it's not just a bad day at the office. It's like someone rewrote the user manual for the universe. In Etruscan.*

*Obscure reference alert: for those who don't know, Etruscan is an ancient language that we haven't done a very complete job of translating over the centuries.

Answer: Vera Ye

Vera Ye is played by Vedette Lim, and though her part is small, her actions echo throughout the series. Vera is a brilliant physicist and former professor to the group of young scientists who make up the main group which the show revolves around (the "Oxford Five"). When experiments at a particle accelerator begin producing inexplicable results, the research project is shut down. It seems the thinking here is that maybe if we all just wait a while, physics will start working again.

Vera visits the enormous Cherenkov tank and then, without warning, very calmly walks off the platform and falls into the water far below. It ends her life and leaves her friends desperate for an explanation.

Answer: Clarence Da Shi

Clarence "Da" Shi, played wonderfully by Benedict Wong, is the intelligence investigator tasked with looking into the mysterious deaths of scientists around the world. His boss is Thomas Wade, the head of an elite intelligence operation. Da Shi begins connecting the deaths and investigating the people surrounding them, including the group of former Oxford students known as the "Oxford Five".

Da Shi is a blunt, jaded, chain-smoking investigator with a keen eye for detail and not much patience. While scientists are trying to understand why the laws of physics seem to be breaking down, he's working the beat: looking at clues, following evidence, watching people, and asking funny questions.

Answer: Countdown

Eiza González plays Auggie Salazar, a nanotechnology researcher on "3 Body Problem". Her life takes a turn for the worse when she suddenly begins seeing a mysterious countdown superimposed over her field of vision. The numbers appear wherever she looks, even when she closes her eyes. What's it counting down to? Nobody knows, least of all Auggie.

It's all a bit upsetting for the scientist, as you can imagine. It seems that weird things are happening to a lot of scientists around the world these days.

The countdown is a delightful piece of psychological torment, if you're into that kind of thing. A deadline only you can see without any explanation of what happens when the clock reaches zero? Yeah, that's not horrifying!

Answer: Helmet

When Jin Cheng visits Vera's mother, she receives a weird helmet, which goes on to become a very important clue in the mystery surrounding Vera's death. Most people leave behind books, jewelry, or a drawer full of cables nobody can identify. Strange metal helmets are less common.

The helmet turns out to be a funky headset connecting the wearer to the mysterious virtual reality experience that several characters encounter. We'll get into that next.

Answer: She enters an immersive virtual reality environment

When Jin puts on the stylish, sleek helmet, she finds herself inside a virtual world. It's remarkably realistic. She appears in a barren landscape with a giant pyramid in the distance, dressed in clothing from an ancient Chinese dynasty. She watches the sun as it rises with terrifying speed, scorching the landscape. Jin steps on what appears to be a dried-out corpse, and when its eyes open, she decides that she's had quite enough of this particular entertainment experience. Not your typical video game.

The device in "3 Body Problem" is considerably more advanced than any technology we have today, creating an experience that engages the user's senses with shocking realism. The game also presents a mysterious puzzle involving the behavior of the sun (or could there be more than one?) and the survival of an entire civilization.

Answer: The stars flicker off and on

In the end of the first episode of "3 Body Problem", a mysterious woman named Tatiana tells Auggie to look at the sky at midnight the following night. Auggie brings Saul along, and as the clock strikes twelve, the stars begin blinking on and off in an impossible, synchronized pattern. Saul and Auggie are stunned.

And it isn't just happening above Oxford. The phenomenon is visible around the world, turning what might have been dismissed as a hallucination into something much more alarming.

Meanwhile, Da Shi is watching the phenomenon with his powerful boss, Thomas Wade. Wade tells Da Shi, "That, Clarence, is our enemy."