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What links Sir Isaac Newton, alien solar systems, and a new multi-million dollar TV show? The answer is “the three-body problem”: a conundrum in astronomy and mathematics that describes why it’s often difficult to predict the long-term trajectory of planets, moons and stars. So, what exactly is the problem? And how did it end up becoming the title of a TV series?

To understand, you first need to know a bit about the background to the TV show and its premise. The story is based on Liu Cixin’s epic sci-fi trilogy, The Remembrance of Earth’s Past, of which The Three-Body Problem is the first book. The original trilogy is characterised by the author’s attention to scientific detail. The adaptation is less so, but still crammed with scientific ideas.

The TV series focuses on the “Oxford Five”, who all studied under the same professor at the University of Oxford. Some have gone on to become scientists themselves (a postdoctoral physics researcher, a founder and chief scientific officer of a nano-tech company, and a theoretical physics academic), one has become a school physics teacher, while the fifth is now a snack-food entrepreneur. Scientific credentials abound.

The crux of the story is that an alien race — called the Trisolarans or San-Ti Ren — is headed to Earth to colonise it. Through intergalactic communication, these travellers attempt to intimidate human scientists into slowing down our rapid technological advancement, making Earth easier to conquer. But why are these aliens so hell-bent on taking over our planet in the first place? This is where the three-body problem comes in.

Bodies, in this context, is a scientific byword for planets, moons, suns or any other massive astronomical object. The extraterrestrials’ home planet is situated in a solar system with three suns, hence their name in the English translation of the book — the Trisolarans. This three-sun system can be highly unstable, making conditions difficult for life, hence the desire to travel across the Universe in order to inhabit our relatively stable Solar System. We only have one Sun, so Earth’s future is relatively predictable — at least for the next few million years.

Fonte: YATES, Kit. What is the three-body problem? The chaotic, cosmic mathematics behind the Netflix TV show. BBC, 2024. Disponível em: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240328-the-science-astronomy-and-mathematics-of-netflixs-3-body-problem-tv-show. Adaptado.

INSTRUCTION: Read the following text to answer question.

Brachytherapy: A Tool for Fighting Cancer

Imagine you are camping at night, and you are sitting inside a tent. You want to read a book, but it is too dark. If someone outside the tent shines a flashlight at the book, that might help – you might be able to do some reading, especially if the person with the flashlight is not too far away. If the person with the flashlight gets very close to the tent, it will probably be easier to read your book. If you have a flashlight with you inside the tent and you hold your flashlight right up next to the pages of the book, then you are really in business! Brachytherapy is a little like this flashlight, because doctors deliver a dose of radiation right up close to tumor cells instead of treating them from farther away.

There are several ways to treat cancer using radiation. [...] When healthcare providers use beams of radiation from outside the patient, like with the linear accelerator, that is a little like shining the flashlight from outside of the tent. This is a great option, especially if doctors can aim the beam very carefully at the target. Another way to treat cancer with radiation is by using little pieces of radioactive metal. If doctors put the radioactive source right into the tumor that they are trying to treat, the cancer cells will get a high dose of radiation. This is what is done in brachytherapy.

Radiation Seeds and Extra Special Robots

There are several ways healthcare providers can deliver brachytherapy treatments. The first one that we will talk about is to use lots of little capsules, called seeds. Even though they are called seeds, these are a lot different than the kind of seeds you use in your garden! These seeds are pretty small – they are each about the size of a grain of rice. A doctor can surgically implant these seeds directly inside a tumor. The seeds stay in place inside and, because they are radioactive, they release radiation right where the cancer is.

In another type of brachytherapy, healthcare providers can use a robot called an afterloader that controls where the radioactive source is placed in the patient. This robot can move the source through special tubes into the inside of a patient. When the treatment is over, the robot removes the source from the patient. When the radiation source is not being used for treatment, it sits inside a container inside the robot. That container is made of lead so that it blocks radiation. The afterloader can be controlled from outside the treatment room, so the doctor and other members of the healthcare team can be outside of the room while the source is outside of its special container and is being used to treat the patient. This makes delivering radiation safer for the medical team, because they are not exposed to radiation each time they treat a patient.

Available at: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ frym.2024.1378550. Accessed on: July 27, 2024.

Text 2

Home

No one leaves

home unless home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well

Your neighbors running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats

the boy you went to school with

who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory

is holding a gun bigger than his body

you only leave homewhen

home won‘t let you stay.

No one leaves home unless home chases you

fire under feet

hot blood in your belly

it‘s not something you ever thought of doing

until the blade burnt threats into

your neck

and even then you carried the anthem under

your breath

only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet

sobbing as each mouthful of paper

made it clear that you wouldn‘t be going back.

You have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

no one burns their palms

under trains

beneath carriages (…)

I want to go home,

but home is the mouth of a shark

home is the barrel of the gun

and no one would leave home

unless home chased you to the shore

unless home told you to quicken your legs

leave your clothes behind

crawl through the desert

wade through the oceans (…)

No one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying –

leave,

run away from me now

I dont know what I‘ve become

but I know that anywhere

is safer than here.

By Warsan Shire. Disponível em: https://www.facinghistory.org/educator-resources/current-events/many-faces-global-migration#8 Excertos. Acesso em: set. 2020.

               An increasing body of evidence suggests that the time we spend on our smartphones is interfering with our sleep, self-esteem, relationships, memory, attention spans, creativity, productivity and problem-solving and decision-making skills. But there is another reason for us to rethink our relationships with our devices. By chronically raising levels of cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, our phones may be threatening our health and shortening our lives.

          If they happened only occasionally, phone-induced cortisol spikes might not matter. But the average American spends four hours a day staring at their smartphone and keeps it within arm’s reach nearly all the time, according to a tracking app called Moment.

         “Your cortisol levels are elevated when your phone is in sight or nearby, or when you hear it or even think you hear it,” says David Greenfield, professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction. “It’s a stress response, and it feels unpleasant, and the body’s natural response is to want to check the phone to make the stress go away.”

          But while doing so might soothe you for a second, it probably will make things worse in the long run. Any time you check your phone, you’re likely to find something else stressful waiting for you, leading to another spike in cortisol and another craving to check your phone to make your anxiety go away. This cycle, when continuously reinforced, leads to chronically elevated cortisol levels. And chronically elevated cortisol levels have been tied to an increased risk of serious health problems, including depression, obesity, metabolic syndrome, Type 2 diabetes, fertility issues, high blood pressure, heart attack, dementia and stroke.

(Catherine Price. www.nytimes.com, 24.04.2019. Adaptado.)

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Artificial intelligence and the future of medicine

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Dying to defend the planet: why Latin America

is the deadliest place for environmentalists

February 11, 2017

    Defending nature is a dangerous occupation, especially in Latin America. According to a recent report by Global Witness, an NGO, 185 environmental activists were murdered worldwide in 2015, an increase of 59% from the year before. More than half the killings were in Latin America. In Brazil 50 green campaigners died in 2015. Honduras is especially dangerous: 123 activists have died there since 2010, the highest number of any country relative to its population. Berta Cáceres, an indigenous leader who was a prominent campaigner against dams and plantations, was murdered there.

    Why is Latin America so deadly? One reason is its abundant natural resources, which attract enterprises of all sorts, from multinationals to mafias. When prices are low, as they are now, the most rapacious do not go away; to maintain their profits they become more aggressive, says David Kaimowitz of the Ford Foundation, which gives money to good causes. New technologies open up new battlefronts. Soya beans bred to grow in tropical conditions have encouraged farmers to displace cattle ranchers, who in turn have advanced into the rainforest. Small prospectors can now extract gold from soil rather than just hunting around. That opens up new areas for exploitation, such as San Rafael de Flores in south-eastern Guatemala, where activists have been murdered.

    The odds of finding the criminals are greater if the victim is foreign. Dorothy Stang, an American nun who fought to protect the Amazon rainforest, was killed in Brazil 12 years ago. Both the gunman and a rancher who had hired him eventually went to jail. But that is an exception.

(https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2017/02/11/ why-latin-america-is-the-deadliest-place-for-environmentalists. Adaptado)

            Brazil must legalise drugs – its existing policy just destroys lives

      For decades, guns and imprisonment have been the hallmarks of Brazil’s war against the drug trafficking. But the only way to beat the gangs is to stop creating criminals, says a top Brazilian judge

      “The war raging in Rocinha, Latin America’s largest favela, has already been lost. Rooted in a dispute between gangs for control of drug trafficking, it has disrupted the daily life of the community in Rio de Janeiro since mid-September. With the sound of shots coming from all sides, schools and shops are constantly forced to close. Recently, a stray bullet killed a Spanish tourist. The war is not the only thing being lost.

      For decades, Brazil has had the same drug policy approach. Police, weapons and numerous arrests. It does not take an expert to conclude the obvious: the strategy has failed. Drug trafficking and consumption have only increased. […]

      In a case still before the Brazilian supreme court, I voted for decriminalising the possession of marijuana for private consumption. […] 

      Drugs are an issue that has a profound impact on the criminal justice system, and it is legitimate for the supreme court to participate in the public debate. So here are the reasons for my views.

      First, drugs are bad and it is therefore the role of the state and society to discourage consumption, treat dependents and repress trafficking. The rationale behind legalisation is rooted in the belief that it will help in achieving these goals.

      Second, the war on drugs has failed. Since the 1970s, under the influence and leadership of the US, the world has tackled this problem with the use of police forces, armies, and armaments. The tragic reality is that 40 years, billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of prisoners and thousands of deaths later, things are worse. At least in countries like Brazil.

      Third, as the American economist Milton Friedman argued, the only result of criminalisation is ensuring the trafficker’s monopoly. 

      With these points in mind, what would legalisation achieve?

      In most countries in North America and Europe, the greatest concern of the authorities is users and the impact drugs have on their lives and on society. These are all important considerations. In Brazil, however, the principal focus must be ending the dominance drug dealers exercise over poor communities. Gangs have become the main political and economic power in thousands of modest neighbourhoods in Brazil. This scenario prevents a family of honest and hard-working people from educating their children away from the influence of criminal factions, who intimidate, co-opt and exercise an unfair advantage over any lawful activity. Crucially, this power of trafficking comes from illegality.

       Another benefit of legalisation would be to prevent the mass incarceration of impoverished young people with no criminal record who are arrested for trafficking because they are caught in possession of negligible amounts of marijuana. A third of detainees in Brazil are imprisoned for drug trafficking. Once arrested, young prisoners will have to join one of the factions that control the penitentiaries – and on that day, they become dangerous.

      […]

      We cannot be certain that a progressive and cautious policy of decriminalisation and legalisation will be successful. What we can affirm is that the existing policy of criminalisation has failed. We must take chances; otherwise, we risk simply accepting a terrible situation. As the Brazilian navigator Amyr Klink said: “The worst shipwreck is not setting off at all.” 

Disponível em: <https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/nov/15/brazil-must-legalise-drugs-existing-policy-destroys-lives-luis-roberto-barroso-supreme-court-judge> . Acesso em: 14 nov. 2017.