He, along with Shi Qiang and the rest of the Battle Command Center, become dedicated to solving the mystery of these events. The countdown only ends when Wang Miao pauses his scientific research.

All of these incidents are revealed to be connected to the Frontiers of Science, a group of scientists/academics/theorists, and then, on a deeper level, to the still-secret ETO. He begins seeing a mysterious countdown in his photographs, and then in his own vision. He learns that many scientists have killed themselves, saying that physics is a lie (including Ye Wenjie’s daughter, Yang Dong). He is contacted by the enigmatic Battle Command Center, where he’s badgered by Shi Qiang, a rude but effective police captain.

Sometime around 2010, a series of mysterious incidents surrounds a nanomaterials researcher named Wang Miao, the main protagonist of the novel. She shares her knowledge of the upcoming alien invasion, and they form the Earth-Trisolaris Organization (ETO) to prepare for further Trisolaran contact. She meets Mike Evans, an extremely wealthy Westerner who has similarly lost faith in humanity. Ye Wenjie’s position in society is eventually restored, and she leaves the Red Coast Base, though she never fully forgives humanity. She kills her husband and her boss to keep her contact with the Trisolarans a secret, and she gives birth to a daughter, Yang Dong, who becomes a theoretical physicist. She is taken to the mysterious, remote Red Coast Base, where this belief (plus her access to technology and her knowledge of astrophysics) eventually leads to her contacting an alien race, the Trisolarans. This event, combined with her treatment as a political outsider over the next few years, radicalizes Ye Wenjie, who grows to believe that it’s impossible for humanity to save itself-an outside force is required to redeem it. Ye Wenjie, one of the central characters of the novel, watches her father die during a struggle session at Tsinghua University. The Three-Body Problem begins in 1967 in Beijing, China, during the Cultural Revolution. The protagonist Wang Miao's family name is Wang, and his given name is Miao. Following the lead of The Three-Body Problem, names in this study guide will be written with surname first. The Summary and Analysis sections proceed according to the novel’s structure. Note: This summary is written according to the order of the novel’s action on Earth, rather than according to the novel’s structure, which isn’t always in chronological order.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu