What Would Happen If The Solar System Collapsed Into Two Dimensions

In The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, one of the most imaginative and haunting ideas is the dual-vector foil, a hypothetical weapon that collapses three-dimensional space into two dimensions. When activated in the solar system, the author describes the resulting 2D space as resembling The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh—beautiful, surreal, and terrifying.

This concept invites serious thought …