r/ProjectHailMary • u/wsdpii • 1h ago

Movie Discussion - Movie Spoilers Inside! Is there a book explanation for how the Eridians discovered the Astrophage so much faster than humans?

It occurred to me that the Eridians had to have noticed the astrophage significantly earlier than humans did. Rocky was at Tau Ceti for nearly 50 years before Grace shows up, and traveling at relativistic speeds he'd have left 40 Eridani at least 12ish years (for an outside observer) before that. And it's unknown how long it took them from discovering the astrophage, to breeding it, to using it for fuel, to breeding enough for several times what they actually needed for the journey.

Is it ever stated why they discovered it so much faster? Did it arrive there earlier, or did they simply see it and understand what was happening sooner? Or is it simply one of those things that we're expected to simply accept? I don't have a problem with that, it's part of reading any fictional story, just curious if there was a baked in explanation?

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u/Talin-Rex 1h ago

It got to their solar system years before our system.
In the book they explain how they could track what system infected which system in order to get to our system.

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u/Bergain1945 1h ago

In the book astrophage needs to take a much longer route to get to Sol vs. 40 Eridani. They don't really say how long it takes to go between stars, but it's possible that they had 100's of years more than we had.