joigus

One I can think of is getting hold of a vast library of nucleic acids and proteins. Biology is also a resource. Also, vast reservoirs of methane in oceanic bottoms, molecular oxygen, which is rare in the universe. Or simply ground to settle. Tidal and volcanic energy that maybe they --but not us-- can wield. Who knows. If you look back at the history of human exploration, the driving force was the acquisition of resources. Adding to knowledge for its own sake was kind of an afterthought.

I don't think civilization ever advances as a result of religious principles being applied. The iconic fantasy of an advanced civilization visiting us is very much a literary mechanism to evidence our own imperfections. But I don't think that any actual intelligent alien species that we may find some day will respond to any of our utopian dreams. Most likely --if that ever happens--, they will be looking for resources.

That assuming they don't see us as food, no matter how advanced they are. I can only hope they can't synthesize pepsin.

The hummingbird really gave it away! I wouldn't say a touch of genius, but definitely a clever one.

Funny, but I think you've misspelled 'melodious' rather than 'Byrds'.

It's audubon.org, @Sensei. Nevertheless, I see your point. I can't edit my post now. If admins think it'd better be deleted, it's OK with me. 🤣 I shudder to think of negative birds, if they don't pick the proper phase! Alfred Hitchcock gave us a preview of what that would be like.

I'm starting to think (as I learn more about it) it might just be a business idea that's somehow envisioned a pool of possible target customers in both idiotic conspiracy nuts and educated, if sarcastic, anti-conspiracy fellows alike. At this point, I just don't know. I strive to understand how much of these snowballing processes is intentional, and how much is just serendipity on the part of the person setting the merchandising business in motion. There is no doubt the potential (intentional or not) to manipulate people's minds for political reasons. But the business element is undeniable.

You'd think you'd heard the last word on ignorance gone beyond the pale (for beings claiming to be rational primates.) https://www.audubon.org/news/are-birds-actually-government-issued-drones-so-says-new-conspiracy-theory-making No rabbitholes barred! What's next?

Enceladus has been on the spotlight for quite some time now, as to possibilities of primitive life. Thanks for the update. The most exciting aspect for me is the possibility of tidal forces as mechanism of geothermal activity.

Highly advanced civilization, huh? That, no doubt, can only mean: Healthcare for everyone Education for everyone Opportunities for everyone Rational management of their planet's resources Not alienating those who are different (pun intended) An emphasis on prevention and correction of misbehaviour, rather than punishment I see no problem. Even monotheists and politicians would want to jump onboard once they see how it works.

It's only fair. I'll leave you with a picture of the recipe of known physics (except gravitation). It's the short version: Gravitation is the piece that's missing in there.

I think you're confusing torque with torsion. A two-body gravitationally-bound system has no torque, as the torque is the rate of change of angular momentum, and angular momentum is conserved in a gravitational problem --leaving aside tidal forces. Internal forces are collinear with distance between particles ==> no internal torque. There are no external torques either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque

It is fair to say that this LHS of Einstein's eqs. is not all of the geometry, as @Eise justly said. All of the geometry is captured by an object called the Riemann tensor, which in dimension 4=1(time)+3(space) has 20 independent components. In a \( D \)-dimensional space-time, the Riemann would have \( \frac{1}{12}D^2\left( D^2-1 \right) \) independent components. The "geometry" on the LHS is only part of the geometry. The rest is the degrees of freedom contained in the so-called Weyl tensor. Those are the degrees of freedom carried by gravitational waves. Only in dimension 3=1(time)+2(space) specifying the Einstein tensor would be tantamount to specifying the Ricci tensor, which would be tantamount to specifying the Riemann tensor, because all of them would have 6 components. Gravity in 1+2 dimensions would have no gravitational waves.

(My emphasis.) Taking up on this, your idea; dear @Butch; should be able to mesh with (at the very least): 1) Quantum mechanics 2) General relativity as it's presented as a model for gravity at a more fundamental level than the one we have. None of these criteria seems to be met from what I've seen. (My emphasis.) It's the other way. The meshing point should be the starting point, which is at the core, I think, of Swansont's last statements here. It's definitely not: Hey, this looks right in my mind; somehow some day it will click with everything else. What are the chances of getting it right this way? It's the other way. And believe me I just want to be helpful. If you see someone starting out from an obvious mistake, you try to tell them.

Good luck with that: There are 19 free parameters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model#Construction_of_the_Standard_Model_Lagrangian I applaud your optimism. PS: None of those include gravity, by the way. Plus the standing problem of hierarchies. Sounds like you have no idea what you're up against, honest. There's a (panoply of) reason(s) why revolutions in science are so hard to come by.

There is no torsion in 2D. You can only have 1 curvature, and no torsion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torsion_of_a_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenet–Serret_formulas In 4D you have even more.

You may find it interesting to know that the Friedmann equation can be derived from Newtonian physics alone. The spatial curvature term of the Einstein tensor happens to coincide with the energy term in the corresponding Newtonian equations. This derivation you can find in Steven Weinberg's excellent book --although somewhat outdated today-- The First Three Minutes. Also in any of Leonard Susskind's lectures on cosmology (Youtube).

So what's wrong with string theory? Why does your theory have a better prospect of being right?

Another difficulty is that you use standard physics terms with a completely different meaning. Polarity has to do with existence of non-zero electric or magnetic dipoles; tensor is another thing altogether; Higgs and string theory have nothing to do with your model. All this only stands in the way of any meaningful communication.

Einstein's equations in general are complicated. They involve second derivatives of the metric arranged in an object with many (10) components (Einstein tensor; LHS of EE). And they are non-linear. On the RHS of Einstein's eqs. you have the distribution of matter, radiation, etc., in the universe. Schematically, they are: Geometry = matter Under assumptions of symmetry at large scale (isotropy=space is the same in every direction; homogeneity=space is the same everywhere) you get to a simple form of EE that's FLRW (Friedmann, etc.) that only involves the scale factor, which codifies the expansion of the universe. Very briefly, the Friedmann equations are Einstein's equations when you plug in several distributions of matter in the universe. On the RHS you plug in different distributions of matter dependent on the scale factor (radiation-dominated, matter-dominated, vacuum-energy dominated). And you solve, and get a rough picture of the different phases of the universe. I hope that was helpful.

Life is not spontaneous; it responds to accumulative causes. Meaning derives from life; not the other way around. Randomness is ubiquitous.

Your 'i' is not a tensor; it's a (Euclidean) scalar (inverse spatial distance squared).

OK. Let's take it piecewise: In your model, what is gravitationally coupled to what?

So how do you know both concepts, nothing and something really make sense, as mutually exclusive categories? Perhaps nothing and something, assuming they make sense, are interpenetrating, or implicating each other in some kind of circularity: There is nothingness in every somethingness (absence of a concrete substance that we can pin down as 'the thing in itself' --Kant-- in every observation we make). And also, maybe, there is somethingness in every nothingness (some non-removable features even after you remove every observable aspect). Can you guarantee that that 'nothing' and that 'something' are amenable to the application of such a thing as a 'boundary', so one is 'here', and the other is 'there'? Or maybe that boundary refers to logic, and not space? The concept of boundary seems to imply space.

As Swansont said: Gravitons move at speed c (they have no rest frame). Gravitons have spin 2. Gravitons are massless, so they cant have any characteristic length (radius of rotation). I see other problems (not completely unrelated): \( i \) seems to be an inverse length squared. But no 'internal' parameter describing a graviton can have length dimensions. Gravitons are not sources of gravitation, but the 'messenger particles' that carry it. Gravitons must have 'wave function' (field amplitudes) if we want them to obey quantum mechanics. Seems like you're trying to formulate an alternative physics, rather than modelling the known one.