Electromagnetism is a property of spacetime itself, study finds

Re:Electromagnetism is a property of spacetime itself, study... by nextaccountic on Saturday July 24, 2021 @04:48PM (#27944348)

I don't know about quantum mechanics, but when we talk about space we should be free to add a quantity to the whole universe (like adding 1 to the x coordinate of everything) because this just shifts the whole universe, or accordingly, shifts the origin - the (0, 0, 0) point - in the opposite direction.

The origin is set at an arbitrary point so this "space shift invariance" is saying that it doesn't matter what point we set for the origin (and mathematically this corresponds to the conservation of momentum - see Noether's theorem[0])

Hmm maybe the "zero" for the quantum states is arbitrary, so you should be able to add anything to it for the whole universe, and this merely changes the zero state in the opposite direction.. and since this should be a conversation law, pretty sure this is equivalent to the conservation of electric charge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_theorem

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Electromagnetism is a property of spacetime itself, study... by galaxyLogic on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:04PM (#27944460)

I may be starting to get it. The magic numbers we add to everything or multiply everything with really represents just a change in the viewpoint, origin of the observer. And because it should be possible to change the "location" of the observer (say the voltage we take to be 0 volts) and still get the same theory to hold up, we can discover that it can only hold up if we assume the existence of some new field. Something like this?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Electromagnetism is a property of spacetime itself, study... by layoutIfNeeded on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:17PM (#27944559)

Yes.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Electromagnetism is a property of spacetime itself, study... by nextaccountic on Saturday July 24, 2021 @07:06PM (#27945129)

*conservation law

[ Parent | on HN ]