Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics.
The post How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Summary
- In 1918, mathematician Emmy Noether published what is now called Noether’s theorem, proving a connection between conservation laws in physics and symmetry.
- A conservation law states that a particular quantity, such as energy or momentum, cannot be created or destroyed - adding to it on one side of an equation (through gain) must mean a loss of the same value on the other side.
- Noether’s theorem demonstrated that these laws were linked tosymmetries in the equations describing physics.
- If a physical system is symmetrical in time, it will have a conservation law for energy, for example.
- This has led physicists to discover new laws in physics through identifying new symmetries.
- For example, the electricity in your home obeys the conservation of electric charge, a consequence of the fact that electricity is unaffected by translations in space and time.