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Beyond Beauty: The Predictive Power of Symmetry

Mar 02, 2020
Nature seems to have something to do with

symmetry

. Nature seems to have something to do with

symmetry

. When we find it it makes us smile. When we look for it we find so many balanced and orderly, aligned and precise shapes. We love this. Children and adults can get lost contemplating the infinite and changing symmetry of the kaleidoscope. But why? Why do we love a building like this? Regardless of its size. It is symmetry. Why have centuries of artists equated

beauty

with symmetry? In ancient Greece, Aristotle wrote, the mathematical sciences particularly exhibited; order, symmetry and limitation and these are the greatest forms of

beauty

.
beyond beauty the predictive power of symmetry
Symmetries can be rotational or radial, like a bicycle wheel that looks the same after we rotate our point of view around a single axis. Reflection symmetry occurs when two halves of an object are perfect mirrors, like the butterfly, one tip of a symmetrical snowflake tells us something about all the tips, one pedal of a lotus teaches us about all the others, and one cell of a honeycomb. It allows us to understand the structure of an entire hive. With symmetry how to guide a complex system can be revealed, made simpler and easier for us to understand. Knowing symmetry allows scientists to make predictions, as Einstein did when he published his theory of general relativity in 1915.
beyond beauty the predictive power of symmetry

More Interesting Facts About,

beyond beauty the predictive power of symmetry...

Symmetry operates on many levels. The young German mathematician Emmy Noether experienced the asymmetry of being the only woman in a world of all men. She was Jewish in Nazi-occupied Europe, but she found a surprising symmetry in her equations. She formulated what we now call Noether's theorem, which says that any symmetry we see in nature has a corresponding conserved quantity. That symmetrical bicycle wheel, for example, keeps the cyclist upright due to conservation of angular momentum. Experiments confirming the predictions of Einstein, Noether and others have convinced many scientists that symmetry is at the very center of our understanding of the universe.
beyond beauty the predictive power of symmetry
They have proposed a deepening space-time symmetry called supersymmetry, which describes a world in which every particle in nature has a superpartner or companion particle. At the recently upgraded CERN supercollider in Switzerland, the race is on to test that theory. Symmetry has always captivated our eyes and minds, but is it also a clue to the deeper order of the universe? So you're going to give up a summer day to think about symmetry? They are equal? Tell me, are they okay? Yeah? Let me see My shoes, are they the same? I got up, you know, early this morning.
beyond beauty the predictive power of symmetry
Are they the same shoe? It is very annoying when you choose the wrong shoe and they are different. Let's see... Continue here ma'am, could you stand up? Would you stand up? Please stand up for a moment. Yes. Alright, is anyone wearing a maroon top today? Great, isn't it? Are you married? Are you. So stand up together. You are symmetrical. It doesn't bother you when you walk in and someone is wearing the same thing as you, right? So symmetry is like something we love..., but it's also something that sometimes bothers, I mean symmetry, symmetry, I mean symmetry.
Hear. Hear the symmetry, right? Symmetry I mean, if all music was symmetry... Yughhk! So our mission here is to engage with symmetry and also asymmetry. Because there's an interesting set of properties for both, uh, for example, if I knew, delete half of my face here, I could predict what the rest of my face would look like simply by your expectation of symmetry on my face But if you literally made my face the symmetrical mirror image of this face, you would be wrong. Because there's a slight... sort of... It's not quite symmetrical and it's not quite symmetrical, but symmetry is expected.
We love the beauty of symmetry and asymmetry together, which tends to be a little scary Um, that's what we want to explore today Hello to all our friends around the world, our streaming people here at the world science festival. I was in Brisbin. We had the festival in Brisbin just a few months ago and just to give you an idea of ​​how processes in nature and, say, politics, move along a continuum and what seems stable at a certain point seems very unstable in another. an instability in politics in 2016 seems to be, a very um,... uh... symbiotic relationship, let's say Um, but it's funny, in Brisbin, I wouldn't HAVE to mention any specific details about what was happening in the United States in March All I would have to say is that we were having a bit of a problem in the States and the audience would go crazy.
I mean, they thought it was funny, funny, hysterical and, you know, anything that even came close to discussing the candidates in the US presidential race, produced all kinds of you know, "What are you guys doing?" Yankees up there?" "Stop it" I've stopped paying attention. I'm watching Game of Thrones, that's the only thing I'm paying attention to between now and November. um people are a little tired and it's that kind of ebb and flow, that back and forth that swing of the pendulum which is also an aspect of symmetry we have symmetry in objects we have symmetry in the behavior of people, we have asymmetry in the behavior of people people um. ...and I think the narrative of symmetry is what we want to focus on here and the

power

of symmetry in physics is really a

power

that we're going to explore and understand, with some really amazing and fabulous characters here, that we've gathered, I'll take my little symmetrical font, yes, the wrong font is totally asymmetrical.
I'm completely upset. However, our first speaker is Robert Dijkgraaf: mathematical physicist, director and Leon Levy Professor of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has made important contributions to string theory and the advancement of science education. Welcome, Robert Dijkgraaf. Speaking of asymmetry, just look at the spelling of that name. Wow, I'm telling you. The man needs to buy a vowel, don't you think? Also with us is the writer, astrophysicist and educator, professor of the practice of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also held a position as a theoretical physicist at Harvard University. Let's welcome Alan Lightman.
Our next guest is a physics professor at CalTech. She has been researching elementary particles and their interactions at Fermilab's Tebatron and CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Say hello to Maria Spiropulu. And our next speaker is the Chancellor President, professor of theoretical physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of asymptotic freedom which led to the formation of quantum chromodynamics, David Gross So there are many ways to talk about symmetry, Robert, what are the different types? Well, I think symmetry is the most accessible part of mathematics, you see it everywhere.
I think we already saw it in the video The typical symmetries that you have in the space that is reflection, the rotation like the petals of a flower, its translation like a chess board But mathematicians go deeper, there are symmetries that are already indicated in time repeating patterns But you can also think about symmetries that exist and that you probably don't realize. For example, if you have a bunch of particles that are all identical, you can swap them around and that's also deep symmetry, but you can't really visualize it in terms of a visual pattern and the great thing is that mathematicians have actually done this.
It is a great effort to make a kind of list of all the possible symmetries. So there's a mathematical field there, group theory, that allows you to systematically explore these symmetries independently of how exactly they are realized in nature. So quarks, the standard model that resulted in quarks, the so-called eightfold pathway, and group theory, group theory is basically this way of predicting the nature of those particles, comes directly from mathematics. The mathematical framework was already there to order and that is, in a certain sense, particular. Physicists love symmetry and group theory, because it is a way of ordering nature. and sometimes we see it very visually, in terms of these wonderful images, but in reality it is this tremendous adventure that we have been on, that that same type of ordering and that power of the mathematical framework is at work at every level of nature, even in the most fundamental In these books about, you know, the Universe, Brian Greene, Elegant Universe, it has to be beautiful or are we a little bothered by the whole thing, is this symmetry a reformulation of that, or is it more complicated than that?
Maria? I think it's much more complicated than that. I think that and not saying anything against Brian Greene, it's actually illegal to do so. I know, we're in Brian's game. Brian is extremely stylish and handsome, exactly the security guys will keep me here in 5 seconds. He is perfectly symmetrical, beautiful and elegant, but, to say something about elegance and beauty, I am talking about mathematics. It is something that touches more the realm, I would say, of truth.

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