The Mirror Rule

Symmetry, Conservation Laws, and Why Physics Has the Shape It Has

von Ingrid Farriday

446 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Every conservation law you were ever taught is a symmetry in disguise. Energy is conserved because the laws are the same tomorrow as today. Momentum, because they are the same here as in Andromeda. That was proved in 1918 by a woman who was not allowed to hold a paid position at the university where she did it.

Symmetry sounds like a property of snowflakes. In physics it is closer to the grammar of everything: the reason particles have the masses they do, the reason there are exactly three forces of the kind there are, the reason a pencil balanced on its point has to fall, and the reason the universe contains matter at all.

Thirty-six chapters. No equations to work through. From tiling a floor to the shape of spacetime.

- What symmetry actually means when you say it about a law rather than a shape- The theorem that turned symmetries into conservation laws, in plain language- Why energy, momentum and spin are consequences, not axioms- The seventeen ways to tile a floor, and why five-fold fails where six succeeds- Effects remember their causes: the principle that predicts what can and cannot happen- The mirror assumption, and the cobalt experiment that showed nature tells left from right- Swapping charge, running time backward, and the kaon that betrayed the combination- Why there is any matter left over at all- Local symmetry, and how insisting on it creates a force from nothing- Phase and the photon, color and the strong force- The pencil that had to fall: how particles got their weight- Three forces, one pattern, and the symmetry that turned out not to be there- Anomalies: when a symmetry that holds classically dies in the quantum- Grand unification, and the proton that refused to decay- Symmetry as the shape of spacetime, and what scale invariance says about the very small- Topology: the symmetry you cannot undo by smoothing- Broken symmetry and the arrow of time- Superpartners: the doubling that never showed up, and what it cost

Including the honest chapter on beauty. When a symmetric theory is beautiful and wrong, how physicists know the difference, and what to do when the compass they have relied on for a century starts pointing the wrong way.

This is the book about the rule underneath the rules, written so that the shape of physics finally makes sense as a shape.

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• Reihe: Independently published
• ISBN: 9798175860208
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 20.09.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Independently published