I had to look up “boost symmetry”, so for posterity, here’s the results of the lookup. From text-davinci-003:
Boost symmetry is a property of quantum field theory [note: actually, relativity] which states that the laws of physics remain unchanged under a Lorentz boost, or change in the relative velocity of two frames of reference. This means that the same equations of motion will be true regardless of the observer’s velocity relative to the system, and that the laws of nature do not depend on the frame of reference in which they are measured.
Very first I tried google, which gave results that seemed to mostly assume I wanted a math reference rather than a first visual explanation; it did link to wikipedia:LorentzTransformation, which does give a nice summary of the math, but I wasn’t yet sure it was the right thing. So then I asked text-davinci-003 (because chatgpt is an insufferable teenager and I’m tired of talking to it whereas td3 is a … somewhat less insufferable teenager). td3 gave the above explanation.
I was still pretty sure I didn’t quite understand, so I popped the explanation into metaphor.systems which gave me a bunch of vaguely relevant links, probably because it’s not quantum, it’s relativity, but I hadn’t noticed the error yet.
Then I sighed and tried a youtube search for “boost symmetry”. that gave one result, the video I linked above, which did explain to my satisfaction, and I stopped looking. I don’t think I could pass many tests on it at the moment, but my visual math system seems to have a solid enough grasp on it for now.
Yeah, sorry for the jargon. “System with a boost symmetry” = “relativistic system” as tailcalled was using it above.
Quoting tailcalled:
Stuff like relativity is fundamentally about symmetry. You want to say that if you have some trajectory τ which satisfies the laws of physics, and some symmetry σ (such as “have everything move in → direction at a speed of 5 m/s”), then στ must also satisfy the laws of physics.
A “boost” is a transformation of a physical trajectory (“trajectory” = complete history of things happening in the universe) that changes it by adding a fixed offset to everything’s velocity; or equivalently, by making everything in the universe move in some direction while keeping all their relative velocities the same.
I had to look up “boost symmetry”, so for posterity, here’s the results of the lookup. From text-davinci-003:
I found this video on Lorentz transformations by minutephysics to be the best explanation I found, and I now feel I understand well enough to understand the point being made in context.
Here’s a lookup trace:
Very first I tried google, which gave results that seemed to mostly assume I wanted a math reference rather than a first visual explanation; it did link to wikipedia:LorentzTransformation, which does give a nice summary of the math, but I wasn’t yet sure it was the right thing. So then I asked text-davinci-003 (
because chatgpt is an insufferable teenager and I’m tired of talking to it whereas td3 is a … somewhat less insufferable teenager). td3 gave the above explanation.I was still pretty sure I didn’t quite understand, so I popped the explanation into metaphor.systems which gave me a bunch of vaguely relevant links, probably because it’s not quantum, it’s relativity, but I hadn’t noticed the error yet.
Then I sighed and tried a youtube search for “boost symmetry”. that gave one result, the video I linked above, which did explain to my satisfaction, and I stopped looking. I don’t think I could pass many tests on it at the moment, but my visual math system seems to have a solid enough grasp on it for now.
(I enjoyed this style of “log of how I looked something up” comment.)
I have a series of search case studies if you want to read more like that.
curious if you’ve tried metaphor.
Yeah, sorry for the jargon. “System with a boost symmetry” = “relativistic system” as tailcalled was using it above.
Quoting tailcalled:
A “boost” is a transformation of a physical trajectory (“trajectory” = complete history of things happening in the universe) that changes it by adding a fixed offset to everything’s velocity; or equivalently, by making everything in the universe move in some direction while keeping all their relative velocities the same.