Skip to content

Comment on The symmetry and simplicity of the laws of physics and the Higgs boson (2015)

Comments

Since he described symmetry in terms of rotations, I would expect that the object labeled (g) in the first figure would be symmetric under 360 degrees rotation. He says it's not symmetric.

I suppose it's a shorthand for "no symmetries other than the trivial identity symmetry"?

Yes, that's indeed the case.

A bit of background: Every object has a "group of symmetries". The smallest and easiest groups are those groups which contain only a single element, in case of symmetry groups the trivial identity symmetry. All those one-element groups are also referred to as "the trivial group". By abuse of language, we sometimes say that a object has "no" symmetries if it only has the trivial one.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.