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January 1928: Dirac equation unifies quantum mechanics and special relativity

(www.aps.org)
109 points thunderbong | 1 comments | 21 Nov 24 02:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.222s | source
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JPLeRouzic ◴[21 Nov 24 08:58 UTC] No.42202394[source]▶
> Quaternions

I know nothing of physics, but it seems to me that rotation fingerprints are everywhere in physics. Is this just me or is there something more tangible in this remark?

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1. nimish ◴[21 Nov 24 15:39 UTC] No.42205393[source]▶
Rotations and spin are deeply tied into the geometrical nature of a space. It's not just you. It's core to understanding the nature of matter itself.

Cartan had only just invented spinors as an object in themselves (ignoring clifford) so a lot of the physics stuff was done in parallel or even without the knowledge the mathematicians had.