Sure, the mainstream media might like to trumpet results that appear to challenge Einstein and threaten to turn everything we know about physics on its head, but those results almost always turn out to be wrong. So, it’s genuinely reassuring when another experiment that appears to confirm our most basic assumptions about the way the cosmos operates.
One of the most fundamental ideas about our universe is that the laws of physics apply across the board – gravity in a distant galaxy behaves like it does in this one, for example. A more elegant piece of theory is what’s called Lorentz invariance - named for Hendrick Lorentz, the scientist who first derived it from his equations teasing out Einstein’s work on special relativity.
Lorentz Invariance states that the laws of physics remain constant for all observers within the same inertial frame. It’s not an idea which is uncritically accepted, since there are mathematical models that predict this symmetry will break down when attempting to reconcile relativity and particle physics. However, two new papers in the journal Physical Review Letters suggest that – for now at least – Lorentz invariance still holds.
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