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Learn Why Symmetry Is at the Heart of Physics In Less Than 3 Minutes

Symmetry in the physics sense, and not the mirror sense, obvs.
Image: Screengrab

Got time for a quick particle physics lesson? Dr. David Kaplan from John Hopkins University narrated this short video in Quanta Magazine explaining why symmetry in the natural world is so important to physicists.

Of course, "symmetry" in physics doesn't mean an object having two sides that mirror each other, but rather, a property of a system that remains the same even after you've transformed the whole system in some way. Understanding which properties of nature are symmetrical is how we make educated guesses about phenomenon we can't observe but which must exist, like the Higgs Boson, which was theorized in 1964 but wasn't confirmed to exist until 2013.

The video is short and accessible, and provides a good example of how much of what we're sure we know about nature is based on filling in the blanks of previous observations.