Love & Math: Edward Frenkel (#281)
Into the Impossible With Brian Keating
Electromagnetism Is a Gauge Theory
In the 70s, physicists wondered whether there is an analog of the electromagnetic duality. For those gauge theories, they found that if such duality existed, and now I have to say that these are not quite realistic models because they're called supersymmetric models with maximal supersymmetry on four dimensions. And then suddenly physicists find the same phenomenon in the electromagnetic dualy. So that's a kind of astonishing surprise. First of all, it sort of cuts to several things that we have discussed, the connection between mathematical discoveries and discoveries in physics. But also this unity that there's some phenomenon which appear in many different branches of mathematics and physics. That signifies that there are higher levels of
