CHIMP meeting

The CHIMP group studies Conceptual and Historical Issues in Modern Physics. There is a meeting coming up:

9:45am - 12:30pm, Wednesday 26 July, 2006
Western Tower Room, Main Quad, University of Sydney

The speakers are:

Hilary Greaves (Rutgers University)

When is a CPT Theorem not a CPT Theorem?

Richard Healey (University of Arizona)

A Tale of Two Symmetries:Is Faraday in the Same Boat as Galileo?

Galilean invariance is a famous example of an empirical symmetry, while the gauge symmetry of classical electromagnetism is traditionally regarded as merely an artifact of our system of representation. But Faraday's observations inside his eponymous cage bear a striking analogy to Galileo's account of observations in the cabin of a ship. If a change in constant electric potential is an empirical symmetry on a par with a change in constant velocity, then don't at least some gauge symmetries have empirical content after all? No -- or so I shall argue.