> Einstein didn't use Maxwell's original quaternion equations. He used the dumbed down vectors of Lorentz, Heaviside, Gibbs, Hertz, etc. Make no mistake—this is the reason why Relativity doesn't play well with quantum mechanics.
> Maxwell's original equations are scalar in nature. The reduction of these equations by Lorentz, et al. in the early 20th century removed the scalar (time) component entirely, and theoretical physics, whether it knows it or not, has been reeling ever since. [...]
Can anybody here explain why this is so important?
I am not a theoretical physicist. I have only done first semester college physics and I have read hacker news comments (and physics related articles) for years.
However, I can assure you that if it was a simple as using the proper Maxwellian quaternions instead of the dumbed down Lorentz vectors to get a unified theory, this would have been done a long time ago.
The comment you ask about seems to make no sense whatsoever. That is why you are having trouble parsing the comment and figuring out what its significance is.
i am a former string theorist, pretty much turned and expanded Maxwell Einstein and Yang Mills in any possible ways, and those comments are garbage.
> original quaternion equations
quaternions are a 3/4d thing, you can write maxwell in any dimensions. sure you can rewrite some 3/4 d physics with quaternions but really no one does that for the last 30 years. we routinely use the group SU(2) or SO(3) but almost never it's quaternion representation. it's really not that practical.
> dumbed down vectors
i don't think it is the vectors that are dumb in this case...
btw it's not only a vector, it's a connection in a U(1) bundle over some spacetime manifold \cal{M}.
> Relativity doesn't play well with quantum mechanics
What in the f**** f**....
it works really well, we call that quantum field theory and it's the best theory ever found by mankind. it works so well CERN didn't found any deviation in 30 years or so.
> Maxwell's original equations are scalar in nature
Oh. My. God.
No. Any Maxwell or Yang Mills is a gauge theory with A_\mu the gauge potential which IS A SPACETIME VECTOR that takes value in some adjoint representation of some group. For Maxwell this group is U(1) so the gauge field aka photons is a real valued vector.
> removed the scalar (time) component entirely
a vector is a vector. a scalar is scalar.
a vector transforms with rotations a scalar does not..
> Can anybody here explain why this is so important
it is not important. it is the dumbest things i heard in a long time.
> Einstein didn't use Maxwell's original quaternion equations. He used the dumbed down vectors of Lorentz, Heaviside, Gibbs, Hertz, etc. Make no mistake—this is the reason why Relativity doesn't play well with quantum mechanics.
> Maxwell's original equations are scalar in nature. The reduction of these equations by Lorentz, et al. in the early 20th century removed the scalar (time) component entirely, and theoretical physics, whether it knows it or not, has been reeling ever since. [...]
Can anybody here explain why this is so important?