Maxwell–Faraday equation symmetry violation

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30 replies · 7K views · last reply
I'm feeling devious.

How would you feel about the electric field if you had moving magnetic charges? Now it's the electric field that is the pseudovector.

Finally, you have a wave in free space. E and H both relate to one another via identical looking curl equations. So now which field is real and which is the pseudovector?

The answer is that just as there is space-time where space and time are mixed for different inertial frames, the same is true for E and H. As has been mentioned already, neither field alone is the complete picture. Both together (EM field tensor) is an object you can hang your hat on.