Scott Manley's explanation of the ISS accident also introduces quaternions as a coordinate system for objects in space that solves the gimbal lock problem and has other desirable algebraic properties:
I recall from quantum physics classes a long time ago that some elementary particles are not identical to themselves 360 degrees rotated. You need a 720 rotation for that. I recently learned that quaternions have that same property. Would there be a relation?
yep, this exact thing is discussed in the later part of the video. it's used to hypothesize a qm interpretation where the complex components could actually be more physically interpretable as (quaternion-based) rotations of the kleinert crystal model
When was that then? I saw the spin animation, she did not refer to it then … although I was baking cookies at the same time so I might have missed a remark here or there.
what other models start with a lattice assumption of space? I have been working on the math for a a model of space that is just a lattice, bosons are a vibration on the lattice, hadrons are twists on the lattice, gravity is stretching/compression of the lattice.
It implies an a priori background structure. Hilbert spaces are usually preferred, as the complex state of a wavefunction kind of implies that representation.
