📢How One Elegant 4D Equation Unifies Gauss's Law and the Ampère-Maxwell Law
The unification of Maxwell's equations into a single, elegant fourdimensional relativistic tensor equation: . This equation unifies the two inhomogeneous Maxwell's equations-Gauss's Law ( ) and the Ampère-Maxwell Law ( )-which are collectively called "inhomogeneous" because they are directly sourced by charge density ( ) and current density ( J ), embedded in the four-current density . Specifically, the (time) component of the tensor equation yields Gauss's Law, while the (spatial) components yield the Ampère-Maxwell Law, which relates the curl of the magnetic field to both current and the time-changing electric field (displacement current). This relativistic formulation, which embeds the electric (E) and magnetic (B) fields into the electromagnetic field tensor and uses the four-dimensional spacetime coordinate , reveals that electromagnetism is inherently consistent with Special Relativity.
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