invariance
Americannoun
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the property of being invariant or of not being altered by transformations or other operations in mathematics or physics, such as rotation or translation.
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the quality of not being altered by circumstances or of not varying from the norm.
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The property of remaining unchanged regardless of changes in the conditions of measurement. For example, the area of a surface remains unchanged if the surface is rotated in space; thus the area exhibits rotational invariance. In physics, invariance is related to conservation laws. For example, conservation of angular momentum is directly related to rotational invariance (the laws of physics don't depend on the angle of the reference point), conservation of energy is related to invariance over time (the laws of physics remain the same over time), and conservation of momentum is related to invariance over translations through space (the laws of physics don't depend on the position of the reference point). A form of invariance called Lorenz invariance is fundamental to the theory of Special Relativity. Invariance is also called symmetry.
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See also Noether's theorem
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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The study did not detect any violation of Lorentz invariance.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 8, 2026
This single neuron thus has semantic invariance for the concept of your grandmother.
From Salon ● Mar. 25, 2025
The company is saying, “Amidst all this enthusiasm, what fundamental invariance can you bet on?”
From The Verge ● Mar. 22, 2022
The only sticking point is the Relativistic version, but there I hold a minority view and would happily violate fundamental Lorentz invariance, explaining observational Lorentz invariance by appeal to what is called quantum equilibrium.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 4, 2018
The basic characteristic of a model in PSM is its invariance.
From The Brain, A Decoded Enigma by Moisa, Dorin Teodor
"Classically, the way that we have thought about sensory systems is that they build up invariances to all those sources of variation that different examples of the same thing can have," Feather says.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2023
"It could also be used to evaluate how idiosyncratic the invariances are within a given model, which could help uncover potential ways to improve our models in the future."
From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2023
"The key inference from that is that these models seem to have what we call idiosyncratic invariances," McDermott says.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2023
This suggests that these models build up their own idiosyncratic "invariances" -- meaning that they respond the same way to stimuli with very different features.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2023
"This is a behavioral test that you can run on a given model to see whether the invariances are shared between the model and human observers," Feather says.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2023
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
