Charge conservation can also be understood as a consequence of symmetry through Noether's theorem, a central result in theoretical physics that asserts that each conservation law is associated with a symmetry of the underlying physics. The symmetry that is associated with charge conservation is the global gauge invariance of the electromagnetic field. This is related to the fact that the electric and magnetic fields are not changed by different choices of the value representing the zero point of electrostatic potential formula_24. However the full symmetry is more complicated, and also involves the vector potential formula_25. The full statement of gauge invariance is that the physics of an electromagnetic field are unchanged when the scalar and vector potential are shifted by the gradient of an arbitrary scalar field formula_26: