Ask A Genius 167 – Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (Part 2)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/03
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RR: Another way people put it is that it is a pencil on edge. You may be able to get a pencil to stand up, but it doesn’t take much to push it over. Spontaneous symmetry breaking in the way it is used is that you need metastability, and in each of those cases those setups are symmetrical. In that, a marble on a sombrero is rotationally symmetrical, as is a pencil on edge, but then the symmetry breaks.
The pencil tips over. A marble rolls off the top of the sombrero into the lip of the sombrero. The pencil can’t move in all directions at once. The sombrero marble can’t move in all directions at once. It has to pick a direction.
It is random, but when it happens then it happens in a particular direction. Now, your deal is no longer symmetrical. Now, your marble is at 1 o’clock or 8 o’clock or sombrero o’clock. A symmetry is broken and in the breaking of symmetry a bunch of energy is released.
All of the energy of the energy that the universe needs to expand into its current form, or much of the energy. So that’s what I think spontaneous symmetry breaking is.
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