🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct6.183626.24921@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> aankrom@nyx.cs.du.edu (Anthony Ankrom) writes:
>
> I have never read this group so I have no idea if it has been sloshed
>around before, butI would like to know, in a nutshell, just what
>Spontaneous SymmetryBreaking is.          ...

In a nutshell, eh.  How about in a wine bottle? 

Spontaneous symmmetry breaking is just what its name implies: one has 
a symmetry, say a single BB being dropped down the exact center of a 
recently emptied beer bottle.  The BB will end up at the center of the 
bottom of the bottle because it is slightly concave.  (OK, maybe it 
really isn't, but lets assume that it is.)  This is an unbroken symmetry.  
Now use a wine bottle, which has a raised area in the center. In principle, 
the center is still an equilibrium point, but it is unstable. The BB will 
not end up in the center, but rather off to the side in some direction.  
The symmetry is broken, spontaneously.  It really does not matter what 
direction the BB chose, since the BB now defines a unique reference 
direction in the bottle. 

In physical systems, this sort of mechanism is used to explain how 
a particle can be described by equations that are symmetric about m=0 
and yet acquire a non-zero mass that breaks the symmetry. 

>        CH3  O            CH(CH3)2        |      dadaMatrix
>           >-P-S-CH2CH2-N<            VX  |                       
>    CH3CH2O               CH(CH3)2        |     aankrom@nyx.cs.du.edu
>                                          | A kinder gentler lobotomy...

Now, could you explain what that thing in your signature is to those 
of us who are chemically challenged? 

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)