spontaneous symmetry breaking

Spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs when a system that is symmetrical in its underlying laws chooses a state that isn’t symmetrical. Imagine a perfectly round pencil balanced on its tip; theoretically, it has rotational symmetry. But, once it falls in a specific direction, it picks a position, breaking that symmetry. In physics, this idea explains how certain particles acquire mass and how forces differentiate early in the universe’s evolution. Essentially, the system’s rules are symmetric, but the actual state it adopts isn’t, leading to new properties and behaviors in the system.