University of Pennsylvania Physics & Astronomy Colloquium

What is common among a magnet, a halibut, a rack of laundry, cubes of ice, superconductor, and the Higgs boson? The concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking is a common theme for many natural phenomena. I'll describe the basic concept and its applications. In particular, the original concepts from Anderson, Nambu, Goldstone, and Higgs do not quite work in many systems that include a magnet on your fridge. I generalize the concept so that it is applicable to all known natural phenomena around us.