Princeton University Class of 1957

Broken Symmetry

Here at the main west entrance to Fermilab, we see before us the 50 feet tall, 21 ton ornamental steel arch created by the lab’s founding director Robert Rathbun Wilson. The tri-span sculpture is entitled "Broken Symmetry," and is one of many large sculptures throughout the approximately 25 square mile Fermilab property designed by this “Rennaisance man,” Robert Wilson. Wilson was also the architect for the imposing central building you see in the distance, named Wilson Hall.

In his concept, Director Wilson has freely adopted the style of the sculptor Alexander Calder to exemplify the notions of symmetry and symmetry-breaking that are so important in the physics of elementary particles studied at Fermilab.

"The twofold mirror symmetry about the east leg, indicated by the red [I would say “orange,” wouldn’t you?] and the black, is nearly perfect," Dr. Wilson said. "The more basic underlying threefold symmetry is perfect at the base, but deteriorates with height and is completely broken at the top of the arch. However, when viewed from directly above the center, or directly below, the arch again appears to be perfectly symmetrical."

In coming to the concept. Dr. Wilson decided to utilize some steel deck plate from the USS Princeton - as an expression of the "swords into plowshares" use at Fermilab of the thick iron plates of which the battleship had been made. The plates, acquired by Fermilab in 1972, are also used to provide thick absorbers of radiation in the experimental areas.

Profile of PRINCETON V

The U.S. Navy carrier Princeton is the fifth “Princeton” since 1842, and this latest version carried helicopters. It was launched July 8, 1945, sponsored by Mrs. Harold Dodds, and commissioned on November 18, 1945. The ship operated in the Atlantic until June, 1946 when she was transferred to the Pacific fleet. Decommissioned in 1949, she was reactivated for combat duty during Korean hostilities. Later Princeton served in Vietnam and in April, 1969, was designated prime recovery ship for Apollo 10-the lunar mission which paved the way for Apollo 11 and the first landing on the moon. She was decommissioned May 20, 1971.

A Princeton Tiger?

Each leg of the “Broken Symmetry” steel arch is painted black on one side and, I insist, orange on the other. You should also consider that Dr. Wilson’s first job after being fired for the second time by Ernest O. Lawrence at the University of California Radiation Laboratory, was at Princeton with Henry DeWolf Smyth. So I think it’s reasonable to say that Robert Wilson was also a Princeton tiger. We all remember William Blake’s poem about “The Tiger,” don’t we?

TIGER, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Significance of Symmetry

The concept of symmetry and the breaking of symmetry is central to much of subatomic physics. It is reflected in the structure of the so-called Standard Model of particle physics. For example, the mass-generating field and its Higgs boson are the only way physicists know how to provide elementary particles with mass. Without the Higgs, their equations would describe a symmetrical world in which all particles had no mass. The Higgs boson breaks this symmetry without wreaking havoc on the rest of the mathematical framework. This has been confirmed, we are told, by numerous collider experiments. Among other things, perfect symmetry would mean the same amount of anti-protons as protons in the universe. Unless symmetry was broken there would, in a sense, be nothing. But a pregnant “nothing,” to be sure.

Therefore, it was no whim that led to the title, “Symmetry,” for the periodical that is the joint publication of Fermilab and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

The cosmologist, Edward Harrison, writes, “It is an attractive thought that in the “beginning” the universe begins in a state of utmost symmetry, formless yet potential of many forms. Perhaps time was without direction, and time and space were without distinction. Perhaps the first symmetry-breaking transition was the birth of space-time from an embryonic manifold, which itself emerged from the great united – What?” (Cosmology, p.521)

Our classmate, bishop Fred Borsch, refers to this in his theological musing on symmetry in his book, The Spirit Searches Everything (Chapter 2, “In a Real World” pages 35&36). “Nothing might, then, be thought of as a vast storehouse of opportunities waiting to appear – a perfect symmetry ready for the slightest imbalancing to make something out of nothing. Again there is an echo of the idea of God creating out of the potentialities of divine imagination. In turn, God could be imagined as the nothingness from which creation emerges . . ..” In his reflections on pages 30 and 31, Fred also writes, “Without a fine balance between stability and instability, life as we know it could not be. There would be either total chaos or frozen stasis . . . [and there] seems to be some ratchet or uptick favoring complexity in the evolutionary current . . ..”

Jerry Moyar ‘57

8/31/2006

“The main application of the work here is spiritual, if you will. It’s because in the philosophical sense, but in the tradition of Democritus, we feel we have to understand in the simplest terms what matter is in order to understand who we are. And we can satisfy that curiosity of man. That would be the principal application and the reason that we are doing this.” Robert R. Wilson

(From Fermilab DVD # 664, “Robert Wilson: A Life of Courage and Creativity”)

Note: For more information about Fermilab history go to http://history.fnal.gov/index.html

Quicklinks