Figure 2.

The diagram depicts a system travelling across symmetry breaking, thus alternatively accessing two different regimens, featured by equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, respectively. Within the gravity field, the system displays a linear behavior and thermodynamics allows only one stable solution: the fate commitment of the cell(s) is unambiguously (and deterministically) recognizable. Downstream of the bifurcation point, in microgravity, the system recovers its symmetry. The previous thermodynamic state becomes unstable and new configurations arise, some of which are transitory, being unstable or meta-stable. This experiment (adapted from [61]) demonstrated that the presence of even a weak force such as gravity can exert a significant effect upon the evolution of a non-equilibrium process by constraining that evolution into a unique stable, configuration.