Just as a snowflake is unaffected by the particular rotations that interchange the locations of its tips, physical processes in the absence of the Higgs ocean would have been unaffected by particular interchanges of electromagnetic and weak-nuclear-force particles—by particular interchanges of photons and W and Z particles. And just as the insensitivity of a snowflake to being rotated reflects a symmetry (rotational symmetry), the insensitivity to interchange of these force particles also reflects a symmetry, one that for technical reasons is called a gauge symmetry.
