Metastability

Why balance means continuous recovery, not perfect stillness

Click on the landscape, or use the nudge buttons, to move the ball. Adjust thermal noise to see metastable escape.

20
Ball (system state)
Metastable wells
True equilibrium (death)
CPG oscillator
Mutual inhibition

Stability is not stillness: it is continuous recovery. The leech heartbeat, your posture, every ecosystem: order maintained by falling and catching, not by standing still. Metastability is the pulse of the living.