Hello there future internet users, I've been Trace and I will hopefully still be him, and
this is probably still DNews.
We'll see.
You've probably heard about the Butterfly Effect -- usually explained by the idea that
a butterfly flaps it's wings in Brazil and causes a hurricane in Texas.
Premise ridiculous!
Of course they can't.
There are millions of butterflies, if every one caused the beginnings of a storm Earth
would be in chaos.
The thing is, that's not what the Butterfly Effect is about.
It's about how tiny changes in big systems, can have complex results.
Systems, in this case, could be anything from weather patterns, to how big groups of asteroids
move, or how lots of people interact.
For an example of a system: picture a Tilt-a-Whirl ride at a carnival.
If you don't know what that is: it's a rotating and shifting platform, with shell-like cars,
each rotating on a smaller circle, with people inside.
It has rules, and follows those rules rigidly: the platform rotates the same every time,
and the carts can only rotate around specific points…
By analyzing this, you can see the butterfly effect in action.
If I sit alone in one of the tilt-a-whirl carts, it would spin completely differently
than if you sat in there with me, right?
Together we'd be heavier and so our cart would have a completely different ride!
Every spin would be completely different from taking the ride alone.
Now, imagine all the carts as part of a system.
With tiny changes to each: someone being a little lighter or heavier in one cart, someone
sitting forward on the seat or with their back on the wall...
These tiny variations affect the WHOLE Tilt-a-whirl system!
That's the butterfly effect -- which does have a scientific name: "sensitive dependence
on initial conditions."
This was originally discovered by an MIT mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz, who was using
an old computer to calculate weather patterns.
He ran a simulation, and wanted to see it again.
The first time, he put in the data to six decimal places, but figured the second time
those tiny fractions of a degree wouldn't matter, so he only used three decimal places.
In the end, because he cut out a few fractions of a fraction, the whole simulation completely
changed.
It was unrecognizable!
And that's when the crap hit the counter.
At the time mathematicians thought, if you changed it a little at the start, it would
only change a little at the end.
It was logical, but these "systems" don't behave that way, and we needed new math to
understand why!
In walks: Chaos Theory.
Chaos Theory, by definition, deals with "complex systems whose behavior is highly sensitive
to slight changes in conditions."
It appears to be chaos, but it's actually governed by the same rules as everything else
in nature, physics, and the universe.
But because there are so many moving parts; it's impossible for us to comprehend them
all.
Imagine watching all the people get on a Tilt-a-Whirl and then guessing how every cart is going
to move…
LOL.
Chaos Theory was groundbreaking when it was discovered, because it threw off classical
physics!
Isaac Newton's laws of nature -- equal and opposite reactions and such, were imagined
in a "clockwork universe," not one filled with apparent chaos.
Basically, if we understood the basic rules of the universe, we should understand everything
in the universe too, right?
Wrong.
Because even a tiny change in something with as many moving parts as the universe would
mean any assumptions we make would be astronomically wrong.
And that's super scary.
We went from grasping a good chunk of our universe, to who knows where.
But, the universe is not random, it's governed by RULES.
Rules which mathematicians have worked on understanding for centuries.
Take nature for example, it might seem random, but it's governed by rules, and that's why
it makes shapes like this.
These are called FRACTALS, and they show us how chaos is really order.
[pause] It's an infinitely complex, repeating pattern that appears chaotic at times, but
is actually ordered!
Chaos theory is an attempt to approximate and understand all the people getting on the
Tilt-a-whirl, and how the tilt-a-whirl will react to their actions; thus finding order
in the chaos.
The more we understand the math, the better handle we will have to predict how a complex
system will react to tiny changes.
The practical applications are huge from understanding the brain, to social interaction, to how gas
moves in our atmosphere.
A study in the Journal of Family Psychology followed 95 couples, attempting to predict
divorce rates using chaos theory math.
They were correct 87 percent of the time.
Turbulence and weather slash climate change models keep getting better with as we gather
more data, because we can harness that chaos math.
The rules that govern fluid dynamics are pretty well understood.
We get temperature, pressure, volume, and mass, we get solar energy and gaseous emissions,
and so on.
But, if somehow, a tiny bit of moisture, dust, heat or cold causes a cloud to form somewhere
we didn't expect… the whole system can be thrown off.
It's maddening.
Which is why the National Weather Service runs the same weather models again and again:
tweaking it each time -- eventually they getting an inkling of the true result.
So, when you think of the butterfly effect, what should you think of?
Understanding order from chaos.
The original model Lorenz was working on appeared to spit out chaos, until it was graphed…
and then it looked like this: [show picture?]
It looks like a butterfly.
It didn't get it's name from an actual butterfly, but from the graph of chaos becoming order.
Which is pretty.
And Insane.
It's Pretty Insane.
To see how the butterfly effect could wreak havoc on a female police detective in 2016
after she discovers she can reach her estranged father over the airwaves and through the decades
in 1996 via ham radio.
Don’t miss the Series Premiere of Frequency, Wednesday October 5th, at 9/8c only on The
CW.
If chaos is really just order, is anything in the universe truly random?!
Jules looked at it here.
Math was not my strong suit, but i find it super fascinating.
What about you guys? Let us know down in the comments.