- #1
giann_tee
- 133
- 1
I am trying to understand the so called "butterfly effect".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
By wording used to describe it, audience gains an intuitive impression that a small initial action of some sort can produce very large changes in system including unleashing storms that have built up.
However the original writing seems to claim something else. Initial degree of certainty drops exponentially and system although deterministic, can not be predicted further on. What lies at the beginning of the sensitive reaction is a small initial uncertainty - a value which has physical units but doesn't seem to connect to the chain of cause and effect as a physical reality. It introduces a large amount of randomness into system and it is puzzling how that is treated as a physical mechanism.
If I presume that in some concrete case exists a real, fundamental physical quantity, does it have a possibility to cause major events beyond it's own energy-momentum?
At the first glance due to energy conservation, all the laws of mechanics and friction there is no such thing. The implications are mind-boggling. Going back to the past and altering anything appears to the intuition as something that would change everything in the present time - but it won't - everything in it's fundamental nature would remain the same. And yet at the same time, there is absolutely nothing accurate that can be said about the future.
Do you believe there is some specific physical quantity that is at least conserved as information throughout the event of first initial action to which a system reacts sensitively?
And finally, is a stored mechanical potential something that can fluently give the momentum to a small particle to release the potential in the system?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
By wording used to describe it, audience gains an intuitive impression that a small initial action of some sort can produce very large changes in system including unleashing storms that have built up.
However the original writing seems to claim something else. Initial degree of certainty drops exponentially and system although deterministic, can not be predicted further on. What lies at the beginning of the sensitive reaction is a small initial uncertainty - a value which has physical units but doesn't seem to connect to the chain of cause and effect as a physical reality. It introduces a large amount of randomness into system and it is puzzling how that is treated as a physical mechanism.
If I presume that in some concrete case exists a real, fundamental physical quantity, does it have a possibility to cause major events beyond it's own energy-momentum?
At the first glance due to energy conservation, all the laws of mechanics and friction there is no such thing. The implications are mind-boggling. Going back to the past and altering anything appears to the intuition as something that would change everything in the present time - but it won't - everything in it's fundamental nature would remain the same. And yet at the same time, there is absolutely nothing accurate that can be said about the future.
Do you believe there is some specific physical quantity that is at least conserved as information throughout the event of first initial action to which a system reacts sensitively?
And finally, is a stored mechanical potential something that can fluently give the momentum to a small particle to release the potential in the system?