Is the Butterfly Effect Consistent with Deterministic Chaos Theory?

[Loren Booda]

How much influence does the Butterfly Effect have in our proximity? Even the Sun's planetary orbits, over billions of years, having experienced myriad nonlinear small interactions (here the "butterflies"), have seemingly resulted in very few chaotic catastrophic outcomes (hence "effects").

 

[hamster143]

Butterfly effect comes into play in many fluid systems that involve turbulence. A good example is atmosphere. Even our best supercomputers, fed by high-resolution infrared imaging satellites, can't predict hurricane tracks with any certainty beyond 3-5 days. Atmosphere is inherently chaotic to some degree.

 

[DaveC426913]

Yes, the Butterfly Effect is used to describe chaotic systems. Orbital mechanics is not an area strong in chaos; most of its systems are negatively reinforcing (for example, a planet drifting out of place tends to be nudged back into place.)

Weather is the poster-child for chaos.

 

[FoxCommander]

Well from what i have learned about this, the so called "Butterfly Effect" talks about how a small change in a system can lead to a gigantic or significat change with time. Now to observe a change in a system you would have had to already have run it before. Let's say you have a model of Earth enclosed so that no outside force or thing could effect it. Now let's run the simulation. You will see that if you don't change anything in it, the same thing will always happen. Now let's say you put a fan in it. the fan is not noticably strong in any sense. If the fan has a big enough impact you could end up with an Earth that is completely changed, maybe there would be more huricanes, or less or anything really. So since we can not change the past I don't know how this "effect" can be felt if we haven't changed anything. Now as for knowing the Future, this could work. Once we figure out how to do that

 

[DaveC426913]

Well from what i have learned about this, the so called "Butterfly Effect" talks about how a small change in a system can lead to a gigantic or significat change with time. Now to observe a change in a system you would have had to already have run it before. Let's say you have a model of Earth enclosed so that no outside force or thing could effect it. Now let's run the simulation. You will see that if you don't change anything in it, the same thing will always happen. Now let's say you put a fan in it. the fan is not noticably strong in any sense. If the fan has a big enough impact you could end up with an Earth that is completely changed, maybe there would be more huricanes, or less or anything really. So since we can not change the past I don't know how this "effect" can be felt if we haven't changed anything. Now as for knowing the Future, this could work. Once we figure out how to do that

It can certainly be demonstrated in a lab setting. Try balancing a golfball on top of a beachball a hundred times. Plot which way it rolls off.

It is however, notoriously difficult to apply to something as astoundingly complex as Earths' weather.

 

[Archosaur]

It can certainly be demonstrated in a lab setting. Try balancing a golfball on top of a beachball a hundred times. Plot which way it rolls off.

"Spontaneous symmetry breaking", anyone?

 

[Loren Booda]

"Spontaneous symmetry breaking", anyone?

Higgs mechanism?

 

[SW VandeCarr]

"Spontaneous symmetry breaking", anyone?

Is this consistent with a deterministic chaos theory? Doesn't "spontaneous" imply acausal?