Talk:Butterfly effect

Henri Poincaré Prediction on Metereology's relation w/ Chaos Theory

Hello all, I am not a usual participant in editing Wikipedia, but I thought I'd help citing the claim that Poincaré did in fact foresee the relation which Lorenz proved in the 60s.

“A very small unknown cause determines a considerable effect which we cannot understand. We therefore say that the effect is due to chance. If we knew exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial moment, we could predict exactly the situation of that same universe at a succeeding moment. but even if it were the case that the natural laws had no longer any secret for us, we could still only know the initial situation approximately. If that enabled us to predict the succeeding situation with the same approximation, that is all we require, and we should say that the phenomenon had been predicted, that it is governed by laws. But it is not always so; it may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena. A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible, and we have the fortuitous phenomenon.”

"Why do meteorologists have such a hard time in foreseeing the weather with a reasonable degree of precision? Why do showers and storms seem to occur at random, so that many people find it absolutely natural to pray for rain or good weather while they would praying for an eclipse utterly ridiculous? We see that great perturbations generally occur in regions where the atmosphere is unstable. Meteorologists are well aware of the instability of the equilibrium and that somewhere there will be a hurricane, but where? They cannot tell, because a tenth of a degree more or less at any point will determine a hurricane here instead of there, and there will be devastations in areas that would have been spared. If one had known this tenth of a degree one could have foreseen the event, but observations were neither sufficiently frequent nor sufficiently precise, and for this reason everything seems to be due to the intervention of hazard. "

Poincaré Science et méthode 1903

I really hope I helped!

atmosphere transport speed

At root this article is about the nature of the physical universe, all matter and energy interactions etc. But in the popular mind it tends to be associated with global weather, and the atmosphere in particular.

Which leads one to wonder, what is the speed of atmosphere transport/mix/diffusion (since that may be a limiting factor in substantial influence between one place and another)? Taking for example a random cubic meter of air on one side of the world, how long until one atom (out of about 10^20?) makes it to the other side of the earth? How long until one of those atoms is likely to be found in a randomly chosen cubic meter on the other side of the earth? Or to pose a similar question in a more cute form, when a baby is born on one side of the world and starts breathing, how long until a randomly chosen person on the other side of the world inhales an atom that the baby has previously exhaled?

And assuming that most natural air transport mechanisms are less than 100 mph average, it seems like the current existence of air travel may be perhaps modifying the answers to the above questions (despite being such a small fraction of the atmosphere)? -96.233.19.191 (talk) 18:51, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Question

How many types of quantum butterfly are there? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.132.104.10 (talk) 15:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I think it changes, depending on whether you count them or not. There are eight if you don't. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:39, March 9, 2016 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Butterfly effect in popular culture

There's really no need for the topic to be separate. Popular culture articles are just used as dumping grounds for trivia. It should be an extension of the main article, but such trivial content would simply be removed from the main article. The end goal of the section should be some kind of non-OR discussion on how the butterfly effect has been used in media, how that may have impacted how people view it, and the inclusion of carefully selected examples. TTN (talk) 22:19, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you completely on the end goal, but alas others are less discerning than you and me -- in practice the dreaded IPC sections tend to get overrun with piffle. The argument can be made that a separate "in popular culture" article helps to keep all the trivial crap out of this article. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:01, 17 June 2016 (UTC)