The dependence on initial conditions for the future of a system can look discouraging. However, there is a positive and constructive approach. In fact, this Lorenz’ real message, but it is not that well known by the general public.
Tag: Determinism
Chaos VII: Strange Attractors
In 1963, Edward Lorenz (1917-2008), studied convection in the Earth’s atmosphere. As the Navier-Stokes equations that describe fluid dynamics are very difficult to solve, he simplified them drastically. The model he obtained probably has little to do with what really happens in the atmosphere. Read More
Chaos: III Some Mechanics
Physics has been dominated for a very long time by Aristotle’s ideas on the subject : Each object has a place of its own, and if we move it from that place, it will do its best to return to it… Read More
Chaos II: Vector fields
At the end of the 17th century, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and Isaac Newton (1643-1727), independently one from the other, invented a brilliant mathematical tool: infinitesimal calculus or differential and integral calculus. Read More
Chaos I: Motion and Determinism
Chaos I: Motion and Determinism
The start of Chaos, with one of the foremost ideas of philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesis, who lived in the sixth century B.C. Creatures develop eternally, things have no substance and everything is always on the move: everything becomes everything, everything is everything. The first minutes of the film illustrate this idea with some everyday examples, as well as some mathematical ones.
The Science Behind the Butterfly Effect
How to Generate Pseudorandom Numbers
What is a the difference between a random and a pseudorandom number? And what can pseudo random numbers allow us to do that random numbers can’t?
Why Quantum Information is Never Destroyed
If you have perfect knowledge of every single particle in the universe, can you use the laws of physics to rewind all the way back to the Big Bang? Is the entire history of the universe perfectly knowable? Or has information somehow lost along the way?