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A BUTTERFLY DID IT
Chaos theory inventor Edward Lorenz has died at 90.
Lorenz discovered that death is the ultimate “strange attractor.”
Posted by daddy dave on 2008 04 17 at 06:42 AM • permalinkIsn’t there something on SBS this week about the coming ice age?
I remember reading a book on chaos theory in my freshman classroom; we were basically told to sit down and be quiet, and my dad had loaned me a book on the discovery of said theories. I loved the story of the Lorenz Attractor, and started inventing superheroes with chaos-themed powers.
RIP, Mr. Lorenz.
Posted by Tungsten Monk on 2008 04 17 at 09:58 AM • permalinkA well respected meteorologist and mathematician who believed that classical linearised second order differential equations with standard boundary conditions were not adequate to model a complex chaotic global atmosphere.
But did he invent chaos theory and the mathematics of catastrophic systems? Try Rene Thom and see how much of his work appears in our current “the debate is over” mathematical climatic models
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2008 04 17 at 10:11 AM • permalinkYes, Paco, but in spite of being difficult to define, solitons are nevertheless quite useful:
“Many exactly solvable models have soliton solutions, including the Korteweg-de Vries equation, the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, the coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and the sine-Gordon equation. The soliton solutions are typically obtained by means of the inverse scattering transform and owe their stability to the integrability of the field equations."
Just think about that the next time you have to deal with a coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equation.
I wouldn’t be too sure of this. Word is they ordered the casket from Schrodinger’s Fine Furniture (a wholly owned subsidiary of PACO UnLtd.)
Or have I just let the cat out of the, erm, bag?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 04 17 at 11:06 AM • permalink#12 paco
My Quantum Mechanics Professor used to say
“If any of this makes sense to you, you don’t get it.....”
Got it!
Posted by Old Tanker on 2008 04 17 at 11:37 AM • permalink#18
Your lucky, Old Tanker; all we had to work on in auto repair class was an old Ford Fairlane.
aahhhh yes, the good old days of working on the impulse drive of the Enterprise......
Posted by Old Tanker on 2008 04 17 at 12:38 PM • permalinkWell, that clears that up.
Just imagine the democratic process as practiced by the Democratic party in Congress, paco. That might help.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 04 17 at 03:06 PM • permalinkNews just in - in time for the gab fest.
It seems our climate expert economist Garnaut has been talking to the UK’s climate expert economist Stern, and Stern now thinks that his predictions of the future wrath of Global Warmongering have been understated.
That the world is in for an even more dire period.
I’m sure the Summit tits will be making the most of this ‘proof’.
Chaos theory, or at least the popular version of it, is a double-edged sword in the warmening debate. On the one hand, it completely precludes any notion of long-term climate prediction, oops, modelling. On the other, the ‘butterfly effect’ gives comfort to prophets who want to believe that insignificant variations in trace atmospheric gases can somehow trigger global catastrophes. Gleick’s popular bestseller Chaos contains a description of the earliest crude computer climate models: they had a funny tendency to revert to the same result (frozen planet) no matter what data you put into them, cf. Mann’s Hockey Stick.
The butterfly effect only gives comfort to people who don’t understand it. It is supposed to be an image of how some systems are inherently unpredictable. For a chaotic system, any amount of inaccuracy in your measurements, no matter how miniscule, will thwart your ability to predict into the far future.
It’s interesting that he chose weather as the prime example.
Posted by daddy dave on 2008 04 17 at 09:44 PM • permalinkno matter how miniscule, will thwart your ability to predict into the far future.
Hammer and nail DD, right on the head. Every measurement introduces error. Weather is a great example though, it has to be measured. All systems requiring measurements have error and it (error) compounds.....
Posted by Old Tanker on 2008 04 18 at 01:06 AM • permalinkLorenz gave large credit to some Japanese guy whose name I forget for developing a mathematical theory of chaos.
In his Danz Lectures, he said he did not know whether climate is chaotic (in the mathematical sense) or not. It isn’t, it’s antichaotic: large changes in inputs result in minor changes in outputs, the exact opposite of what happens with weather. Curious.
He must have been a wonderful teacher. The Danz Lectures are worth reading.
Posted by Harry Eagar on 2008 04 18 at 03:17 AM • permalink
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The tree in the forest fell and killed the butterfly.