I remember reading that a butterfly on the otherside of the world can cause a hurricane on the opposite side, and it’s down to chaos theory, could someone explain what chaos theory is please? Thanks
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The answers here are good, but I’ll try to simplify for ELI5.
Imagine a stream of water or a plume of smoke. The individual partials are chaotic and hard to predict. However, when the system as a whole is observed patterns can emerge. Even though systems like this are sensitive to small changes, the math allows us to have a lot of knowledge about it.
Fractals are another great example. The non linear equations generate seemingly random numbers, but with enough of those numbers graphed patterns surface.
And one more example. It’s difficult, maybe impossible to know exactly what an individual particle will do exiting from a jet engine. But, jet engine engineers understand what the jet wash behind the aircraft will do very well.
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