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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Compare a [simple pendulum](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02w9lSii_Hs) and a [double pendulum](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U39RMUzCjiU). For each of those, ask yourself this: Where is the tip of the pendulum going to be in five seconds’ time?
Simple pendulums are high school physics, they’re very _very_ predictable, their behaviour is very straightforward. Most importantly: If you make small adjustments to the initial height and speed of pendulum, that has a small effect on the position of the pendulum in five seconds’ time.
Double pendulums are incredibly unpredictable. Modeling their behaviour is fairly advanced physics, and any small tweak to the initial state can result in wildly different results five seconds down the line.
Chaos Theory is the study of these sorts of systems where the outcomes are highly sensitive to the initial state. Turns out that, even though those systems are pretty unpredictable on a moment-to-moment basis, you can often predict their large-scale overall behaviour with reasonable accuracy. The butterfly/hurricane thing is an exaggeration, but the point is that the weather is one of these chaotic systems that are incredibly sensitive to changes.
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