I don’t understand this concept of “chaos” in a universe governed by physics.
Just because something is nearly infinitely complicated, doesn’t mean predicting outcomes would be actually impossible. If the universe produces the outcome, doesn’t that mean it’s following a rule set?
Do I fundamentally not understand chaos theory?
In: 4
To get all the data to make a calculation you’d have to consider everything from quantum level. And quantum level is a level at which outcomes exist in a probability.
Take radioactive decay for example. A single atom that is unstable might decay instantly or never. There is absolutely no saying when it will break down. However if you take lots of radioactive material, the decay will be predictable. Consider a crowd of people, one person might never cough, but a in a crowd big enough there will always be some coughing.
So if we consider from this perspective, that this decay does affect the behavior of a bigger system, such as what elements some planet might be composed of. Since radioactive decay releases energy it reduces the mass of that planet. You’d have to consider everything from the level of a single atom decaying. Since fundamentally that atom’s decay can not be predicted, you can never actually be sure of the mass of a planet at any point. You could map it at a single point of time, but further from that point you go in time more your uncertanty grows. Since the mass of the planet affects it’s orbiting behavior, given enough time and radioactive decay, even if you could predict the behavior of that body, you could only predict it’s behavior in that state as it was. Given enough time, these errors in your ability to estimate things will acumulate to a degree where you can’t know anything anymore at a big scale.
Here is a mindfuck for you to think in bed. Since nothing says that an radioactive element has to decayse, there can be a sitaution where for a moment none of the decay. So that would mean that nuclera fission would for that moment just stop. That means that a fluoerescnet dials on your watch with Tritium in them, could just stop glowing for a moment. This obviously will never happen, but universe allows for this to happen. So how can you be sure that this will not happen?
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