The Butterfly Effect

I photographed this Red Admiral butterfly in our garden during the warm weather a month ago. It reminded of the famous idea that launched chaos theory on the world. In 1963, Edward Lorentz came up with some equations for atmospheric conduction. When plotted in phase space, they resembles the wings of a butterfly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system His work showed that the weather obeys non-linear relationships - in other words, doubling one thing doesn't often double the other. The response can be quite out of proportion. A small change can produce a big effect. They started saying that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Rio, it can cause a hurricane in the US. Small change in pressure, disproportionate effect. This study of non-linear Physics became known as Chaos Theory.