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What does the Butterfly Effect mean?

The Origins of Butterfly Effect?


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Butterfly effect has been popularized by a mathematician and meteorologist named Edward Norton Lorenz. The term butterfly effect emerged when Lorenz ran two global climate models wherein the first model ran from the beginning and the second model started at the middle of the process. He was trying to predict the weather when he did the mistake. The event leads him to two predictions although Lorenz together with his colleagues assumed that the predictions would be the same even though they started differently. Little do they know that there were minute variations causing the result to be different. As a mathematician, Lorenz calculated and created an explanation on how this event came to be. He found out that small differences and even the tiniest factor can impact the results greatly and he know calls it the butterfly effect.

It has been said before that butterfly wings can alter weather patterns and the effect would change within a large area. Although this claim still has a lot of studies to prove, the term butterfly effect has now been used for years already.

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect plays a great role in the effects of the systems that are included in the theory. As what mentioned before, minute differences, slight changes, and even the smallest detail can cascade and would bring forth a whole different effect compared to what was expected. Not only would it affect a small portion of the whole process, but it can totally alter the event.

The butterfly theory has been a concept that has been widely accepted. History places a great role in the shaping of the future. The chaos theory, together with the butterfly effect has been a subject to many movies and stories wherein people do time-travel and change a part in the history to totally alter the future.
Jan 7th, 2013 at 12:57 AM
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