CHAOS AT
50 6
1963 - 2024
1
Sarah Newman
Adilson E. Motter, David K. Campbell; Chaos at fifty. Physics
Today 1 May 2013; 66 (5): 27–33.
CONTENTS
THE HISTORY OF THE LORENZ
WHAT IS CHAOS?
CHAOS ATTRACTOR
WHAT IS CHAOS?
A sensitive dependence on initial
conditions
“Chaos: When the present
determines the future, but the
approximate present does not
approximately determine the
future.” Edward Lorentz
TIMELINE
Late 1880s 1963 1975 July 1989
Henri Poincare Lorenz publishes “Period three First Chaos
studied the three- “Deterministic implies chaos” Tien- conference in the US,
body problem nonperiodic flow” Yien Li and James next one to be held in
Yorke’s the Soviet leading to
a journal on non
linear science
“Predictability: does New York Academy
the flap of a of Sciences
Lorenz mentions his butterfly’s wing in organized the first
findings at a Brazil set off a symposium on
symposium in Tokyo tornado in Texas?” chaos
1960 1972 1977
David K. Campbell; Editorial: The pre-history of Chaos—An
Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science. Chaos 1 September 2015;
Late 1880s
3 BODY PROBLEM
“How will two masses move in
space if the only force on them
is their mutual gravitational
attraction?”
Methods known to Poincare
could not find a general
analytical solution
We now know this is a chaotic
system and slight changes in
initial conditions produce very
Richard Montgomery; The Three-Body Problem . Scientific American; Aug 1, 2019
different results
1960s
LORENZ EQUATIONS
12 variable meteorological system
Rounding to 6dp compared to 3dp produced large differences in
predicted weather
Adilson E. Motter, David K. Campbell; Chaos at fifty. Physics Today 1 May 2013; 66 (5): 27–33.
1960s
NAME SAKES AND THE COLD
1970s – 1990s
WAR
1972 “Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil set
off a tornado in Texas?”
1975 “Period three implies chaos” Tien-Yien Li and James Yorke’s
Cold War - Chaos research was not well communicated across the
East/West divide.
This changed when the AIP (American Institute of Physics) and
VAAP (Soviet Academy of Sciences) jointly sponsored a
Non linear science conference in 1989
David K. Campbell; Editorial: The pre-history of Chaos—An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear
Science. Chaos 1 September 2015; 25 (9): 090401.
ANY QUESTIONS?
