When it comes to the butterfly effect, I guess what comes to your mind isThe 2004 film of the same name starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart, am I right? In fact, this movie is just a repackaging of an old concept.
The butterfly effect is a concept thatSeemingly small things can end up having huge consequences – In other words, these trivial things have non-linear effects on extremely complex systems. A classic example: When a butterfly flaps its wings in India, tiny changes in air pressure can ultimately cause a tornado in Iowa.
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In the movie mentioned at the beginning, Kutcher's character finds a way to return to his childhood. Every time he time travels, his actions change slightly – but these small changes end up having major (and horrific) consequences for his adult life.
“The Butterfly EffectThe term was coined in the 1960s by Edward Lorenz, a professor of meteorology at MIT who was studying weather patterns. He devised a model to describe: Suppose there is Two starting points that are close to each other and indicate the current weather. The two points can quickly separate, and then the area represented by one point may experience severe storms while the other area is calm.
At the time, meteorological statisticians believed that people should be able to predict future weather by consulting historical records to see what had happened in the past when conditions were similar to the present. Lorenz was skeptical. He was running a computer program to simulate various weather conditions and found that if a variable was rounded from 0.506127 to 0.506, the program's weather forecast for the next two months would change dramatically.
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His point is,Long-term weather predictions are nearly impossible, mainly because humans are incapable of measuring nature’s extraordinary complexity. There are so many tiny variables that can be called pivot points, leading to larger consequences.
As science reporter Peter Dizikes wrote in the Boston Globe: “Lorentz points out that the 'countless' interconnections in nature mean that the flutter of a butterfly's wings could trigger a tornado — or vice versa. Come and say, it's possible to stop a tornado. Likewise, if we make super small changes to nature, 'we'll never know what would have happened if we hadn't disturbed it' because the subsequent changes are so complex and entangled. Cannot revert to previous state.”
So while people often think of the butterfly effect as meaningSmall changes can have serious consequences(And we can trace the development process to sort out the causes and consequences), but what Lorenz wants to express isWe can't track these changes. We're not sure what would cause weather patterns to go in different directions.
When Lorenz introduced his work to the public in a 1963 paper entitled “Definite Aperiodic Flow Fields”, he called the aforementioned concept “initial condition sensitivity” (the term “butterfly effect” The term was coined by him in a subsequent speech). This paper was rarely cited (at least initially).
Butterfly Effect and Chaos Theory
Later, other scientists realizedThe importance of Lorenz's discovery.His keen insights laid the foundation for a branch of mathematics known aschaos theorythat is, trying to predict the behavior of an inherently unpredictable system.
You see examples of the butterfly effect every day.Weather is just an example, climate change too. It turns out that climate warming – by chance – is affecting alpine butterfly species in North America.
“Climate change is expected to cause some major impacts, such as the climate becoming too hot for some species, or too dry for others, while at the same time there are countless smaller indirect impacts.” Al Alessandro Filazzola, a community ecologist and data scientist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Berta, wrote in an email.
“In our study, we investigated one of these indirect effects and found that future climate will gradually lead to a misalignment of the habitats of the butterfly and its host plants. In the larval stage (caterpillar), since the butterfly only eats this plants, so any misalignment of their habitats will lead to a decline in butterfly numbers.”
He added that if we pause and consider all the other species in the food chain, it suddenly becomes clear that many species could be affected – not just one small butterfly.This isThe application of the butterfly effect on a larger scale. “For example, what about the animals that previously fed on that butterfly and the animals that feed on those animals, or other insects, or other butterflies (which could all be affected)? The projects we do are very controlled because we study “Butterfly species only eat one type of plant, and it's the same logic (just harder to measure) when you study an entire ecosystem.” When we start thinking about how one small change can quickly lead to a lot of unintended consequences, nature says. Will become worried.
For example: Limiting the construction of hydropower plants may reduce certain types of environmental damage. But in reducing this potentially clean energy source, we become more reliant on fossil fuels that accelerate global warming. Biofuel subsidies, while intended to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, have actually exacerbated problems such as rainforest destruction, fresh water waste and rising food prices, affecting the poorest groups in humanity.
So, weHow to live freely in life without fear of causing harm? Filazzola gives the example of butterflies here. “Probably one of the most important things to do if you want to mitigate these indirect effects isbetter understand these impacts. Simply put, keeping nature pristine is the most important thing,” he said. “Ecosystems are very complex and the loss of one species may not have an obvious impact, but it may have knock-on effects throughout the system. “For example, reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone not only increases the beaver population, but also increases the number of willows and aspens and provides food for animals like birds, coyotes, and bears, among many other benefits.
Second, let’s think about how the butterfly effect affects our personal lives. With nearly 8 billion people on the planet, can one person's actions trigger change on a global scale?
Filazzola said he did think aboutWhat are the indirect effects of personal behavior?. “The items I buy, the people I come into contact with, the things I say, I believe everything has the potential to have a ripple effect in society,” he said. “That's the important thing about trying to be a good person: having a positive impact on society. Plus, I thinkThese indirect effects are often not as small and isolated as many believe. “
NASA hopesUsing the butterfly effect to guide spacecraft. The International Cometary Explorer, launched in 1978, became the first spacecraft to intercept a comet, passing through the tail of comet Giacobini-Zinner and collecting valuable data. Using chaotic system calculations, the researchers learned that by using just a little bit of fuel at exactly one moment, the spacecraft could reach the right place quickly and accurately – all of which was achieved perfectly.
Author: Nathan Chandler
Translation: Unit 7
Reviewer: Yueyue
Original link:What Is the Butterfly Effect and How Do We Misunderstand It? | HowStuffWorks