Chaos Part of 7/31 When Lorenz plotted his three equations a | Blinkist Summary Book

Chaos
Part of 7/31


When Lorenz plotted his three equations as a graph he found that they produced a characteristic shape: a strange three-dimensional double spiral that looks like a pair of butterfly wings. Its motions were almost cyclical but never quite repeated themselves – just like the weather the waterwheel or a playground swing.
Lorenz’s discovery that a few simple equations can produce intricate patterns of chaos was a revolution. And like all revolutions it was met with backlash by people wedded to the status quo.
In the 1970s physicists and mathematicians began studying nonlinear systems in earnest.
Scientists like to have their expectations thwarted about as much as the rest of us. And they certainly weren’t expecting that some of the most fundamental physical systems in our world behave in completely chaotic unpredictable ways. So naturally most of them weren’t too thrilled about this new chaos theory embraced by younger freethinking scientists from the 1970s onwards.
It sounded unsc