BUTTERFLY (LORENZ')
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 346 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Methodology or model |
A chaotic attractor whose graphical representation is similar to butterfly wings.
This attractor was discovered by the American meteorologist E. LORENZ. It graphicates the turbulent sequences of meteorological variations, submitted to the stochastic determinism proper to very complex systems. The same type of attractors appears in many other situations dependent from the sequence of interactions between various initial conditions. More generally, this is a chaotic attractor, for which, as stated by R. MAY “arbitrary close initial conditions can lead to trajectories which, after a sufficiently long time, diverge widely. This means that, even if we have a simple model in which all the parameters are determined exactly, long term prediction is nevertheless impossible” (1976, p.466).
In a metaphorical — but not at all rigorous — way, the so-called “butterfly effect” in weather forecasts says that, if a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere in the States today, it may produce a typhoon in the Eastern Pacific one month later, i.e. a small local initial effect may trigger a snowball effect eventually leading to a gigantic accumulative event, possibly faraway in space and time.