Light Speed

“In 1972, Edward Lorenz gave a presentation titled: “Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” The term “butterfly effect” was born. Lorenz, who was born on this day in 1917, was a pioneer of chaos theory, which analyzes how subtle changes in the initial conditions of a system can lead to widely differing outcomes. This 2013 Physics Today article examines Lorenz and the birth of chaos theory.” - Physics Today

Chaos at fifty by Adilson E. Motter and David K. Campbell is an article that lays out the discovery of chaos. I found it a very satisfying and informative read about dynamical systems, the butterfly effect, bifurcations, predictability and fractals. You should probably go check it out by clicking on the bolded title. 👍

“Chaos sets itself apart from other great revolutions in the physical sciences. In contrast to, say, relativity or quantum mechanics, chaos is not a theory of any particular physical phenomenon. Rather, it is a paradigm shift of all science, which provides a collection of concepts and methods to analyze a novel behavior that can arise in a wide range of disciplines.” - Chaos at fifty

Image above: “The Lorenz attractor, as revealed by the never-repeating trajectory of a single chaotic orbit. The spheres shown here represent iterations of the so-called Lorenz equations, calculated using the original parameters in Edward Lorenz’s seminal work. (Spheres are colored according to the iteration count.) From certain angles, the two lobes of the attractor resemble a butterfly, a coincidence that helped earn sensitive dependence on initial conditions its nickname—the butterfly effect. An animated visualization of the attractor is available here. (Image courtesy of Stefan Ganev.)”

Red Spider Planetary Nebula

Blue Angels

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Coin flip.

“One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever face in life is choosing whether to walk away or try harder.

Ziad K. Abdelnourp