For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost;

For want of a horse, the rider was lost; for want of a rider, the message was lost;

For want of a message the battle was lost; for want of a battle, the kingdom was lost . . .

      Because of a nail the kingdom perished. This is the Butterfly Effect, the idea that

an insect flapping its wings in China could in time affect air currents over the Atlantic

just enough to bring on a hurricane. It means that in the natural world, where

feedback is the rule, a small change at one point makes for unexpected

changes later on. And this means that in the natural sciences, where

measurement is the rule, most predictions have a bug in the system.

        Behold the Lorenz Attractor, an endless pathway of lines

that never cross. It models the earth’s weather in phase space,

where points are units of data moving through time. An attractor

is, according to Ed Lorenz, “a set of states that exist, as opposed

to those that don’t.” So in the model, whatever lies outside the

attractor’s field gets drawn in and like snow in the Sahara,

won’t last. Stable weather (like a heatwave) shows activity

in just one lobe, but only for so long. Mostly we see

a kind of elegant dance between the hemispheres.                                                                                                                                VIEW  PLAY

         The Lorenz Butterfly, as it’s also known, reveals                                                                                                                            FORM        SPIN

how within apparent chaos there’s order after all. More                                                                                                                            LINE        DRAW

important, it’s proven that long range forecasting is doomed,                                                                                                                   TRACE      PAINT

or at best unreliable, since the computers that run a bunch                                                                                                                      FLOW      GRAPH

of simulations to do this rely on what they’re given and when                                                                         HOME                                   MIX         PLOT

it comes to the weather, these measurements will never be                                                                                                                      RIDE         FLY

exactly the same. Each time, there’s that butterfly…..

                                                                                                                                               

   gg