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Global PokédeX Plus Forums _ Debates _ Is the Chaos Theory correct?

Posted by: 44Cinder44 May 25 2013, 06:00 PM

Some people say by jumping somewhere they just caused an earthquake. Or by flapping its wings, a butterfly will cause a tornado in Kansas. Or maybe by swimming, they just caused a tsunami!

Do you think this is true?

Posted by: Samoo May 25 2013, 06:07 PM

Most of those a just folk stories I would assume.
With the earthquake.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHbyQ_AQP8c

But to answer your question? No. I don't believe it. Stories is what they are.

Posted by: Lord Raven May 26 2013, 11:56 PM

Physics doesn't allow that. Your momentum does shit all. You're maybe falling at around 3 m/s with around 60 kg of weight, momentum of 180 Ns - adding onto that, the mass of the earth is several orders of magnitude larger than that. The velocity of the earth after you jump is 10^-22 m/s, roughly. To put that into perspective, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle would probably disallow that precise a measurement (okay an exaggeration but nothing you have will be able to make that precise a measurement, and nothing most physicists have will either). So that kills your theory for earthquakes. The momentum you create by flapping your arms is eventually lost through entropy when you start a tornado, and similar enough arguments apply to tsunamis. Basic physics destroys the everloving shit out of your chaos theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory and chaotic systems are a thing, but it's not at all what you are thinking. You are assuming that stuff such as tornadoes and etc are chaotic systems are very very VERY very very very heavily affected by initial conditions. They are indeed affected by some initial conditions, but not all initial conditions such as butterfly flapping and etc. And to round out my post, here's the double pendulum, an actually chaotic system sensitive to all sorts of initial conditions (that I've seen physics projects for and I derived the equations of motion - never solved them because I was too lazy to put them into Mathematica or something and get a numerical answer)