If a butterfly flying through the valleys of Mullaperiyar dam in Kerala flaps its wings, can it form a hurricane in New York? Don’t feel surprised. ‘It’s possible’, says Butterfly effect. Through this article, am giving you a small idea about this term, used in Chaos theory.

Suppose, it’s forecasted heavy monsoons next week and we prepare ourselves to welcome it. Against predictions, if monsoon didn’t shower? What does it mean? Does it say weather conditions can’t be predicted absolutely true? Or does it mean less of knowledge? What happened to scientists? Before searching its answers, let us go back five decades.

This incident occurred in 1961. Place - Massachusetts of America. Edward Lorenz, a mathematician and meteorologist was running global climate models on his computer one day. He was examining previous day’s values. Computer at that time was about the size of a small room and it needs a lot of time to boot and start its working. He wanted a graph with value 0.506127. Since processing time at that time was too long, to save a little time, he gave the input value as 0.506 leaving the last three less significant decimal numbers. Since its difference was just below 1/1000, he thought, it won’t give a less accurate answer. After giving that task to the computer, he went for a tea break. When he returned, he was shocked seeing its report. Report was entirely different from the climate of previous day and then only he understood that even 0.000127 can make a big difference in the results. That means small changes in the beginning can lead to big differences when time pass by, though it seems unrelated first. That symbolically implies a butterfly flap in Kerala can cause hurricane in New York. This effect is known as Butterfly effect which forms the basis of Chaos Theory.  That means, if wing flaps of a butterfly can cause storms, flaps of another one can neutralize it too!

Before Lorenz

Years before Lorenz presented Chaos theory, Henry Poincare- a mathematician put forward this theory in 1903. But no one was able to understand his points and hence his theory went unnoticed.

Chaos – Patterns in disorder

Chaos can be defined as any form of disorder or confusion. Let me explain with the help of ferns in the picture.

If the picture1, there is no order or pattern in the plant distribution, just appear as a bush. But if we go through pictures 2 and 3, small patterns start appearing. In picture 4, we can see distinct patterns within the leaf and in the last picture, its pattern in appearing more complex. That means, if we examine as a whole, we can’t find any patterns and as we deeply go inside it, an order and pattern is unfolding before us leading us to a complex world of minute patterns followed. In simple words, as we examine more and more, its order is also becoming more complex, the same way, a butterfly flaps changes to hurricane or storm. 

Fractals – the similarities

Let us closely examine a cauliflower. Each of its simple part/flowerets is closely similar to other flowerets of the same cauliflower. We can find many such examples from nature itself. Peacock, clouds, trees, flowers etc are some common ones. During the middle ages of 1970s Scientist Mantle Brott noted the self similar objects. He gave them the name, Fractals. He formulated some Mathematical equations with the help of a computer. Z=Z2 +C is known as Mantle Bolt sets. Fractal Geometry is related to Chaos Theory. Fractal figure created by him is known as God’s fingerprint.

Chaos everywhere

Chaos is present in every branch of science – Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Graphics, Climatic predictions, Engineering etc. For example, the function of a healthy brain is chaotic, means disorder. But for conditions like fits, that particular part of brain begins to function as an order. Thus Chaos theory has helped a lot in the treatment of such diseases. 

It’s a strange theory which is getting attention nowadays. It says, even a small change can cause great differences in the output later. So, it implies the principle that, ‘never neglect even small things for our convenience’.