Surely you have heard of or seen the movie about butterfly effect. This effect comes through a Chinese proverb that says the following: "the flapping of a butterfly's wings can be felt on the other side of the world." This means that even the smallest detail can lead to other totally divergent consequences. Anything we do can have a considerable long-term effect over time. This can be extrapolated both at the level of nature and at the level of human actions and our personal actions.
In this article we are going to tell you what the butterfly effect is and what its main characteristics are.
What is the butterfly effect
The butterfly effect is linked to chaos theory. This theory says that the fluttering of the insect in Hong Kong can unleash a whole storm in New York. It is a nondeterministic system with small changes that can lead to completely different consequences. Initially, it begins with a small disturbance. Through an amplification process, this small disturbance can generate a considerable effect in the short and medium term.
The disorderly movement of the stars, the movement of plankton in the seas, the delay of airplanes, the synchronization of neurons, etc. All these chaotic or dynamic non-linear systems can trigger some divergent effects in the short or medium term. The theory of chaos and the butterfly effect explains that something as complex as the universe is totally unpredictable. The universe is a flexible chaotic system. Chaos theory explains how the atmosphere by the conditions of the Weather prevent predictions when reliable weather is beyond 3 days. This relates to the impact of the climate change in the global climate and can be seen in studies that confirm the effects of climate change on the flora and fauna of Europe.
The butterfly effect is usefully used to address studies on social phenomena that are difficult to solve in terms of linear cause and effect relationships. It can be said that little things can have a considerable effect over time. If we take it on a personal level, we can see that the inclusion of numerous habits in our life can trigger other consequences.
Areas of the butterfly effect
The butterfly effect can be applied in many areas. It can serve as the main basis in various literary works or be part of relevant theories and more controversial and popular scientific paradigms such as chaos theory. And it is that the butterfly effect keeps a symbolism that can be applied to different realities.
Since a given action or situation can lead to a series of successive situations or actions that end up causing a considerable effect that it does not seem to correspond with the situation of the element that started it. Given that if only the initial cause and the final consequence are analyzed, it may not have too much correlation between them. However, the initial small action is the one that began to trigger other smaller effects but that have had a cumulative effect over time. This is how effect after effect has reached the final consequence.
The concept of the butterfly effect began with the experiences of meteorologist Edward Lorenz. This meteorologist coined the term "butterfly effect" in 1973 due to the impossibility of making completely reliable long-term weather predictions. This is because the climate is affected by the accumulation of various variables that are capable of modifying atmospheric behavior. To better understand this, it is interesting to study how the climate change affects wildlife.
When we're talking about an atmospheric system and the possibility of precipitation, numerous variables must be analyzed. These variables have a value that depends on other variables in question. For example, the temperature in a region will depend on the inclination at which the sun's rays arrive from space. This, in turn, depends on the moment in which our planet is in its translational motion relative to the sun's orbit. Therefore, temperatures depend not only on what we've mentioned, but also on other variables such as wind action, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, relative humidity, etc.
Since each variable in turn has a direct or indirect dependence on other variables, a kind of chaos is formed that is very difficult to predict after a certain time.
Chaos theory
All of this explains why chaos theory is at work in the butterfly effect. This tells us that seemingly simple and harmless changes in a variable, a specific action, can generate massive effects. The first variable, or the first action, is the one that it triggers the process that causes the rest of the variables to propagate the effects until reaching the final consequence. This procedure is acquiring more and more strength.
Such is this chaos that it is the origin of the popular saying that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Hong Kong can cause a hurricane in New York. This means that the slightest alteration in the same process can lead to very different, and even totally unexpected, results. The butterfly effect is often seen as a metaphor or analogy used as one of the pillars of chaos theory. Chaos theory was also originated by Edward Lorenz. According to this meteorologist, there are systems in the universe that are highly sensitive to the presence of variations. All these variations can present very diverse, though limited, results in a chaotic and unpredictable manner.
The main model of chaos theory proposes that when faced with two identical worlds or situations in which only one, almost insignificant, variable differentiates them, over time and progress, other differences can arise that will make the worlds increasingly distinct from one another. In other words, let's give an easy example. Consider two planet Earths with all the same conditions since their creation, but we assign a slightly higher average temperature to one. Although it's a small variable, the fact that one planet has a few degrees higher average temperature than the other could determine whether, over thousands of years, life can develop differently.
I hope that with this information you can learn more about the butterfly effect of its characteristics.