The Butterfly Effect?

Question

Can the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Africa really cause a hurricane in the U.S.

the 'myth' is that it causes a disturbance in the air which can lead to a storm wich travels acrross the ocean and make a hurricane.

Answer 1

i dont see how. wouldnt we constantly have hurricanes?

Answer 2

Yes this is true but you have to think about how it could. If a butterfly flapped its wings right now it pushes some air down. that pocket of air that was pushed down pushes down that entire piece of atmosphere.lets say in Africa at the time was a cold front and that disturbance causes the front to move out of Africa into the Atlantic.
Now you got a cold front rapidly gaining straight and being pushed towards warmer waters pretty soon it comes close to the east coast very powerful and becomes by chance a devastating hurricane.

This is just an example of how it could form a storm. there are many possible ways that seem to be "natural that scientist dismiss this as natural cause

Hope I helped.

Answer 3

I attended a lecture by Dr. Lorenz who studied the chaos theory and penned the name "butterfly effect". Theoretically it is possible, actually speaking it is not. What the butterfly effect really means is that a small, relativly unnoticable change can cause something more widespread and possibly destructive. If you look at it litteraly, something larger, even your breath could change weather systems. Not exactly logical (or relativley possible). The chaos theory is a lot more indepth than studying the effects of butterflies. The butterfly effect is just an exaple of a small part and is not to be taken litteraly.

Answer 4

Reverse the question... Can a hurricane from the US make a Butterfly wing flap in South Africa?? Think about it.

Answer 5

Minute changes to a system can certainly have a drastic effect if given enough time; indeed this is the thoroughly applied concept behind seeding "pseudo" random number generators. However, it is important to remember that idealized analogies to the butterfly effect, such as computer algorithms are not chaotic systems like the weather. Personally, I believe that even if the weather's chaotic behavior currently makes it impossible prove or predict the butterfly effect, it does exist.

Answer 6

It really isn't meant to be taken literally. What it signifies is that if you make a very small change to the initial conditions of a nonlinear system, then it can make a drastic change in what results, given enough time. For things like weather that time period is about 2 to 3 weeks. What it really shows is that the weather is unpredictable on those time periods, because you can never know the initial state well enough to determine the final state accurately

Answer 7

Although it's theoretically possible, it's more useful to think of that as a model or analogy to demonstrate how "small variations of the initial condition of a nonlinear dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system". It's something you'll have to read a bit about if you really want to understand.....


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect


***********EDIT++++++++++++


Missylizzy is incorrect-- it's is NOT about how random events are interrelated. It's about how small events now effect event in the future.

Answer 8

Yes, this is the chaos theory that shows how random events are actually inter-related.

Answer 9

chaos theory says yes

Answer 10

No. That is a myth.