The Butterfly Effect

"The waved of the wings of a butterfly in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas." The meteorologist synthesized this way Edward Lorenz your notable you contribute to the mathematics of the XX century: the "Effect Butterfly" and your relationship with the Theory of the Chaos. That you were for accident, the same as many other scientific important discoveries.

In the year 1961, Lorenz was working in the development of computer models of simulation of the time. A complex software that were run in the most efficient computers in that time, tried to represent the climatic conditions and the relationship mathematically among the elements that compose them, based on the entrance of multiple parameters (temperature, dampness, atmospheric pressure, etc.) and the studio of your effects.

The scientists trusted in that the development of a mathematical advance model, fed with the precise and correct parameters, would be able to predict the state of the time with the same accuracy with which you can calculate the orbit of a planet or the path of a projectile. But little time later, Lorenz would demonstrate the impossibility of that theory.

In certain occasion, Edward Lorenz was working with one of these sophisticated models of meteorological simulation. You had entered a data set to analyze your evolution, and then he/she was happened to enter the same data exactly, for second time. Your surprise was uppercase when you observed the run of both simulations: the obtained results were absolutely different, when they would have to have been identical.

First thought that the computer didn't work well. Then he/she realized that you had not entered the same conditions initials exactly. The computer processed in your memory the data with an acuity of six decimals; for example, 0.345517, but to save space, the columns of printed paper of where Lorenz had taken the data to enter them for second time, they rounded the values to four decimals (0.3455). That accidental difference, of the order of a cienmilésima, you had been enough to alter the final results completely.

The meteorologist realized that the answer to the enigma was in a dark and unexplored path of the mathematics, enunciated for the first time at the end of the XIX century by Henri Poincaré, well-known as the Theory of the Chaos that had been minimized by the mathematicians until that moment. However, Edward Lorenz dedicated the remainder of your life to scan and to develop in depth the equations of the Theory of the Chaos, attracting the interest of important prominences later on.

In essence, Lorenz determined that a perfect prognosis didn't only require the use of a perfect model, but also a perfect knowledge of the wind, temperature, dampness and many conditions more, in the entire world and in the exact same moment. The smallest discrepancy in these data, produces a completely different result. The publication of your discoveries in 1963, in a document that a work teacher is considered by your exhibition clarity, you demonstrated that the absolute accuracy when predicting the time is impossible to get; pronouncing the sentence that we mention at the beginning of this note and that one knows popularly as "the Effect Butterfly."

The equations of Lorenz and your followers were good to perfect the calculation of the prognoses of the time. At the present time, the advance of the mathematical models and the biggest acuity in the data collection allow to grant a very high acuity to the short term prognoses, but due to the chaotic nature of the climatic system, as the hours pass the error margin you are each more marked one, until the point that one is not able to precedir the state of the time with a reasonable accuracy beyond the five to seven days.

Edward Lorenz the past died April 16, to the 90 year-old age. Your bequeathed invalorable influenced deeply in the Science and one of the most dramatic changes has caused in the way of understanding to the Nature and your chaotic behavior from Isaac's time Newton.