How Chaos Theory Unravels the Mysteries of Nature

Ever wonder how we try to predict the unpredictable? Supercomputers use the power of chaos theory. » Subscribe to Seeker! » Watch more Elements! As humans, we’re always trying to know more about how our world works, so we make models, models that allow us to reasonably predict what might happen if any of the established variables in a situation were to change. This is a deterministic system, meaning the behavior of certain variables is determined by their known characteristics. But what happens when the situation is a whole lot messier, with many, many variables and moving parts to keep track of? Take the weather for example, to make a perfect weather prediction we would have to have highly accurate measurements of every contributing variable over every single square inch of atmosphere we are looking at. So you can imagine, any tiny cha