On The Wings Of Butterflies

Have you ever replied to a simple, innocent question on impulse and then immediately thought, “Oh no! What have I just done?”

I recently attended a presentation. Nothing unusual about this. This time of year, I attend a lot of presentations. And, as is the norm, I sat in the front row.

There’s a reason for that. Sometimes presenters make their PowerPoint font one size too small to read from anywhere but the front row. Also, if I have a question, it’s easier for the presenter to hear me.

Now, there is a downside to this seating choice. Not only does it make the speaker more accessible to you, but it also makes you more accessible to the speaker. That could be a double-edged sword.

Take what happened at this recent conference. The speaker wanted to make a point about the randomness of the domino effect. (Do people too young to have grown up during the Vietnam War even remember the Domino Theory?)

Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The speaker looked at the entire crowd. And, by that, I mean he overlooked the front row. He gazed far beyond me. Then he casually asked, “Are there any physicists in attendance?”

I instinctively raised my hand. Not because I’m a practicing physicist, but because I double-majored in Physics and Astronomy. Technically, that makes me an astrophysicist by training, but most people wouldn’t know the difference.

Actually, for all intents and purposes, an astrophysicist is simply a physicist who focuses on the universe. In a similar way, a particle physicist might study the universe’s smallest building blocks using particle accelerators. Same concepts. Different laboratories.

Of course, in the world of academics, there’s always the possibility that a theoretical physicist might take exception to an astrophysicist claiming to be a “physicist.”

That’s the thought that raced through my head moments after my hand committed this sin.

What if there was a “real” physicist in the room? Would he think I was a fraud? Worse, would he prove I was a fraud?

Not that the bar is very high to achieve that proof. It’s been decades since I last practiced physics. And my astronomy work has tended to emphasize history rather than modern cosmology.

Imagine my sigh of relief when no other attendee raised his hand.

Whew!

I dodged a bullet on that one.

Or did I?

The speaker looked at me and said, “Since we have a physicist present…”

Ouch! My impostor syndrome surged. The jig was up.

“…can you explain…”

Worse. Possible. Scenario. Did I not just tell you the last time I opened a physics textbook was in 1982? I have no idea about the latest discoveries and theories. Oh, woe is me!

“…the Butterfly Effect.”

Pause.

The Butterfly Effect? That’s not physics. That’s meteorology. OK, on the margin, weather is just atmospheric physics, but, then again, what isn’t physics?

Literature. But science fiction tends to borrow generously from the science.

Now, I couldn’t correct the speaker. I know, I know. Some would say the best defense is a good offense. But it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to have suggested the speaker wasn’t really talking about physics.

Instead, from within my quiver of answers came that font of all truth and knowledge: The Simpsons.

I began, “Remember that time when Homer tried to fix his toaster and ended up creating a time machine that sent him back to the age of dinosaurs? He squashed a mosquito and, when he returned to the present time, everything had changed. That’s the Butterfly Effect. One innocuous action echoes through the years until its impact far exceeds the actual event.”

In other words, knock over one domino, and it can cause a chain reaction that knocks over all the other dominoes.

The speaker, who had already worked pop culture references into his presentation, was taken aback by The Simpsons reference. But he was glad for it.

For those who really want to know all about the Butterfly Effect, here’s the skinny:

The Butterfly Effect is a central idea in Chaos Theory, which isn’t exclusively physics or meteorology. Its foundation is mathematics. (Of course, theoretical physics is nothing more than applied mathematics, so there’s that.) I mean, I could go back to the late 1800s and drop names like James Clerk Maxwell, Jules Henri Poincaré, and Jacques Salomon Hadamard, along with a short treatise on nonlinear differential equations. But then you’d get bored, quit reading, and miss the amazing twist that comes at the end of this Commentary.

Most people credit the American mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz with popularizing the concept known as “the Butterfly Effect.” Truth be told, as early as 1963, he was already using a seagull’s wings to illustrate how a tiny atmospheric disturbance could eventually change the course of the weather.

Nearly a decade later, he was scheduled to deliver a presentation on the idea at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting. The organizers needed a title. Lorenz hadn’t supplied one. To fill the void, Canadian meteorologist Philip Merilees created one. And thus, in December 1972, Lorenz presented a talk titled “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”

It’s unclear who actually coined the phrase “butterfly effect.” Even Lorenz, who most scientists agree came up with the concept, never could figure it out. Still, by 1976, theoretical ecologist Robert M. May was confidently attributing the expression to Lorenz. In “Simple Mathematical Models with Very Complicated Dynamics” (Nature, Vol. 261, No. 5560, June 10, 1976, pp. 459–467), he wrote:

“In a meteorological context, Lorenz has called this general phenomenon the ‘butterfly effect’: even if the atmosphere could be described by a deterministic model in which all parameters were known, the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings could alter the initial conditions, and thus (in the chaotic regime) alter the long term prediction.”

Notice how I said “most scientists” a couple of paragraphs ago. That’s because the idea of a butterfly changing history appeared in literature years before Lorenz introduced his butterfly metaphor. Specifically, in the June 28, 1952 issue of Collier’s magazine. It was a short story titled “A Sound of Thunder,” by Ray Bradbury. I read it in high school.

In it, a time-traveling safari hunter steps off the path he’s not supposed to. When he later looks at the sole of his boot, he sees a colorful smudge. “Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead.”

Like Homer Simpson, when he returns to the present, he sees everything has changed.

All because a butterfly didn’t flap its wings.