Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas? -A paper presented by December 1972 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C by Edward Lorenz was the first scientific research on the subject of "Butterfly Effect".
The effect essentially is an extension of the idea known as sensitive dependence of a system on initial conditions. The small changes in initial conditions (often immeasurable by human standards )may end up having widely different behaviour than expected.
The 2004 Aston Kutcher starrer of the same name tries to look at the scientific scenario from a cinematic point of view.The main protagonist of the movie is somehow gifted with the power to travel back through time ,just by recreating the time in his memory,(usually by reading his childhood manuals).Reaching back in time he tries to make slight changes to his past ,which unfortunately leads to quite unintentional changes to his future.This results in him revisiting his past over and over again just to rectify the changes he has made in his previous visits.
The film though an interesting concept, it scientifically is not exactly the Butterfly effect as only his immediate family and friends are affected by his tampering of past.As per the Butterfly effect ,his changes would have had a world wide impact resulting in more wide reaching changes to himself and the world.
Other films which had tried their hands at this concept are
1998 Gwyneth Paltrow starrer Sliding Doors and the 2001 Tamil movie 12 B ,starring Shayam. Both are interesting takes on how a particular event(boarding/missing a train(or bus) which has a 50% probability of occurring impacts the protagonist future based on one particular action of boarding/missing a train(or bus as in the Tamil movie).
Another movie with a similar endeavor is The 1998 movie Run Lola run.The movie showcases 3 distinct possibilities in a 20 minute window in a person life based on small sub conscious decisions she takes.
About the movie,the trusted,Lord Wikipedia says :
“The movie itself begins by posing questions pertaining to the unpredictability of the world and the unknowable nature of its meaning. It suggests that drastically disparate consequences can alter the fates of different people from a one second change in the time of one person's running.”
Talking of time travel there is another interesting concept “Time paradox”,first thought of (or rather first publicly discussed )by science fiction writer René Barjavel,in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent.The poaradox here is, “What happens to the a time traveler’s “Present “ ,if he travels back in time and kill his grandfather before his father is concieved?” .Buts that’s for a entirely new blog……
2 comments:
" What happens to a time traveler’s “Present “ ,if he travels back in time and kills his grandfather before his father is conceived?"
That's a very good question. :P
@ abhinav : :)
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