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Hurricanes and butterflies

Chaotic systems can be characterized by the swirling patterns of ‘strange attractors’. A powerful method to determine their behaviour has been validated for the most famous case, the Lorenz attractor.

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Figure 1: The Lorenz attractor, tracing the phase-space trajectory for a simple model for atmospheric convection.

PROF. E. LORENZ, PETER ARNOLD INC./SPL

References

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Halsey, T., Jensen, M. Hurricanes and butterflies. Nature 428, 127–128 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/428127a

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