Strange Attractor:
An attractor is informally described as strange if it has non-integer dimension or if the dynamics on it are chaotic. The term was coined by David Ruelle and Floris Takens to describe the attractor that resulted from a series of bifurcations of a system describing fluid flow. Strange attractors are often differentiable in a few directions, but some are like a Cantor dust, and therefore not differentiable.
The recognition of strange attractors fed the revolution in chaos by giving numerical explorers a clear program to carry out. They looked for strange attractors everywhere, wherever nature seemed to be behaving randomly. Many argued that the earth's weather might lie on a strange attractor. Others assembled millions of pieces of stock market data and began searching for a strange attractor there, peering at randomness through the adjustable lens of a computer.
For now, the excitement went beyond pure science. Ruelle, for example: "I have not spoken of the esthetic appeal of strange attractors. These systems of curves, these clouds of points suggest sometimes fireworks or galaxies, sometimes strange and disquieting vegetal proliferations. A realm lies there of forms to explore, and harmonies to discover."
An attractor is informally described as strange if it has non-integer dimension or if the dynamics on it are chaotic. The term was coined by David Ruelle and Floris Takens to describe the attractor that resulted from a series of bifurcations of a system describing fluid flow. Strange attractors are often differentiable in a few directions, but some are like a Cantor dust, and therefore not differentiable.
The recognition of strange attractors fed the revolution in chaos by giving numerical explorers a clear program to carry out. They looked for strange attractors everywhere, wherever nature seemed to be behaving randomly. Many argued that the earth's weather might lie on a strange attractor. Others assembled millions of pieces of stock market data and began searching for a strange attractor there, peering at randomness through the adjustable lens of a computer.
For now, the excitement went beyond pure science. Ruelle, for example: "I have not spoken of the esthetic appeal of strange attractors. These systems of curves, these clouds of points suggest sometimes fireworks or galaxies, sometimes strange and disquieting vegetal proliferations. A realm lies there of forms to explore, and harmonies to discover."
....to be continued
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