Que sera

Graphic - lorenz
In the present are the seeds of an infinity of futures
[Anon]

The weather model dreamed up by Lorenz (which now bears his name) provides the most celebrated images in the land of chaos. In its most widely studied form the Lorenz model describes the evolution of three variables, typically denoted X, Y and Z and representing three physical characteristics of the weather system (only aspiring meteorologists ask exactly what!).

The animation above shows an XY plane. On it you will see the time evolution (projected on to this plane) of one hundred thousand systems, each initiated from (almost-but-not-quite) the same point.

As time evolves the points which tell us what each system is doing spread out; but they do not fill the space uniformly. They build up a shape which some find beautiful and others strange. The shape is known as the Lorenz attractor. It is the prototype member of a class of objects referred to generically as attractors. What are they? Well while we are unable to say where, specifically, any one of our systems will end up we can say that, if we wait long enough, it will tend to be found somewhere on the attractor. The attractor is thus a kind of probability map which tells us the relative likelihoods of the infinity of futures which may come from essentially the one present.

If you want to explore the Lorenz attractor more systematically you can start here: