As Bob Dylan famously sang, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Yet if you do have enough wind velocity information, combined with an array of readings from barometers, ...

A monarch butterfly (Dannaux plexippus) flaps its wings in Piedra Herrada Sanctuary, Mexico. Might this start a chain of events that results in a tornado in Texas? Photograph by Jaime Rojo In 1961, ...

Researchers are using chaos theory to 3D-print stunning pieces of jewelry. As Einstein himself said, "The greatest scientists are always artists as well." Monisha Ravisetti was a science writer at ...

The 2004 film The Butterfly Effect was bad, but its badness wasn’t just a product of Ashton Kutcher’s horrible performance, Amy Smart’s scenery chewing, or director Eric Bress’s bruised pallet. The ...

Popular culture turned the Butterfly Effect into a story of random chance — a wingbeat that changes the world — but scientists say it’s really about mathematical sensitivity, not chaos from nowhere.

Plus, relationship therapists share how the trend can be a tool for mindfulness. Leave it to TikTok to take an abstract philosophy, spread it across the app, and use it as evidence for how they ...

In 1961, MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz was inputting numbers into a weather prediction program. His model was based on a dozen variables, the value of one being .506127. When he ran the model again, ...

There is an iconic scene in “Jurassic Park” where Jeff Goldblum explains chaos theory. “It simply deals with unpredictability in complex systems,” he says. “The shorthand is ‘the butterfly effect.’ A ...