WEBVTT - SYSK Selects: How Chaos Theory Changed the Universe 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:03.640 Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, your old pal, and for 0:00:03.680 --> 0:00:06.960 this week's s Y s K Selects, I've chosen How 0:00:07.040 --> 0:00:10.520 Chaos Theory Changed the Universe first came out in July 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:13.000 of two thousand sixteen, and I have to say I 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:16.239 think it's um one of the better science e Stuff 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:18.880 you should Know episodes of all time, because there's just 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.319 something about this that grabbed me and Chuck by the 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:25.439 callers and said I'm interesting, aren't I? And we said, yes, 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.720 you definitely are. And this one has everything. It has science, 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.160 it has philosophy, it has our understanding of the universe. 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:34.919 Is just all around good episode. So I hope you 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:38.280 enjoy it as much as I did listening to it. Again. 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:43.559 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:52.640 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:56.000 I'm Josh Clark with Charles W Chuck Bryant and there's 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:58.800 Jerry over there. So this is stuff you should know, 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:03.920 the podcast about Chaos Theory. Like, uh, have you ever 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:09.280 seen Event Horizon? I did not bad? Great movie? Are 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:11.000 you crazy? I think it was great? Oh it was 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:13.679 so imagining it. I thought it was okay, it was 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:17.560 like a love crafty and thing in outer space. Yeah, 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:20.160 I loved it was all right, I love crafted it. 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:24.200 I liked it. Um, that's what I think of when 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:26.559 I think of chaos. You know, there's that one part 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.080 where they kind of give you like a glimpse behind, 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.640 like the dimension that this action is taking place in, 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:35.640 to see the chaos underneath. And you should check that 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:42.319 out again. Yeah, I think about Jurassic Park and Jeff 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:48.680 Goldblum as as the creep Dr Malcolm explaining chaos in 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:54.640 the little auto driving suv or whatever that was. Yeah, 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:56.400 that's what it was called in the script, the auto 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:59.880 driving suv scene. Yeah. And you know what, actually rewatched 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:02.640 the scene and it confirmed two things. One is that 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:05.840 he uh, he actually did a pretty decent job for 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:10.560 a Hollywood movie with a very rudimentary explanation of chaos. Um, 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:13.840 and you watched it for this yeah, yeah, just that scene. 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:16.120 And then it also confirmed of what a creep that 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:19.359 character was. Yeah. If you watch that scene, he's like, 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:22.320 you know, he was all gross and flirty with her 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:25.920 right in front of her ex but there's just you know, 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:28.040 he's talking to her. I didn't even notice this at first. 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:30.640 He like he just like touches her hair out of 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:33.480 nowhere for no reason. He's just talking to her and 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:35.640 he just like grabs her hair and touches it. And 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:38.200 I'm like, what a creep. I know, if you look closely, 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.840 you can see the hormones emerging through his chest hair. Yeah, 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:45.720 and I love Jeff Goldblum. It's not a reflection on him. 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:49.480 He was basically doing Jeff Goldbloom. Well that's what. Yeah, sure, 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:51.960 he's Jeff Goldblum, but I don't think that's how in 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:53.720 the manner in which he speaks. But I don't think 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:59.200 he's a creep, do you. Wow, I've got nothing against 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.560 Jeff gold I think he's a I think he's doing 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:04.920 Jeff Goldblum. It was also a sign of the times, 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:09.160 Like if that movie were made today, doctor what was 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:12.080 her name in the movie? Think, Yeah, Dr Sadler would 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:16.240 be like, it's very inappropriate to stroke my hair. Yeah, like, 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:21.560 don't touch me. But this was the nineties, nineties, free wheeling, 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:24.440 it was eight it was nineties, it was the early 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:29.200 mid nineties thing. The book came out in and in 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:35.080 the book, uh Ian Malcolm, who's a Kayetician? Yeah, creep Kaetician? Right? 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:40.360 He um? He he goes into even more depth about chaos. 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:42.080 But that was I mean, that was the first time 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:44.440 I ever heard of chaos theory was from Jurassic Park, 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:50.160 and um it really it was really misleading. I think 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:54.280 the entire term chaos is very misleading as far as 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:58.120 the general public goes as from what I researched in 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:00.560 this this for this article, well, yeah, I mean you 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:04.000 hear the word chaos as an English speaker and you 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:08.560 think frenetic and crazy, out of control. Yeah, and that's 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:11.480 not what it means in terms of science like this, right. 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:14.040 What it means, I guess we can say up front 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:19.479 is is basically the idea that complex systems do not 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:24.919 behave in very neat ways that we can easily grasp, understand, 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:29.680 or measure right, and not even even simple systems don't. 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:33.440 Sometimes it doesn't always have to be complex. But um, 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:35.400 I want to give a shout out in addition to 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:38.800 our own article to uh when you know, when it 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:41.680 comes to stuff like this, the brain breaking stuff for me, man, 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:43.799 this is a brain breaker. You know how I always 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:47.760 go to like blank blank for kids because it always 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:51.240 helps if there's a dinosaur mascot on the page. It's 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.320 a sure thing, we can understand it. But the best 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:56.640 explanation for all this stuff that I found on the 0:04:56.680 --> 0:05:01.600 internet was from a website called a bar Um A 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:04.919 B A R I. M. Publications, which turns out to 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:10.520 be a website about biblical patterns and sandwiched in the middle, 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:14.760 there is a really great, easy to understand uh series 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:17.160 of pages on chaos there. So I was like, man, 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:21.200 I get it now, I mean in a rudimentary way, right, Well, yeah, um, 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:26.760 I think even a lot of people who deal with 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:30.520 systems that display chaotic behavior, which I guess is to 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:34.599 say basically all systems eventually under the right conditions, UM, 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:38.480 don't necessarily understand chaos. Yeah. And they define a complex 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:42.800 system is specifically. It doesn't mean just like, oh it's complex, 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:46.800 I mean it is, but specifically, Um, they define it 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:48.880 in a way that helped me understand. It's a system 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:52.480 that has so much motion, so many elements that are 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:55.200 in motion, moving parts. Yeah, that it takes like a 0:05:55.240 --> 0:06:00.120 computer to calculate all the possibilities of like what that 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:02.360 could look like five minutes from now, ten years from now. 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:09.719 So before computers came around, we before the quantum mechanical revolution. 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:12.320 It was there's a lot more basic. It was like 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:15.320 what comes up must come down, stuff like that. Let's 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:18.839 talk about that, Chuckers, because when you're talking about chaos theory, 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:23.839 it helps to understand how it revolutionized the universe by 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.320 getting a clear picture of how we understood the universe 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:32.039 leading up to the discovery of chaos. Right, So, prior 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:37.760 to the um the scientific Revolution, everybody was like, oh, well, 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:40.120 it's it's God. The Earth is at the center of 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:42.960 the universe, and God is spinning everything around like a top. Right. 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.200 It was all a theistic explanation. Then the scientific revolution 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:50.680 happens and people start applying things like math and making 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:56.120 like mathematical discoveries and and and figuring out that there 0:06:56.160 --> 0:07:01.840 are there's order. They're finding order in patterns and predictability 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:07.320 to the universe if you can apply mathematics to it. Yes, specifically, 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:12.000 if you can apply mathematics to the starting point right, right, So, 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:14.720 if you can if you can um figure out how 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:18.320 a system works mathematically speaking, right, you can go in 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:22.520 and plug in whatever coordinates you want to and watch 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:24.560 it go. You can predict what what the outcome is 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.200 going to be, and what this is the it's based 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.880 on what at the time was a totally revolutionary idea 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:36.040 um By Initially, I think the cart was the first 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.840 one to kind of say cause and effect is a 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.400 pretty big part of our universe, right. Yeah. It was 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:43.880 sort of like where this is the the sixteen hundreds where 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:49.120 early science met philosophy. They kind of complemented one another 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.120 as far as something that's we're talking about determinism, right, 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:56.320 So that was the kind of the seeds of determinism 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.320 was the scientific revolution, and like you said, where philosophy 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:01.880 and science came together in the form of Descartes, right. 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:04.120 And then Newton came along and we did a whole 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:07.840 episode on him. Yeah, January of this year. That was 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:10.320 a good one. It was really good. Like I think 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:13.440 you said in that episode that there's possibly no scientists 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:17.040 that changed the world more than Newton has. He's he's 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.880 got legs. People shouted out others and email, but I'll 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.200 just say he's at the near the top for sure 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:26.600 with some other people. The cream. So Newton came along 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:29.920 and Newton said that was his name, Isaac the Cream Newton, right, 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:33.880 and anytime he don't to be like cream, Yeah, you 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:36.120 just got creamed. So I thought he was a boxer. 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:39.640 He's a basketball player. He was much more well known 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:42.079 as a boxer, but he definitely could dunk as a 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:47.520 as a B baller. So um Man, that threw me 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:51.600 off a little bit. Yeah, the cream comes along and uh, 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.320 he basically says, watch this, dude, this causing effect thing 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:59.240 you're talking about, I can express it in quantifiable terms. 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:01.840 And he comes up with all of these great laws 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:06.120 and and basically sets the stage the foundation for science 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:09.160 for the next three centuries or so. Yeah, these these 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:14.760 laws that were so rock solid and powerful that scientists 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:17.520 kind of got ahead of themselves a little and said 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:21.920 we're done. Like with Newton's laws, we can predict Uh, 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:24.520 we can predict everything if we have a good enough 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:29.760 beginning accurate value to plug into his equations, and they weren't. 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:32.360 I think there was a little hubris and a little 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:36.480 just excitement about like, well, we figured it all out right, 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:39.600 that that you could take Newton's laws and if you 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:45.160 had accurate enough measurements, you could predict what the outcome 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:47.880 would be of that system that you plug those measurements 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:50.280 into using these simular and at the time, a lot 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:54.040 of this was like planetary like, well, we know that 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:57.400 these planets are here and they're moving and their orbiting. 0:09:57.760 --> 0:09:59.240 So if we know these things, we can plug it 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:01.760 into an equation and we can figure out what it's 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:03.920 going to be like in a hundred years exactly. And 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:08.839 they've figured out the basis of determinism is what we 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:12.320 just said, that if you have accurate measurements, you can 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.880 take those measurements and use them to predict, um how 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.960 a system is going to change over time using differential equations. Right, 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:22.800 so this is what this is what Newton comes along 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:24.959 and figures out that you can describe the universe and 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:30.280 these mathematical terms using differential equations and um. Like you 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:34.040 said there was a tremendous amount of hubris, and well, 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:36.240 I think you said there's some hubris. I think there's 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.560 a tremendous amount of hubris where science basically said, we've 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:43.760 mastered the universe, We've uncovered the blueprint of the universe, 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:46.960 and now we understand everything. It's just a matter now 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:50.960 of getting our scientific measurements more and more and more exact. 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:54.600 Because again, the hallmark of determinism is that if you 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.160 have exact measurements, you can predict an outcome accurately, like 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:03.200 the pool queue example. Well they're the pool table example, right, right, 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:05.800 So if you've got a pool table, let's say you're 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:09.199 playing some nine ball. You have that beautiful little diamond 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.200 set up, you got your cue ball, you put that 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:14.439 cue ball, and you you crack it with the queue. 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:18.800 And if you are super accurate with your initial measurements, 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:22.160 you should be able to mathematically plot out via angles 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:25.200 where the balls will end up right exactly, Like you 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:27.120 can say, this is what the table will look like 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.480 after the break, if you know the force, the angle, 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:33.920 all those little variable temperature, if there's wind in the room, 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.720 like the felt on the table, like everything. The more 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.880 specific you are, the more accurate your end result will be. Right. 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:43.320 And then one of the other hallmarks of determinism is 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:47.319 that if you take those exact same initial conditions and 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.120 do them again, the table, the pool table will look 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:52.959 exactly the same after the break. Yeah, which is pretty 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:56.480 much impossible for like a human to do with their hands. Sure, 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.760 but the idea at the time of science was that 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:02.840 if you could build a perfect machine, sure that could 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:06.920 recreate these conditions, it will happen the same way every time, right, Yeah, 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:09.840 And this, I mean, this led to they had hubris, 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:13.480 but you could understand it when like literally in eighteen 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:20.520 forty six, two people predicted Neptune would exist within months, 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:23.200 that would exist, but does exist. And this is not 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:25.200 by looking up in the sky like they did it 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.560 with math and they were right. Yea. So imagine in 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:32.520 eighteen forty when that happens, they're like, yeah, we kinda 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:35.280 we've got the math down, so we're pretty much all 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:39.240 knowing well. Plus also for the most part these not 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:43.280 just with Neptune, they were finding, um that this stuff 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.960 really panned out. It held true for everything from um, 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:51.960 you know, the investigation into electricity to new chemical reactions 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:56.680 and understanding those, and it laid the scientific revolution, laid 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:59.960 the basis for the industrial revolution, and just the change 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.280 inge that came out of the world like that. It 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:06.080 definitely there. It is understandable how science kind of was 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.280 like we got it all figured out well. And like 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:13.679 you said, they even Galileo was smart enough to know 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:21.000 there's uncertainty in these measurements, like the precision is key, 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:23.640 so they spent what does the article say, A lot 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:26.440 of the much of the nineteenth and twentieth century just 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:30.080 trying to build better instrumentation to get more and more 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:33.760 smaller and smaller and more precise measurements. Right, that was 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:35.880 like basically the goal of it, right, Yeah, which was 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:38.320 the right direction. That's like exactly what they should have 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:43.280 been doing. The problem is there, Like you said, Galileo 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.600 knew that there was some sort of there, There're gonna 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.960 be some flaws and measurement that we just didn't have 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:54.720 those great scientific instruments yet. Yeah. It's called the uncertainty principle. Okay, 0:13:55.520 --> 0:14:00.960 it's accuracy, right, But the idea is if you have 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:04.400 a good enough instrument, you can overcome that, and that 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:11.400 the the more you shrink the um error in measuring 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:15.600 the initial conditions, the more you're going to shrink the 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:18.440 error in the outcome. It would be proportionate. Right. They 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:22.720 were correct. The thing is they were also aware but 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:28.200 ignoring in a lot a lot of ways some outstanding problems, 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:32.920 specifically something called the end body problem. You know what, 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:35.440 I'm so excited about this. I need to take a break. 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:37.120 I think that's a good idea. I need to go 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:42.200 check out my end body in the bathroom, Okay, and 0:14:42.280 --> 0:15:03.160 we'll be back, all right. Took we're back. So there's 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:07.240 some there's some issues right with determinism. There's some some 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:12.160 weird problems out there that are saying like, hey, pay 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:17.200 attention to me because I'm not sure determinism works right. Uh. 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:19.760 And one one is the end body problem. Yeah. How 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:24.800 this came about was five. That was King Oscar number 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:28.840 two of Sweden and Norway. Yeah, I don't want to 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.000 leave out Norway both. Uh. He said, you know what, 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:34.840 let's offer a prize to anyone who can prove the 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:38.640 stability of the Solar system, something that has been stable 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:42.080 for a long time before that. And a lot of 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:45.120 the most brilliant minds on planet Earth got together and 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:49.640 tried to do this, uh, with mathematical proofs, and no 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:54.800 one could do it. Uh. And then a dude name Honoree. 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:59.320 You gotta help me there with that, Oh, say the 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:03.320 whole thing. Red Plank, a very nice he was French, 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:06.080 believe it or not, and he was a mathematician, and 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:08.520 he said, you know what, I'm not gonna look at 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:10.920 this big picture of all the planets in the Sun 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.000 and all their orbits. You'd have to be a fool 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:15.400 to try that. Sure, he said, I'm gonna shrink this down. 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.920 Like we talked about shrinking that initial value, you know, 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:23.080 and um, that initial condition, he shrunk it down. He said, 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:26.640 I'm gonna look at just a couple of bodies orbiting 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:30.640 one another, uh, with a common center of gravity, And 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.600 I'm gonna look at this. And this was called the 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.360 N body problem, Yeah, which was smart to do, because 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:42.280 the more variables you factor into um a nonlinear equation 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:45.280 like that, just the harder it's gonna be. So he 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:48.400 shrunk it down. So the N body problem has to 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:52.480 do with three or more celestial bodies orbiting one another. 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:56.240 So Plank said, oh, I'll just start with three. Ye. Smart. 0:16:56.520 --> 0:16:59.480 And what he found from doing his equations for this 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:05.600 this King Oscar the Sequel Prize um, was that shrinking 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:11.920 the initial conditions measurement or rate of error right yeah, 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:17.960 did not really shrink the the error in the outcome, right, 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:20.679 which flies in the face of determinism. What he found 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:27.200 was that just very very minute differences in the initial 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:33.360 conditions fed into a system produced wildly different outcomes after 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:35.879 a fairly short time. Yeah. Like, let me just round 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:38.399 off the mass of this planet at like the eighth 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:42.919 decimal point, and you know who cares, who cares? At 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.600 that point? Let me just round that one to a two, 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.320 and that would throw everything off at a at a 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:52.439 pretty high rate. And he said, wait a minute, I 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:57.680 think this contest is in possible, right, He said, there 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:02.040 is no way to prude, prud to roof the stability 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:07.040 of the Solar system, because he just uncovered the idea 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:12.000 that it's impossible for us to predict the um, the 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:16.480 the rate of change among celestial bodies. Yeah, it's such 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:21.440 a complex system. There are far too many variables that, uh, 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:25.840 it's impossible to start with something so minute to get 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:29.920 the equation whatever, the sum that you want at the end. Well, 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:32.080 not only that a sum I guess, but the result 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:35.720 not only that, And this is what really undermined determinism 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.080 was that he figured out that you would have to 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:44.680 have an infinitely precise measurement. Yeah, which even if you 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:48.800 build a perfect machine that could take the infinitely a 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:51.800 perfect machine that could take a measurement of like the 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:56.640 the movement of a celestial body around another, you, it's 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:02.440 literally impossible to get infinite an infinitely precise measurement, which 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:05.800 means that we could never predict out to a certain 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:10.679 degree the movement of these celestial bodies. Like he was saying, like, no, 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:14.680 you you can't get you can't build a machine there 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:17.760 that gets measurements enough that we can overcome this, Like 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:22.560 determinism is wrong, Like you can't just say, uh, we 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:27.159 have the understanding to predict everything. There's a lot of 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:29.560 stuff out there that we're not able to predict. And 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:32.680 he uncovered it trying to figure out this end body problem. Yeah, 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:36.320 and King Oscar the sequel said you win, Yeah, bring 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:39.040 me another rack of lamb and uh, here's your prize. 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:42.400 And he won by proving that it was impossible, which 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:46.919 is pretty interesting, and that utterly and completely changed not 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:49.600 just math, but like our our our understanding of the 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:52.560 universe and our understanding of our understanding of the universe, 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:55.000 which is even more kind of earth shaking. Yeah, he 0:19:55.119 --> 0:20:01.119 discovered dynamical instability or chaos, and um, they didn't have 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:03.400 supercomputers at the time, so it would be a little while, 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:09.040 about seventy years at m I T until uh, we 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:12.920 could actually kind of feed these things into machines capable 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:15.280 of plotting these things out in a way that we 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:19.040 could see, which was really incredible. So there was this 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:25.360 dude um seventy years later, uh named um Edward Lawrence 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:28.840 or Lawrence. Yeah. Well, first of all, we should set 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:32.320 the stage the reason this guy he was a meteorologist 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:36.440 and scientist, not that those are not the same thing, right, 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:41.120 He's a scientist who dabbled the meteorology. He was a mathematician, Yeah, 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.640 but he was really into meteorology because it was there 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.360 was a weird juxtaposition at the time where we were 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:51.800 sending people into outer space but we couldn't predict the weather. Yeah, 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:54.560 and it was it was definitely a blot on the 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:57.359 field of meteorology. People were like, do you guys know 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:00.719 what you're doing? And and meteor all just like you 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:03.960 have no idea how hard this is? Yeah, Like, yeah, 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:06.080 we can predicted a couple of days out, but after that, 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:10.160 it's just it's totally unpredictable. It drives as mad and 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:13.840 it's not It wasn't just there, um, their reputations that 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:16.080 were at stakes, like people were losing their lives because 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:18.440 of it, right, Yeah. Nine six two there were two 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:20.680 notorious storms, one on the East coast and one on 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:23.520 the west. Uh, the ash Wednesday storm in the east 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:26.000 and the Big Blow in the west. That killed a 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:29.080 lot of people, cost hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:31.480 and people were like, you know, we need to be 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:33.800 able to see these things coming a little more because 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:36.959 it's a problem. And meteorologists were like, why did you 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:41.880 do it then? So they thought the key was these 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:45.280 big supercomputers. Remember the supercomputers. When they came out the 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:49.560 big rooms full of hardware, it was amazing and they 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.480 were finally able to do like these incredible calculations that 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:54.280 we could never do before. I know, they were able 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:57.159 to like crunch sixty four bites a second. Yeah, we 0:21:57.240 --> 0:22:01.920 had the abacus and then the supercomputer, nothing in between. Um. 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:04.840 I looked up the computer that Lawrence was working with, 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:08.639 the Whopper a Royal McBee. What was the whopper board games? 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:13.160 Was it called the whopper? W a pr? I can't 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:16.480 believe they called it that. So the guy just nicknamed 0:22:16.480 --> 0:22:23.760 it Joshua. No, Joshua was the the software Falcon was 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:26.240 the old man who designed all this stuff, and his 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:29.399 son was Joshua. And that was the password? Oh, that 0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:32.400 was the password. Yeah, I guess I was too young 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:35.320 to understand what a password was. Yeah, okay, you didn't 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:38.760 even there weren't passwords at the time. Shouted it at 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:42.720 the computer and they're like, okay, access granted. Yeah, still 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:45.639 that movie holds up, does it really totally got to 0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:48.920 check it out? Yeah, still, very very fun. Young Ali 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:51.240 Sheety boy had a crush on her from that movie. 0:22:51.320 --> 0:22:54.040 She was great. Yeah, what else was she in recently? 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:57.480 Wasn't she in something? Well? I mean she kind of 0:22:57.520 --> 0:22:59.560 went away for a while and then had her big 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:03.040 comeback with the indie movie High Art, But that was 0:23:03.080 --> 0:23:06.600 a while ago. Has she been in anything else recently? Sure? 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:10.080 I think I saw something and something recently and I 0:23:10.080 --> 0:23:13.480 didn't realize that was her. She looks familiar. I was like, oh, 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:18.520 that's Ali Sheity. I don't know all right. I could 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:20.960 look it up, but I won't as it doesn't matter anyway. 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:25.600 I still crushed on her. So the the Royal McBee 0:23:25.640 --> 0:23:28.520 was not quite the whopper. You could actually sit down 0:23:28.560 --> 0:23:30.720 at it. The Royal McBee, that's the name of that 0:23:30.800 --> 0:23:33.639 sounds like a Hamburger too. It was by the Royal 0:23:33.960 --> 0:23:37.679 Typewriter Company and they got into computers for a second. 0:23:38.119 --> 0:23:40.520 And this is the kind of computer that Lawrence was 0:23:40.560 --> 0:23:44.560 working with, and it was a huge deal, like you 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:49.439 were saying Abacus supercomputer. UM. But it was still pretty 0:23:49.560 --> 0:23:52.680 dumb as far as what we have today is concerned. 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:54.800 But it was enough that Lawrence is like Lawrence and 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:58.920 his ILK, where like, finally we can start running models 0:23:59.200 --> 0:24:02.640 and actually pretty the weather. Yeah, he started doing just that. 0:24:02.800 --> 0:24:06.240 He did. So he started off with, UM, a computational 0:24:06.280 --> 0:24:13.399 model of twelve meteorological meteorological calculations, which is very basic 0:24:13.920 --> 0:24:18.920 because they're infinite meteorological calculations, probably depending I stay it 0:24:18.960 --> 0:24:22.160 wrong again, Like it sounds like you're about to say 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:23.440 it wrong and then you pull it out at the 0:24:23.520 --> 0:24:26.880 last second. Maybe it's really impressive. But h So that's 0:24:26.920 --> 0:24:29.040 very basic. But he wanted to start out, you know, 0:24:29.240 --> 0:24:32.760 with something attainable, so he narrowed it down to twelve conditions, 0:24:32.800 --> 0:24:37.840 basically twelve calculations that had you know, temperature, wind, speed, pressure, 0:24:38.080 --> 0:24:42.600