Inside certain quantum systems, where randomness was thought to lurk, researchers—after a 40-year journey—have found order and unique wave patterns that stubbornly survive.
In a classical chaotic system, tiny changes to its initial conditions produce exponentially large deviations in behavior. Think, for example, of a billiard table with curved ends, similar to the shape of a stadium. A ball that ricochets off one of the curved ends will have a vastly different trajectory than if it bounces off a point just a short distance away. (To learn more about the field of chaos and its development, see the 2013 PT article “Chaos at fifty ,” by Adilson Motter and David Campbell.)
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