Messages from the fifth dimension

This morning at 8 AM it was 38º Fahrenheit--clear and crisp, in a shivery kind of way, after an unpredicted rain. (For those of you on the Celsius system, 38º F is 3º Celsius--in either system, just a few degrees above freezing.)

I have gotten used to our meteorologists being fairly good at predicting the near-term weather, and when they said that the rain was moving to Southern California (in a big way), leaving it clear up here for the next few days, I believed them. That is, until I saw the low-lying clouds yesterday morning that definitely looked like rain in the next 24 hours to me. And I was right. Later in the evening. I heard the rain falling hard and steadily on my roof, and the cats started coming in with sprinkles on their fur.

The reason why the weather cannot be correctly predicted 100% of the time is that, although there is a certain kind of orderliness to how the weather works, it is never exactly the same twice. There are many factors that affect the weather, some more acknowledged than others, all of which come together to create that magnificent and ever-changing display in our sky and air.

Many scientists have come to believe in what is called the chaos theory. Now, in the general way, "chaos" means a complete and total lack of order; disorderliness, in some minds bordering on malevolence. However, in the scientific sense, "chaos theory" refers instead to the concept that certain systems are so complex, and are open to influences from "outside" sources, that it is impossible to make specific predictions about what is going to happen, yet there is enough orderliness that it is possible to make general predictions. Because of the complexity of the interactions between the forces in a chaotic system, a slight change at one point can have big results later on.

You may have heard the simple example of how a chaotic system works: A butterfly flapping its wings in Japan could set in motion a series of events that result in a storm in California. Which pretty much encapsulates it rather nicely.

The "butterfly" could be anything, and doesn't have to just be one thing; it could be a lot of little things, or one big thing and some little things, and so on. The point is that there are so many other things in the system, and the interactions between them are so varied and complex, that introducing anything new into the system has big effects. Also, even having something change that is already in the system, or even just having things withn the system go about their daily business of being and acting, will still result in unpredictable results--at least at the level of fine detail, though at a higher and more general level, general results can be predicted.

Using the weather, here's a practical example: We can say with confidence that the Pacific Northwest will experience storms from October/Novemberish through March/Aprilish. That's a general, high-level prediction. However, we cannot predict exactly when those storms will happen, or how much rain will fall, for any given day more than a few days away. We can't say right now that next fall the rains will begin on such-and-such a date. There are too many factors and there is too much that can happen between now and any time too distant in the future.