Significance of chaos research

The practical significance of chaos research is various. The discovery of chaotic motion makes people see a form of motion that is ubiquitous in nature and has been neglected for a long time, thus understanding many phenomena that were difficult to understand in the past. For example, after 1977, it is found that the superconducting tunnel junction placed in the microwave cavity has abnormal noise with the increase of gain, and the equivalent temperature of noise is as high as 5×104K in the 4k experiment, which can't be explained by any known mechanism at that time. Later, I realized that the system entered the chaotic region and the noise came from the dynamics itself. The beam loss in the high-energy particle accelerator, the plasma leakage in the magnetic confinement nuclear fusion device and the possible harmful backflow in the circulating water system of nuclear power plant are all related to chaos. The discovery of chaotic motion provides a new angle to consider this problem. For example, the problem of long-term weather forecast, the discovery of Lorentz attractor and the sensitivity of the solution of atmospheric dynamic equations to initial values have shaken the original idea that long-term weather forecast can only be solved by improving the calculation accuracy. However, the ergodicity of chaotic attractors can just ensure the stability of the average and the independence of the initial conditions. Because the long-term weather forecast focuses on the average value of rainfall and temperature after a long time, chaos increases the reliability of the long-term weather forecast. In addition, the random turning of geomagnetic field in recent millions of years and the El Niñ o phenomenon that affects global weather changes can be studied from the perspective of chaotic motion of deterministic systems. (3) The study of chaotic motion has important implications for the study of complex life phenomena by precise scientific methods such as physics and mathematics. Such as various biological rhythms, are neither completely periodic nor completely random. It is not only influenced by natural cycle processes such as seasons, day and night, but also maintains its own internal characteristics. Using mathematical models such as coupled nonlinear oscillators to simulate and cooperate with physiological experiments, we can reveal the possible relationship between arrhythmia, atrioventricular block, ventricular fibrillation and chaotic motion. Examining human brain waves, it is found that the brain waves of epileptic patients have obvious periodicity, while those of normal people are closer to random signals. Through dimension measurement, it is found that these signals are not really random signals, but come from the dynamic behavior of low-dimensional attractors. ④ Chaos research has changed human's view of nature. There have always been two sets of opposing description systems for the unified nature: determinism and probability theory. Since the establishment of Newtonian mechanics, the scientific tradition has praised deterministic systems and taken the description of probability theory as a necessary supplement. Chaotic motion reveals the inherent randomness of deterministic system itself, which undoubtedly liberates people from this man-made contradictory description system, deepens their understanding of inevitability and contingency, and understands the unity of nature more comprehensively.

The discovery of chaos and the establishment of chaos theory, like relativity and quantum theory, are major breakthroughs in Newton's deterministic classical theory. Many scientists believe that the three brilliant scientific miracles of physics in the 20th century are the establishment of relativity, quantum theory and chaos theory.