4 ms·

Random fluctuations and butterfly effects aside, couldn’t you actually predict the lava lamp flows from fluid dynamics? Or does it just so happen that the math

• Heliosmaster 6y ago
  as far as i can tell, true randomness doesn't work except from in the quantum world. Everything else is random insofar as "we don't know it and it's unpractical to predict". Coin tosses are also not random: they all depends on the system initial conditions.
• etiam 6y ago
  Random fluctuations, butterfly effects and hairy heat transfer effects with resulting gradients of dynamically changing material properties aside, probably yes. But that's one whopping reservation, and even if, you could only predict exactly to the extent fluid dynamics exactly models interacting particle physics involving mind-boggling numbers (for the scales of interest). Also, I have no background solving complex fluid dynamics problems, but my understanding is that the differential equations involved generally have to be solved with iterated numerical approximations (if anyone here knows more certainly, please do chime in). In the short term that's probably one of the smaller problems, but it is at least somewhat connected to why we don't get get highly reliable 3-week weather forecasts, and possibly never will.
• bmm6o 6y ago
  If you assume you can ignore the hard parts, the problem becomes easier, I guess. You still need to know initial conditions to impossible accuracy.