Is the butterfly effect real?

Question

Can you change a very slight thing in the past (if you could go to the past) and things would be drastically different in the future??? How could this work?? =]

Answer 1

It's possible, but we'll probably never know for sure. I suppose if you went back in time and stopped someone from having s*x, someone you knew would give birth to say, your best friend, the future would be drastically different (for you.) Or, if you nearly ran someone over in the past, it could cause them to become a recluse in the future (frightened nearly to death, afraid to leave the house.) Stuff like that. But killing a butterfly? Maybe, but probably not "OMG EVERYONE IS DEAD NAOW WTF?" drastic. Maybe that species of butterfly goes extinct. It's hard (nay, impossible,) to predict such things without testing...which is impossible, at the moment, and perhaps forever.

Answer 2

ye

Answer 3

Well yes, in theory.  But the theory also holds that you can never really observe the phenomena.  

The Idea is that the mere flap of a butterfly's wing starts an entire chain of events that leads to a powerful Hurricane. We can never really know all of the inputs to the natural chaotic outcomes we observe, but we do know there are inputs.  We can extrapolate that the smallest of them may have huge influence on the outcome had they been different or non existent.

You may be alive today because of a broken shoe lace. Perhaps your father as a young man was getting dressed for an appointment.  A shoe lace broke.  It took a few extra minutes to replace it.  That delayed his leaving.  On the way to the appointment he was stopped by a passing train which delayed him further, but he would not have encountered the train had he not broken the shoelace.  That stopped him from rolling through an intersection at the same time a truck ran a red light.  Had the shoelace not broken, he may have died.  Because the shoelace broke, someone else may have.

A very small event with the potential of drastically different outcomes.