Chaos theory

In math and computer science, researchers have long understood that some questions are fundamentally unanswerable. Now physicists are exploring how even ordinary physical systems put hard limits on what we can predict, even in principle.

Landmark results in Ramsey theory and a remarkably simple aperiodic tile capped a year of mathematical delight and discovery.

A custom-built machine learning algorithm can predict when a complex system is about to switch to a wildly different mode of behavior.

New research finds that chaos plays a bigger role in population dynamics than decades of ecological data seemed to suggest.

The American mathematician invented entire new ways to understand shapes and spaces.

Dynamical systems can be chaotic and impossible to predict, but mathematicians have discovered tools to help understand them.

Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann have been honored for their work that led to reliable predictions of the effects of climate change. They will share the Nobel with Giorgio Parisi, who has made pioneering studies of chaotic physical systems.

To a dynamicist like Amie Wilkinson, understanding the universe is about knowing all the right moves.

Two teams found different ways for quantum computers to process nonlinear systems by first disguising them as linear ones.