str8thinker
7th April 2011, 01:27
Most of you know about Mandelbrot and his famous set. But how many of you knew Alan Turing was one of the first pioneers in this field? And how many have heard of the work of Russian chemist Boris Belousov and the Australian Robert May?
The other day, SBS Australia aired Jim Al-Khalili's 2010 BBC Documentary, The Secret Life of Chaos, one of the most profoundly beautiful documentaries I have ever watched. Witchy1 mentioned it here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?17291-Did-You-Think-Space-Was-an-Empty-Vacuum&p=186412&viewfull=1#post186412) (thank you!) but I feel it deserves a thread of its own.
http://moth.stoopdice.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/fractals.jpg
Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand.
It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how did we get here?
In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to uncover one of the great mysteries of science - how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life? How does order emerge from disorder?
It's a mindbending, counterintuitive and for many people a deeply troubling idea. But Professor Al-Khalili reveals the science behind much of beauty and structure in the natural world and discovers that far from it being magic or an act of God, it is in fact an intrinsic part of the laws of physics. Amazingly, it turns out that the mathematics of chaos can explain how and why the universe creates exquisite order and pattern.
And the best thing is that one doesn't need to be a scientist to understand it. The natural world is full of awe-inspiring examples of the way nature transforms simplicity into complexity. From trees to clouds to humans - after watching this film you'll never be able to look at the world in the same way again.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/secret-life-chaos/
In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili, a man I like to call the Carl Sagan of our time, shows and explains how order can emerge from chaos, life from lifelessness and how Alan Turing, the man who helped save countless lives by cracking the German Enigma and was driven to suicide by a religiously inspired society unwilling to accept his homosexuality, helped giving birth to a new science, and how he is just as important for abiogenesis as Charles Darwin is for the Theory of Evolution.
Al-Khalili explains how Turing used mathematical equations to explain and predict the emergence of the life-like organisation of chemicals, that there are still questions to be solved, that the hypothesis is incomplete, but that Turing's work provides a generally correct framework that can (and is) now be used to look for the missing pieces of the puzzle.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/286465
Not surprisingly, evolutionists will feel vindicated after watching this, though natural selection working hand in hand with mathematical chaos theory may well be as dangerous an oversimplification of evolution as Newtonian physics is to cosmology.
Jim Al-Khalili OBE (born 1962) is an Iraqi-born British theoretical physicist, author and science communicator. He is Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey. He has become a familiar science personality in the British media. He has hosted several BBC productions about science and is a frequent commentator about science in other British media venues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Al-Khalili
Fortunately, there are two YouTube sites for single-file downloads of this program. Also if you look around you will find a BitTorrent link for a 765 Mb MP4 version.
Reviews:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/secret-life-chaos/
(the site is worth bookmarking for more documentaries and the comments on this page are also worth reading)
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/286465
Full-length on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxPR0pjGuYw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPjv5gIUeU8
Other PA forum threads for documentary videos:
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?2144
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?376
http://moth.stoopdice.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/fractal_food_02.jpg
The other day, SBS Australia aired Jim Al-Khalili's 2010 BBC Documentary, The Secret Life of Chaos, one of the most profoundly beautiful documentaries I have ever watched. Witchy1 mentioned it here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?17291-Did-You-Think-Space-Was-an-Empty-Vacuum&p=186412&viewfull=1#post186412) (thank you!) but I feel it deserves a thread of its own.
http://moth.stoopdice.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/fractals.jpg
Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand.
It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how did we get here?
In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to uncover one of the great mysteries of science - how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life? How does order emerge from disorder?
It's a mindbending, counterintuitive and for many people a deeply troubling idea. But Professor Al-Khalili reveals the science behind much of beauty and structure in the natural world and discovers that far from it being magic or an act of God, it is in fact an intrinsic part of the laws of physics. Amazingly, it turns out that the mathematics of chaos can explain how and why the universe creates exquisite order and pattern.
And the best thing is that one doesn't need to be a scientist to understand it. The natural world is full of awe-inspiring examples of the way nature transforms simplicity into complexity. From trees to clouds to humans - after watching this film you'll never be able to look at the world in the same way again.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/secret-life-chaos/
In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili, a man I like to call the Carl Sagan of our time, shows and explains how order can emerge from chaos, life from lifelessness and how Alan Turing, the man who helped save countless lives by cracking the German Enigma and was driven to suicide by a religiously inspired society unwilling to accept his homosexuality, helped giving birth to a new science, and how he is just as important for abiogenesis as Charles Darwin is for the Theory of Evolution.
Al-Khalili explains how Turing used mathematical equations to explain and predict the emergence of the life-like organisation of chemicals, that there are still questions to be solved, that the hypothesis is incomplete, but that Turing's work provides a generally correct framework that can (and is) now be used to look for the missing pieces of the puzzle.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/286465
Not surprisingly, evolutionists will feel vindicated after watching this, though natural selection working hand in hand with mathematical chaos theory may well be as dangerous an oversimplification of evolution as Newtonian physics is to cosmology.
Jim Al-Khalili OBE (born 1962) is an Iraqi-born British theoretical physicist, author and science communicator. He is Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey. He has become a familiar science personality in the British media. He has hosted several BBC productions about science and is a frequent commentator about science in other British media venues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Al-Khalili
Fortunately, there are two YouTube sites for single-file downloads of this program. Also if you look around you will find a BitTorrent link for a 765 Mb MP4 version.
Reviews:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/secret-life-chaos/
(the site is worth bookmarking for more documentaries and the comments on this page are also worth reading)
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/286465
Full-length on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxPR0pjGuYw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPjv5gIUeU8
Other PA forum threads for documentary videos:
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?2144
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?376
http://moth.stoopdice.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/fractal_food_02.jpg