>
>
Micahel W
>4. As I understand it 'attractor' has a specific meaning in the mathematics of
>chaos - could you venture an intuitive interpretation of that meaning, and
>perhaps give a few examples of other alleged real world attractors?
>
Paul C:
Attractors are the set of points towards which arbitrarily placed test particles
move. The ocean is the attractor for raindrops. The plane of Saturns rings
is the
attractor for small particles orbiting Saturn at the requisite distance.
In principle one deals with the attractor as a higher dimensional object in
phase space, but these are suitable tangible examples.
Paul Cockshott
wpc@cs.strath.ac.uk
http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/CS/Biog/wpc/index.html