Chaos Theory
Pop Culture Versions
Cool article.
A Sound of Thunder has an interesting story involving time travel and paradoxes.
From wiki "The story is a fictional exploration of the principle in chaos theory which later came to be called the Butterfly Effect (or “sensitive dependence upon initial conditions,” in the words of Edward Lorenz) through the literary device of time travel. Although both the story and the scientific principle use a butterfly as an example of a seemingly insignificant thing whose actions can ultimately lead to vast differences in outcomes, there is no evidence that one directly influenced the other. Bradbury's story pre-dates Lorenz's work by nearly 10 years. The two examples refer to different phenomena: changes in weather patterns caused by tiny disturbances introduced by a butterfly flapping its wings in one case, and the effects of killing an organism on the course of history via time travel. Furthermore, Lorenz's initial example was that of a seagull flapping its wings, which he changed to a butterfly later."
Pop Culture Versions of the Butterfly Effect
This article talked about the way in which most pop culture versions of the butterfly effect misrepresent it. I liked this summary of why:
"Pop culture references to the butterfly effect may be bad physics, but they're a good barometer of how the public thinks about science. They expose the growing chasm between what the public expects from scientific research - that is, a series of ever more precise answers about the world we live in - and the realms of uncertainty into which modern science is taking us."
"The meaning of the butterfly"
Ahh something went wrong last time I put the link in...try eeet now :-)