Chaos theory applications

Yesterday, I and my roommate went shopping to restock our dwindling supplies of nutrition. We were supposed to go to a supermarket with student-friendly, i.e. *very* low prizes and then look for an Arabic store so that we might purchase some more... exotic items, not very common in traditional Swedish cuisine.

Prior to our departure, I consulted my preferred weather forecast service - the window. It was cloudy, with a slight cold northwest wind, looking ready to pour down heavy amounts of rain any minute. Heeding the advice of my inner voice, I searched for my umbrella. I found it in the wardrobe, successfully playing the role of a sleeping bat. Luckily for me, it had not developed any life-threatening traits apart from the substantial layer of dust lying on the handle. I disentangled it from the pile of coat hangers and put it into my backpack. After giving in to my scroogy side, I provided it with company - two plastic bags, so that I would not have to pay extra for those in the store, should the need arise.

We were all set to go and ventured bravely towards the unknown stores of Uppsala. We managed to do a lot of window-shopping and a fairly good amount of actual shopping. We had been strolling around the streets for more than two hours when we finally got home. And in that time, not a single droplet of rain managed to land on our bodies. Not that we were using the umbrella, mind you. The ex-bat was now re-enlisted in the mimicry division, this time as a cat, purring quietly in my backpack. There was simply no rain at all. And I was certain that had I not taken the make-shift parachute, we would have been soaked after the first ten minutes of our journey.

This obvious application of the Murphy’s Law made me think. What if rain was not caused by wind patterns, air mass migrations, temperature shifting and all the complex climate machinery meteorologists try to sell to us as an excuse for not doing any actual work? What if it was simply the Chaos theory combined with quantum mechanics that was the real deal? Imagine that there is a city somewhere with a certain known population. Let us say that one half of those people have used their windows in the way I did. The quantum theory says that an object could be in one of several different states simultaneously and only the act of observation determined which state was the currently correct one... for this particular universe. This means that those people that looked through the window are the ones that actually influence the weather. The rest are simply victims.

Let us say that it was the same cloudy day in that town as it was yesterday here in Uppsala. There is a certain probability that it would rain. The actual rainfall, however, manifests itself according to Murphy's Law. In other words, if more than half of the people that looked through the window had not taken their umbrellas, raincoats or whatever waterproof device they would prefer, it would rain. It is as simple as that. The combined observation and resulting decision of a certain amount of people would generate enough influence waves in the fabric of space-time that it would shift the weather balance towards rain or no-rain. Presently, I am not sure how this can be applied in more serious weather effects such as tsunamis or hurricanes, but I am positive they are observed by a very large number of people, so that decisions and consequences thereof have much greater impact, thus resulting in much greater damage.

In conclusion, if it looks as rain, use your umbrella wisely. Sometimes rain is needed.