Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou problem
Problema de Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou
- Date
- 1953 · confidence high
- Place
- Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States
- Credited to
- Stanisław Ulam, Mary Tsingou, Enrico Fermi y John Pasta
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Numerical simulation on the MANIAC computer of a chain of nonlinear oscillators that, contrary to expectations, failed to thermalize: it showed near-periodic behavior (the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou recurrence) that challenged the ergodic hypothesis and launched the modern study of chaos and solitons.
What it led to
- Chaos theory
- Discovery of solitons
- Numerical simulation as a scientific tool
- Study of nonlinear dynamical systems