Lyapunov Time
In modern physics, primarily exploring “very unbalanced conditions” and chaotic systems, there is a technical term - “Lyapunov time.” It designates a period, when a certain process (physical, mechanical, quantum, or even biological) moves beyond the bounds of precise (or probabalistic) predictability and enters a chaotic mode. In other words, the tajectory of the process is subordinate to strict laws only up to a certain moment in real time. Beyond this moment, “normal” time ends and paradoxical “Lyapunov time” (or, more precisely, “positive Lyapunov time”) takes over. The characteristics of this “time” are very curious. Unlike usual physico-mechanical time, which is regarded in classical physics as an essentialy reversible quantity (this means that time is nothing else but a static axis, adding a fouth dimension to three-dimensional space; refer to the educational Einstein model), “Lyapunov time” flows irreversibly, only in one direction, and, consequently, consists not of a once-and-for-all defined trajectory (in four-dimensional space), but of “events,” completely unpredicatable movements, which are arbitrary, accidental, irregular. Processes that occur during “Lyapunov time,” are called chaotic in contrast to processes in classical mechanics.