Boundary Condition

Full Title or Meme

The most common use of the term Boundary Condition is to mark a place or a time where the values for a differential is known and can be used to determine values at other times or places.

Context

Without boundary conditions, there would be no structure to the universe.

While physicists have been taught that if all of the conditions of all of the particles, both location and momentum, are known, the the conservation laws can be used to know the condition of the universe at any other time, both past and present. Clearly this assertion could not be determine, so the statement has no value other than the expose the hubris of any team of physicist that believes it. The statement can not be proved either true or false, so it is of no help in the real world.

Given a set the differential equations, it the values of the bulk conditions at any particular boundary are know, then it is possible to know something about the values inside the boundary. However, reality is always intruding and it is clear since the advent of chaos theory and even of the quantum uncertainty principle that our information will always be limited.