Chaos and structures in geophysics and astrophysics / Хаос и структуры в геофизике и астрофизике

Even though our limited perceptions provide us with only a brief glimpse of the Universe, the main lesson that we learn from our observation is that the world is complicated. Very complicated. Every part of the universe interacts with the other parts; the responses of each component are never proportional to the applied forces, and the feedbacks of one subsystem on another cannot be discarded. As a result, processes are unpredictable, and chaotic behavior is a common occurrence. Disorder and turbulence become rife. Yet from the chaotic background, coherent structures sometimes emerge, patterns form, and local order is generated.
In the face of the wealth of phenomena, the myriad of details and the richness of quality and quantity, the quest for scientific understanding might seem to be a hopeless endeavour. Perhaps it is a fundamental human flaw that leads us to challenge this point of view. But challenge it we do. And at end of our struggles, perhaps we will find some comfort in judging how far we have come, and how infinitely further we could continue. At the very least, it may cure the crisis of mid-life. Thus, even if it may be pointless to try to describe what can happen in the universe, in these lecture notes, for reasons obscured to all but the fellows, we begin to do so. <...>