Schrödinger equation and Freak Waves

Plato was the one who said that Necessity is the mother of invention. That held true at his time, and still holds true until today. It is also true that the general attitude of human beings is to believe and be happy with short term solutions to immediate problems, even if they actually cause more problems in the long run.

In this blog post, I will take a very unique example of this and how eventually we cracked a mystery. It is about the phenomena called: "Freak Waves".

For so long, sailors have spoken about waves as high as 30 meters destroying ships in the ocean. This was dismissed as being a myth. Even scientists were so believing in their theories, claiming that the probability of such waves occurring is almost zero. Eventually, and only when the shipping industry was being effected did scientists worked it out and discovered that their theory was wrong all along and that normal waves in the ocean follow the Schrödinger wave equation.

Schrodinger equation predicted the distribution of actual results. Below is a BBC documentary about Freak waves. If you have the time, please watch all 5 parts and discover this very interesting phenomena in nature.