Definition of "attractor" []

• One that attracts: flowers that are excellent attractors of hummingbirds. (noun)
• Physics A set of physical properties toward which a system tends to evolve, regardless of the starting conditions of the system. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I actually think that the same hunger for authenticity that makes the internet a "strange attractor" is at works in politics, too."
• "This pattern has developed into a state that conflict scholars label intractable and that mathematicians call an attractor: the Israel-Palestinian conflict has thus become an intractable attractor."
• "Classically, a dissipative chaotic system tends towards a strange attractor with a fractal structure; that is, the attractor exhibits substructure at all length scales."