Catastrophe

Catastrophe or catastrophic comes from the Greek κατά (kata) = down; στροφή (strophē) = turning. It may refer to:

• Disaster 
• Aral Sea catastrophe or Aral Sea crisis, the environmental, economic, health, social, and other disruptions caused by Soviet diversion of rivers into the Aral Sea
• The (Asia Minor) Catastrophe, a Greek name for the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey
• Blue sky catastrophe, a type of bifurcation of a periodic orbit, where the orbit vanishes into the blue sky
• Catastrophic failure, complete failure of a system from which recovery is impossible (e.g. a bridge collapses)
• Climatic catastrophe, forced transition of climate system to a new climate state at a rate which is more rapid than the rate of change of the external forcing
• Collapse of societies and cultures
• Cosmic catastrophe, thought experiment about what would happen if the sun were to suddenly disappear
• Ecological catastrophe, a disaster to the natural environment due to human activity
• Error catastrophe, extinction of an organism as a result of excessive mutations
• Garbage catastrophe, a theory that the process of aging may derive from imperfect clearance of oxidatively damaged, relatively indigestible material
• Impending climatic catastrophe, conjectured runaway climate change resulting from a rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system
• Infrared catastrophe or infrared divergence is a situation in particle physics in which a particular integral diverges
• Iron catastrophe, runaway melting of early earth's interior as a result of potential energy release from sinking iron and nickel melted by heat of radioactive decay
• Late Bronze Age collapse
• Malthusian catastrophe, prediction of a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth has outpaced agricultural production
• Mitotic catastrophe, an event in which a cell is destroyed during mitosis
• The Nakba, the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homes
• Nedelin catastrophe or Nedelin disaster, launch pad accident at Baikonur test range of Baikonur Cosmodrome
• Oxygen catastrophe, the biologically induced appearance of dioxygen (O2) in Earth's atmosphere
• Runaway climate change or Climatic catastrophe, hypothesized runaway global warming when a tipping point is exceeded
• Toba catastrophe hypothesis, hypothesis that the Toba supervolcanic eruption caused a global volcanic winter and 1,000-year-long cooling episode
• Ultraviolet catastrophe, the prediction by classical physics that a black body will emit radiation at infinite power
• Vacuum catastrophe, the discrepancy between theoretical and measured vacuum energy density in cosmology
• Volcanic catastrophe, the predicted global climatic disruptions caused by a supervolcanic eruption

Le terme catastrophe désigne les effets dommageables d'un phénomène brutal, durable ou intense, d'origine naturelle ou humaine. Il nous vient du grec ancien καταστροφή (« bouleversement » et « fin, dénouement »). Les conséquences de la catastrophe – le fait catastrophique – sont dans la fracture de la continuité organisée et du confort acquis. On distingue tout particulièrement les situations incluant pertes humaines et destructions à grande échelle.