Is the Hénon attractor chaotic?

By performing a systematic study of the Hénon map, we find low-period sinks for parameter values extremely close to the classical ones. This raises the question whether or not the well-known Hénon attractor--the attractor of the Hénon map existing for the classical parameter values--is a strange attractor, or simply a stable periodic orbit. Using results from our study, we conclude that even if the latter were true, it would be practically impossible to establish this by computing trajectories of the map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]