Abstract
First, I will recount the substance of several important
conversations I had with Ilya Prigogine over the years. There is
no doubt in my mind that Professor Prigogine firmly believed in
the underlying stochasticity of the universe. Second, I will
summarize my curiosity about the principle of detailed balance.
In my opinion, so far it has always been put in by hand. Third, I
will advance my own theory of microscopic irreversibility, that
is, irreversibility at the quantum level. This involves new
concepts of probability preference and probability violation. A
manifestation of this irreversibility may be seen during emission
of bound-free photons during field-matter interactions. Entropy
increase is tied to radiation increase, and the notion of heat
bath becomes light bath.