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Foundations of Physics

Irreversibility in physics: Reflections on the evolution of ideas in mechanics and on the actual crisis in physics

Georges Lochak

Published Aug 1, 1981• 4 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1007/bf00726938

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The Entropy Footprint Hypothesis proposes that the universe does not exist as a continuously persisting background, but is instead constituted by discrete generative events. Each generative event actualizes a single physical state from a quantum probability cloud of multiple potential states. This act of actualization is fundamentally irreversible, as unrealized possibilities cannot be restored to their original probabilistic structure. The loss of inaccessible information resulting from each generative event is defined as an entropy footprint. Within this framework, entropy is reinterpreted not as a passive byproduct of physical evolution or disorder, but as the intrinsic informational cost of reality generation. Time is not treated as a flowing dimension, but as an ordered sequence of generative events. The arrow of time emerges from the accumulation of entropy footprints rather than from macroscopic thermodynamic asymmetry alone. This work integrates concepts from quantum mechanics, statistical physics, information theory, and philosophy of time to formulate a generative universe model. The hypothesis offers a unified explanatory perspective on entropy increase, temporal directionality, irreversibility, and quantum state actualization, while remaining compatible with established physical theories. Potential implications for cosmology, black hole entropy, decoherence, and the ontology of time are discussed.
The double-slit experiment has remained one of the most profound and conceptually challenging demonstrations in physics. While the mathematical framework of Quantum Mechanics - superposition, wave function, and state collapse - accurately predicts outcomes, it fails to provide a clear causal description of how potential quantum states transform into actual, registered events. This paper presents the Event-Chain Model, a new conceptual framework that represents every quantum process as a causal sequence of connected physical events. Each event reflects an irreversible registration, transforming quantum potentials into factual reality. The model introduces three core components: the Potential Pattern, the Irreversible Event, and the Event Chain that constitutes reality itself. Using this framework, the paper explains interference, decoherence, quantum erasure, and the EPR-eraser experiments without invoking many-worlds or retrocausality. Superposition is defined as a Potential Pattern - a structured map of possibilities - while collapse is redefined as a natural, physical registration process that generates an event in the chain of reality. Interference patterns thus emerge not as physical waves but as cumulative records of uncollapsed potentials. The Event-Chain Model preserves all results of Quantum Mechanics while adding a transparent causal layer, linking mathematical formalism with physical reality. It provides a unified interpretation of how potential, event, and actuality co-exist and evolve within a consistent quantum framework.
In this paper, we try to show where and why quantum mechanics went wrong – and why and when the job of both the academic physicist as well as the would-be student of quantum mechanics turned into calculating rather than explaining what might or might not be happening. Modern quantum physicists effectively resemble econometrists modeling input-output relations: if they are lucky, they will get some kind of mathematical description of what goes in and what goes out, but the math does not tell them how stuff actually happens. To show what an actual explanation might look like, we bring the Zitterbewegung electron model and our photon model together to provide a classical explanation of Compton scattering of photons by electrons so as to show what electron-photon interference might actually be: two electromagnetic oscillations interfering (classically) with each other. While developing the model, we also offer some reflections on the nature of the Uncertainty Principle. Finally, we also offer a brief history of the bad ideas which led to the current mess in physics.