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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.