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Statistical mechanics

Brownian motion and microscopic chaos

Nature volume 394, pages 831–833 (1998)Cite this article

Einstein's 1905 paper1 on Brownian motion is his most cited article, and one of the most cited physics papers ever. But nearly a century later, we are still learning from this phenomenon. On page 865 of this issue, Gaspard et al.2 report a high-precision measurement of the position of a colloidal particle suspended in water at thermal equilibrium, providing direct experimental evidence for chaotic dynamics of the fluid on the microscopic scale. Counterintuitively, perhaps, this strengthens our conviction that chaos underlies the smooth behaviour of matter on macroscopic scales.

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References

  1. Einstein, A. Investigations on the Theory of the Brownian Movement (Dover, London, 1956).

  2. Gaspard, P.et al. Nature 394, 865–868 (1998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, Universität München, and Herbert Spohn is in the Centre for Mathematics, Technische Universität München, D-80290, München, Germany

    Detlef Dürr & Herbert Spohn

Authors
  1. Detlef Dürr
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  2. Herbert Spohn
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Dürr, D., Spohn, H. Brownian motion and microscopic chaos. Nature 394, 831–833 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/29650

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