Jerry Gollub, professor of physics, is co-author of an article in the 15 December 2005 issue of the scientific journal Nature about an experimental and numerical investigation showing how the irreversibility of the macroscopic world can arise from reversible microscopic interactions or forces among its constituents. Irreversibility is usually thought to result from the inexorable increase of entropy; in this article, Gollub and his colleagues (David Pine of New York University, John Brady of the California Institute of Technology, and Alexander Leshansky of Technion - Israel Institute of Technology) show it can also be a manifestation of chaos.

The story was picked up by The New York Times on Tuesday, Dec. 20, in the Science Times section.