Dr Faustus of Modern Physics - Department of Speech, Music and ...

102 CHAPTER 22. LOSCHMIDT’S REVERSIBILITY PARADOX
and his answer was what his teacher and mentor Loschmidt questioned in
his paradox.
To solve the problem Boltzmann introduced microscopic statistics and
thus replaced microscopic reversible Hamiltonian mechanics by irreversible
statistical mechanics, and thus circumvented the reversibility paradox, but
Loschmidt never accepted Boltzmann’s solution.
Loschmidt also objected to the prediction by Maxwell and Boltzmann
that a gas column in thermal equilibrium in a gravitational field has the
same temperature at all heights. We shall see below that Loschmidt was
right. Loschmidt was smarter than Boltzmann. Listen to some soft words
about reversibility and watch a Short Emotional Film on Time-Reversibility.
Figure 22.1: Johann Josef Loschmidt.