Poincaré Recurrence

In bounded Hamiltonian systems, almost every trajectory returns arbitrarily close to its initial state — eventually

N = 4
1.50 (irrational-like)
ε = 0.05

Poincaré Recurrence Theorem (1890)

For a Hamiltonian system with finite phase space volume (Liouville's theorem: volume is conserved), almost every initial condition will return to an arbitrarily small neighborhood of itself — infinitely often.

The recurrence time is astronomical: for N gas molecules, T_rec ~ exp(N). For 1 mole (N~10²³), the recurrence time is incomprehensibly larger than the age of the universe. This is why the theorem is consistent with the second law in practice.

T_rec ~ VN / (ε3N · v̄) — grows exponentially with N