While ubiquitous at all levels of nature's organization, including objects of today's nanotechnology, the low-frequency 1/f-noise is not yet understood. A possible reason is the uncritical application of probability theory concepts, primarily that of independence, to physical random phenomena. It is shown that in the framework of statistical mechanics no medium can impart a certain definite diffusivity and mobility to a particle that performs a random walk through it, which gives rise to flicker fluctuations in these properties. This example realizes a 1/f-noise source universal for many-particle systems, namely, the dependence of time behavior of any particular relaxation or transport process on the details of initial microstate of the system as a whole.

Keywords: 1/f-noise, molecular random walks, Brownian motion, statistical mechanics of transport processes, dynamical foundations of kinetics, deterministic chaos in many-particle systems PACS: 05.20.Jj, 05.40.Fb (all) DOI: 10.3367/UFNe.0185.201507d.0773 URL: https://ufn.ru/en/articles/2015/7/d/ 000364717000004 2-s2.0-84944883397 2015PhyU...58..719K Citation: Kuzovlev Yu E "Why nature needs 1/f-noise" Phys. Usp. 58 719–729 (2015) BibTexBibNote ® (generic)BibNote ® (RIS)MedlineRefWorks Received: 22nd, January 2015, revised: 24th, April 2015, accepted: 28th, April 2015 Оригинал: Кузовлев Ю Е «Почему природе нужен 1/f шум» УФН 185 773–783 (2015); DOI: 10.3367/UFNr.0185.201507d.0773