Why does physics disprove the ability to tell the future?

DartL: Why does physics disprove the ability to tell the future?
I heard somewhere that einstein and all of physics has disproved the ability to tell the future, therefore all palm readers, fortune tellers, and tarot card people are lying. What principle/law in physics disproves the ability to tell the future?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Pocket Protectorate
They’re not lying…

They’re just “Acting!”…

Answer by mewantmoney2004
Because it is supernatural, if something is supernatural like ghost and such physics/sciences will not agree to it. But hey palm reading and those tarot people are guide by an unknown force…….A force that doesn’t apply to any law…

Answer by Rae
i dont know
but i dont believe that psychics are lying haha
some people just have the ability to know certain things.

Answer by CheGuevara
cause and effect.

If a fortune teller tells you that you will be hit by a bus when you cross the street you will stay at home and will therefore not be hit by a bus. In that case the fortune teller would not have told you. Therefore you wouldn’t stay at home and would be hit by a bus.

This paradoxon violates the law of cause and effect.

Answer by Alecs B
because of something you call probability, friend.
for something which is about to happen (in future) there are always different options about its happening. and each option has its own probability of occuring.
for example u r about to pick up a ball, the various options are :
1) u may be able to pick it up
2) some kind of problem (earthquake, or accident or whatever is logical) may occur and u might not be able to do so..

both these options are possible (however we might not feel so) and hence nothing can be predicted with 100% accuracy.

Answer by physineer
My simplified answer (based on relativity)

The future implies knowing something, which has not yet occured in time.

Our concept of time is based on the speed light travels in a vacuum. In order to go forward in time and view something or experience something (the future) it would require going faster than the speed of light.

In order to do that we must either have an infinitely large source of energy or a massless particle, which can travel faster than the speed of light. Since we define our massless particle as the one, which can travel faster than the speed of light this is impossible.

Some electromagnetic waves may seem to or as a group have a velocity, which seems to exceed light speed but the problem is once those waves or modulated, they greatly decrease to slower than the speed of light, possibly 98% of the speed, but not the speed.

Thus, any of these waves such as the ones which are found in fiber optic wires, which contain information can not travel anywhere near the potential speed of light, which clearly means they can not go faster, thus can not exceed the speed of time as we experience it and furthermore will not allow us to go forward, get information and then come back with it; viewing information must still be done by the same process, that is what a “window” is.

Hopefully this helps, if not be sure to read up on Einstein’s theory of special relativity (special relativity he won the nobel prize for NOT general relativity)

Many theorists such as Stephen Hawking have written extensively on this topic as well, be sure to check out his “A Brief History of Time.”

Answer by dmoney_sc
Physics doesn’t say we can’t predict the future, in fact it is about predicting the future to a limited extent. If you know all the variables at the present time, and you know how various processes work, then you can tell what will happen a little ways into the future. The problem is that there is some randomness in all processes, and the more events there are, the less you can know about exactly where something will be, or how fast it will be moving. For instance, the weather man can tell you pretty close what the temperature will be tomorrow, but he can’t tell you much about a week from now. Anyway, the things we are most interested in predicting are usually about people, and they are much less predictable than the weather, or a controlled scientific experiment. As far as fortune tellers are concerned, no one has been able to prove so far that any of that stuff is valid.

Answer by richard t
not quite true,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,they have found a way to move atoms(light I believe).thru a tube and it comes out before it goes in…..not a lot, but measurable……………it sort of screws with the speed of light being the max speed………..,,,so they are learning….as far as fortune tellers go, they are a bunch of thieves preying on the weak and desperate….it is the ”law of suckers”

Answer by guanotwozero
It defies causality.

Suppose you ‘see’ in the future that your neighbour will eat an apple on Thursday. On the Wednesday, you murder your neighbour. If he’s dead, how can he eat an apple the next day? So what did you ‘see’?

Answer: you can’t see the future.