if everything obeys the law of physics, is it theoretically possible to predict the future accurately if we know all of such laws?

Question

Edit: by predict the future, I mean predict every little event and it’s consequences in future, the human history and everything.

In: Physics

Answer 1

This is a very interesting question. Initially we thought no, events like a coin flip were random and impossible to predict.

Then Newton came up with classical mechanics, which explained everything about how objects move. If you knew the initial state and all the forces acting on a system, you could calculate how it evolved over time. This explained everything we could see universe, with enough calculations you could predict anything. It was gradually evolved over the next 200 years until it seemed like we had everything figured.

Then of course quantum mechanics came along, and with it came inexplicabally random events. Electrons that could be in many places at once and were impossible to measure properly, systems that seemed to be in a superposition of multiple states. Einstein hated the idea, arguing that “God does not play dice”. But quantum mechanics is still the best explanation we have.

So right now? We don’t really know. There are several possible interpratations of quantum mechanics, some of them suggest the universe is truly random, others suggest it’s deterministic.