General scientific consensus suggests that our universe has no pre-defined destiny. While a number of current theories propose anything from a final Big Crush to an accelerating expansion into cold nothingness the future plan for the universe is not pre-determined. Unfortunately, our increasingly sophisticated scientific tools are still to meager to test and answer these questions definitively. So, theorists currently seem to have the upper hand. And, now yet another theory puts current cosmological thinking on its head by proposing that the future is pre-destined and that it may even reach back into the past to shape the present. Confused? Read on!

[div class=attrib]From FQXi:[end-div]

The universe has a destiny—and this set fate could be reaching backwards in time and combining with influences from the past to shape the present. It’s a mind-bending claim, but some cosmologists now believe that a radical reformulation of quantum mechanics in which the future can affect the past could solve some of the universe’s biggest mysteries, including how life arose. What’s more, the researchers claim that recent lab experiments are dramatically confirming the concepts underpinning this reformulation.

Cosmologist Paul Davies, at Arizona State University in Tempe, is embarking on a project to investigate the future’s reach into the present, with the help of a $70,000 grant from the Foundational Questions Institute. It is a project that has been brewing for more than 30 years, since Davies first heard of attempts by physicist Yakir Aharonov to get to root of some of the paradoxes of quantum mechanics. One of these is the theory’s apparent indeterminism: You cannot predict the outcome of experiments on a quantum particle precisely; perform exactly the same experiment on two identical particles and you will get two different results.

While most physicists faced with this have concluded that reality is fundamentally, deeply random, Aharonov argues that there is order hidden within the uncertainty. But to understand its source requires a leap of imagination that takes us beyond our traditional view of time and causality. In his radical reinterpretation of quantum mechanics, Aharonov argues that two seemingly identical particles behave differently under the same conditions because they are fundamentally different. We just do not appreciate this difference in the present because it can only be revealed by experiments carried out in the future.

“It’s a very, very profound idea,” says Davies. Aharonov’s take on quantum mechanics can explain all the usual results that the conventional interpretations can, but with the added bonus that it also explains away nature’s apparent indeterminism. What’s more, a theory in which the future can influence the past may have huge—and much needed—repercussions for our understanding of the universe, says Davies.

[div class=attrib]More from theSource here.[end-div]