Have you ever watched a game of billiards?

A player strikes the white cue ball, and it begins its journey across the table, colliding with the scattered balls. They, in turn, strike one another, setting off a chain of reactions until, eventually, one ball finds its way into a pocket. That single initial stroke determined everything that followed.

 

Now imagine a scientist capable of measuring, with perfect instruments, every variable in that moment: the position, speed, spin, and angle of every ball; the friction of the felt; even the microscopic imperfections in the table’s surface. With enough data, he could calculate the location of each ball at every point in time, predicting, in effect, the shape of the future.

 

So it is with the universe.

Every action begets a reaction, which becomes the next action in an unbroken chain. Some of these forces are visible, measurable, even predictable; most remain hidden from us. Countless influences intertwine, known and unknown quanta, fields and interactions we will never be able to detect, and the intricate chemical machinery of the brain that persuades us we possess free will. Yet all of it obeys immutable natural laws operating with perfect determinism.

 

Thus the future already exists, fixed, inevitable, inscribed into the very fabric of reality, though forever beyond the reach of human calculation. The cosmos is woven from invisible threads, and nothing under the sun is truly new; everything began rolling into motion with that first primordial strike, the Big Bang. That single blow determined all that would ever be.