I’ve been looking for a new programming project, since I haven’t really felt like doing any more TCP/IP programming for a while, and I finally decided to make a program that could predict the future.

It’s a simple matter, really. If you know the basic laws of motion, and you see a ball rolling across a table, you can use the laws of motion to predict that the ball will fall off the edge of the table if it’s going fast enough. Applying the same basic idea to a larger system, if you know all the laws of physics, and you can create a model of the entire world, you can use the model to predict the future, right?

So that’s exactly what I did. I wrote a program that would simulate every subatomic particle in the solar system (I decided not to model the entire universe, because I’m running the simulation on a 600MHz iMac), and set it up to show me what will happen in the future. Among the more surprising discoveries:

In the future, cows and other barnyard animals will be converted to run on natural gas, a clean, renewable energy source.

In the future, supplies of gravity, once thought to be a limitless natural resource, will diminish until the government has to start rationing gravity. People with an even numbered street address get to use gravity on even numbered days of the month, people with odd-numbered street addresses can only use gravity on odd numbered days of the month. $500 fine for using gravity on the wrong day.

In the future, a balloon animal will be elected mayor of Washington, DC, and surprisingly, its ideas on economic reform will prove to be very popular.

In the future, mimes will be driven to the brink of extinction by unlicensed poachers, and nobody will really care.

In the future, money will be printed on aluminum foil, because it’s much shinier than paper.