Tehran time warp

An Iranian businessman and scientist claims to have invented a machine that can predict the future, the Guardian reported on Wednesday.

Ali Razeghi, 27, a Tehran-based scientist, businessman and serial inventor, claims his “Aryayek Time Traveling Machine” can “predict five to eight years of the future life of any individual, with 98 percent accuracy,” according to the report.

Razeghi said that his device, which is about the size of a small computer, uses complex algorithms to “bring the future to you.” He said that governments can use his invention to “prepare itself for challenges that might destabilize it” but that a prototype won’t be launched currently because “the Chinese will steal the idea and produce it in millions overnight.”

Although Razeghi’s results are unconfirmed, the idea is not as far-fetched as one might initially think: a Wednesday article in Wired describes the emerging new field of “cliodynamics,” where scientists use Internet data to “analyze history in the hopes of finding patterns they can then use to predict the future.”

Razeghi said that by predicting the future he wasn’t trying “to play God” and emphasized that the project was not against Islamic values.