Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. It's nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur. And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions. Researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York says it starts with a neural lag that most everyone experiences while awake. When light hits your retina, about one-tenth of a second goes by before the brain translates the signal into a visual perception of the world. Scientists already knew about the lag, yet they have debated over exactly how we compensate, with one school of thought proposing our motor system somehow modifies our movements to offset the delay. Changizi now says it's our visual system that has evolved to compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. That foresight keeps our view of the world in the present. It gives you enough heads up to catch a fly ball (instead of getting socked in the face) and maneuver smoothly through a crowd. His research on this topic is detailed in the May/June issue of the journal Cognitive Science, Explaining illusions: That same seer ability can explain a range of optical illusions, Changizi found. "Illusions occur when our brains attempt to perceive the future, and those perceptions don't match reality," Changizi said. Here's how the foresight theory could explain the most common visual illusions — geometric illusions that involve shapes: Something called the Hering illusion, for instance, looks like bike spokes around a central point, with vertical lines on either side of this central, so-called vanishing point.

The illusion tricks us into thinking we are moving forward, and thus, switches on our future-seeing abilities. Since we aren't actually moving and the figure is static, we misperceive the straight lines as curved ones.

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I wonder if there's some way to use the neural delays to see further into the future. But then the actual light has to hit the retina's... I wish they'd explain a little more on how we see the future.

What? Did some high school geek come up with this ridiculous idea? There are several reasons why this explanation is completely void of any truth.

1. Due to the fact that you are not actually moving toward the object, you are not actually seeing a tenth of a second into any future. You are merely projecting a possible future at the most. Nothing real though. People see those types of futures all the time. It's called daydreaming.

2. If the circles fool your brain into thinking it's moving forward causing the lines to bend outward, then it would continue to fool your brain a tenth of a second into the future as well... meaning that the lines will continue to bow outward even further again and again. This is because for each tenth of a second that passes, you are apparently seeing a new image in your mind.

3. Despite an illusion; common sense, logic and deduction will compensate for such an explanation after a moment and cause the lines to straighten out again in a matter of a second or two of looking at it.

4. This theory only works when comparing it to only specific images. Not all optical illusions have anything to do with projected motion which means that there needs to be an alternative explanation for several different types of illusions. There should be only one.

Something very strange happen to me this afternoon, I was working on my online book business, in my storage room. I was working of my laptop and I was ready to leave. I looked around, pick up the padlock and lowered the door. Just as the door was closing, two swords I had near the hinge (I used to be an SCA member) fell. I told myself they wouldn't go any further and locked. I left and went to my favorite coffee shop, to relax a bit when I opened my bag.. the power supply of my laptop was missing. It's not the first time something like this happen to me. I wish I could pay a little more attention to the events of my life as it seems I get warning about some fallout very often, as if something outside of me tries to warn me. In this case, the sword were very secure against the wall, as they were for the past several weeks. What move them? Of course, one could say the repeated vibration of a closing door could have moved them, but why on the day I was forgetting the power supply. I guess we'll never know. Jung was right about one thing: There are no accidents.