Your Bad Luck Isn’t Random—And an Oxford Physicist’s Proposed Machine Could Help Prove It

3 min readQuantum mechanics may miss a deeper deterministic structure behind seemingly random events.Quantum computers might be able to test that theory. If quantum states are not truly continuous, then these machines may eventually fail to scale as standard quantum mechanics expects.That case may provide evidence that what we call luck may actually reflect a deeper, hidden structure, rather than pure chance.Since the birth of quantum mechanics—the early 20th century theory that governs the strange behavior of particles at the smallest scales—the notion of randomness has taken on an almost mythical status in physics. However, some scientists theorize that quantum mechanics is incomplete—because it’s missing the underlying truth that events aren’t totally random after all. Over time, that idea has seeped beyond physics itself, shaping a broader intuition: that a deep-seated fundamental structure determines the outcome of even seemingly random events.And if such uncertainty lies at the core of reality, then it would imply that these rules not only influence physical phenomena, but could also influence the random events in your life—good and bad. If reality is truly cause-and-effect, not random, then whatever behind-the-scenes structure shapes the final states of particles and probabilities leaves less room for chance than quantum theory suggests.Timothy Palmer, PhD, a Royal Society research professor in climate physics at the University of Oxford, thinks there’s a way to test whether or not quantum mechanics is a complete framework, using quantum computers. He thinks it might not be, because capturing the full, hidden order of reality means the math used to describe it shouldn’t add possibilities that don’t exist in nature. For example, the observable universe never actually requires infinitely precise numbers, as we derive from numbers like π, the never-ending ratio that defines every circle. But the theory of the subatomic world relies on what physicists call a continuum—a smooth spread of numbers with no gaps, stretching infinitely between any two points.In principle, a device to test the limits of quantum mechanics should outperform classical computers at tasks like factoring extremely large numbers that could fill pages with digits (the foundation of modern encryption). Quantum computers rely on qubits, which can exist in combinations of 0 and 1 at once, allowing them to explore many potential solutions simultaneously. The more qubits the computers harness, the greater their advantage should become.Palmer, though, expects that advantage to break eventually. His prediction is that at a certain scale, quantum computers will stop behaving as the theory predicts, since a quantum computer cannot access the full range it needs if every mathematically possible quantum state (the continuum) does not exist. If the machines do continue to improve as mainstream science expects, then his idea will collapse. But if they don’t—if performance stalls where it shouldn’t in the coming years—it could signal that something deeper than the quantum structure is at work. However, mainstream scientists are skeptical, because they think quantum computers wouldn’t ever hit that limit.For now, we can only speculate about whether or not next-generation quantum-based machines could fail to scale up as Palmer predicts.The physics of the very small has withstood every experimental test for more than a century, earning its reputation as one of the most successful theories in science. But if Palmer’s proposed test reveals cracks in that success, the consequences would be profound.Because if chance is not fundamental, then perhaps what we call luck—the tantalizing notion that lingers between order and surprise—may become something else entirely: a placeholder for a structure we have yet to uncover.Stav Dimitropoulos contributed to this article.