- Quantum 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