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A physicist challenges the core idea of quantum mechanics, that events are truly random. He says a hidden framework of rules may influence outcomes.That’s because our current math makes quantum outcomes only appear random, while the reality of nature may have an underlying order we can’t track.This limitation means the evolution of quantum computers may hit a fundamental limit, which could be proof for his theory, he believes.
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. In the microscopic world of electrons flickering around atoms and light waves hitting a photon detector, outcomes are random, according to the laws of probability. 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.
Timothy Palmer, PhD, a Royal Society research professor in climate physics at the University of Oxford, points to what he thinks is the fundamental problem: not reality itself, but the mathematics used to describe it. In a companion paper currently under review in Proceedings of the Royal Society, he says something simple but radical: that not every mathematically possible state allowed by quantum theory actually exists in the real world.
Take a look at the math itself. 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. That world includes numbers like π, the never-ending ratio that defines every circle, or √2, the length of a square’s diagonal that you can never write down exactly.
Palmer objects to this continuum to explain reality.
Instead, he proposes removing the continuum from the theory and restricting what counts as physically real. “Nature abhors a continuum,” he says. In other words, the observable universe never actually requires infinitely precise numbers. They only add possibilities that don’t exist in nature.
That intuition isn’t unique to Palmer. Some physicists have long wondered whether the continuous mathematics used in mainstream quantum mechanics reflects the nature of things itself—or just the limits of how we describe it. Nobel Prize–winning physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft, known for his work on the foundations of quantum theory, has argued that quantum behavior might emerge from deeper, deterministic rules, even if it appears lawless on the surface. Meanwhile, Carlo Rovelli, a leading figure in quantum gravity research, has explored the idea that the structure of existence could break into finite units at the bottom layer.
What sets Palmer apart is how far he pushes that idea. In his March paper, he doesn’t just question the continuum, but says that some of those hypothetical “what if” scenarios simply do not exist in the first place. Remove them, and much of the apparent weirdness begins to dissolve. Even Schrödinger’s cat—the famous thought experiment in which a cat exists in a superposition of being alive and dead until observed—no longer occupies both states at once, he says.
The same logic extends to randomness. In the standard quantum model, a particle doesn’t come with a fixed trajectory. Instead, the theory assigns probabilities: you might have an 80 percent chance of one result and a 20 percent chance of another. Run the experiment many times, and those numbers line up. But for any single event—this electron, that moment—the theory offers no deeper explanation. Why this result and not the other? It doesn’t say.
“There might be a reason,” Palmer says, even for a single outcome that appears purely random. In his view, “the world really is deterministic… it looks random, but it’s not actually random.” What we interpret as chance may instead reflect an underlying structure we do not yet see.
The idea that something can follow strict rules and still seem like a roll of the dice may sound paradoxical, but physics has seen this kind of illusion before.
What, then, becomes of your supposed chances of a particular, hoped-for outcome?
At this point, Palmer stops short of offering a concrete answer, emphasizing that his goal is not to speculate, but to build a testable theory. He leaves open the possibility that what we perceive as randomness reflects a deeper structure—but declines to say what that structure might be.
Other scientists have investigated the idea of a hidden structure further. David Bohm, a 20th-century physicist, built a fully deterministic alternative to quantum mechanics, in which particles move along precise paths, guided by an unseen “pilot wave” that carries hidden information.
Not everyone who entertains the idea of a hidden order beneath the noise agrees on what this order might look like, though. Sabine Hossenfelder, PhD, a theoretical physicist and science communicator known for her work on the foundations of quantum theory, also considers the possibility that quantum mechanics may not provide the ultimate answers in physics.
In her view, the theory may describe what she calls “an ensemble, not individual instances.” That, she says, “strongly suggests that quantum mechanics is a statistical theory… a theory of averages.”
While she parts ways with Palmer on some details, Hossenfelder agrees on one key point: that reality is cause-and-effect, not random. She also notes that his model does not describe events as happening in familiar space at all—a feature she calls “alocal.” And that, ultimately, is where she rubs elbows with Palmer: whatever behind-the-scenes structure shapes the final states of particles and probabilities leaves less room for chance than quantum theory suggests.
➡️ Explore Hidden Facets of the Universe
The idea that something can follow strict rules and still seem like a roll of the dice may sound paradoxical, but physics has seen this kind of illusion before.
In chaos theory—a field Palmer has worked in for decades—systems evolve according to precise laws, and yet behave in ways that feel capricious. Weather is the ultimate example; it’s governed by equations, yet is still impossible to predict beyond a certain horizon. The uncertainty of an outcome does not come from chance, but from extreme sensitivity to initial atmospheric conditions; a barely measurable difference in temperature, pressure, or wind speed can amplify over time until it reshapes the entire outcome.
It’s possible that quantum mechanics hides a similar dynamic in plain sight. What looks like randomness may instead mark the limits of what we can track—not the absence of underlying order. As Palmer puts it, quantum theory “has no answer” to why a particular outcome occurs in a single instance, because it offers only probabilities.
He thinks there’s a way to test whether or not quantum mechanics is a complete framework, using quantum computers. Built to exploit the very uncertainty his theory calls into question, these machines could provide proof.
In principle, these devices 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.
For her part, Hossenfelder remains skeptical of Palmer’s prediction. If quantum computers were found to hit his proposed fundamental limit, it would be “the biggest breakthrough in physics in 100 years,” she says. But she doubts nature will cooperate, because Palmer’s idea hinges on the faint pull of gravity. He says that it introduces a subtle “graininess” into the space of the quantum states—a kind of limit on how finely they can be defined. This limit, in turn, restricts how many states a quantum system can actually access. However, based on Hossenfelder’s own calculations, she argues that gravity is far too weak to have that effect, so computers won’t 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.
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Stav Dimitropoulos is a Gold and Community Anthem Award–winning journalist, and writes about consciousness, science, and culture for Popular Mechanics, Nature, and the BBC. Her work often explores mind-stretching angles where science meets philosophy. Her debut nonfiction book, Slow, Lazy, Gluttons (Greystone Books, 2026) asks: What if the traits society shames — laziness, darkness, nostalgia, and more — are actually survival superpowers?