With most forms of unpredictability, the limitations are not with the universe, but with the systems we use to describe it. Sometimes mathematics itself is limited, sometimes it's a lack of information, but either way, the description is incomplete. But then there are grey areas. Recent work shows that some chaotic systems, such as in the three-body problem, simply can't be computed, due to limitations set by the Planck length[1]. Is it the universe or the description that creates the limitation there? It can be shown that both are involved. But the main question is whether the universe is ever unpredictable in a way that is entirely unrelated to the description, and that can only be answered via quantum mechanics (QM). Here it is argued that three aspects of QM suggest there are missing concepts: the basic unpredictability, non-locality, and no consensus on how to interpret the theory. Some clues and ways to search for missing concepts are outlined, then a new interpretation for QM, in the hope that it sheds light on the unpredictability.
Jonathan Kerr