Every galaxy, star, and planet owes its mass and position to quantum accidents of the early universe. But there’s more: these accidents are also the source of the universe’s minute details. Chance is a crucial element of the language of nature. Every roll of the quantum dice injects a few more bits of detail into the world. As these details accumulate, they form the seeds for all the variety of the universe. Every tree, branch, leaf, cell, and strand of DNA owes its particular form to some past toss of the quantum dice. Without the laws of quantum mechanics, the universe would still be
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