The good news is reality exists. The bad is it’s even stranger than people thought

[..]Lucien Hardy proposed a thought experiment that makes nonsense of the famous interaction between matter and antimatter—that when a particle meets its antiparticle, the pair always annihilate one another in a burst of energy. Dr Hardy’s scheme left open the possibility that in some cases when their interaction is not observed a particle and an antiparticle could interact with one another and survive. Of course, since the interaction has to remain unseen, no one should ever notice this happening, which is why the result is known as Hardy’s paradox.

[..]This week Kazuhiro Yokota of Osaka University in Japan and his colleagues demonstrated that Hardy’s paradox is, in fact, correct.

They managed to do what had previously been thought impossible: they probed reality without disturbing it. Not disturbing it is the quantum-mechanical equivalent of not really looking. So they were able to show that the universe does indeed exist when it is not being observed.

The reality in question—admittedly rather a small part of the universe—was the polarisation of pairs of photons, the particles of which light is made. The state of one of these photons was inextricably linked with that of the other through a process known as quantum entanglement. [..]

Source

Thought I would share the above with you guys. Considering the premise that has long fascinated physicists: by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality. I'm always fascinated by the quantum world, more so as each day passes. Really can't wait until the LHC is up and running again. Enjoy :the unobserved matrix :

sooooooooo when a tree falls in the woods

it really does make a sound

even if there is no one there to hear it

reply to post by maintainright


...and once the lumberjacks have all gone home for the day, there could be less than zero trees remaining

reply to post by maintainright


Plus it would explain why you can never find a damm alien when you want to!

reply to post by Hagalaz

You can never find them as half of the ATS crew have scared them off with their terrible sense of humour