Anyone that keeps some tabs on what is happening in phyiics knows that questions like "what is reality"? "When is reality"? "What is an event"?, etc appear to be far less certain than we thought.
I'm pretty much a "Many Worlds" guy ... if you see something happening, it DID happen FOR YOU, and it was and is always happening for YOU ... and as this article talks of, that can be true for some number of observers that share that "time/event slice" ...
We have found a new paradox in quantum mechanics – one of our two most fundamental scientific theories, together with Einstein's theory of relativity – that throws doubt on some common-sense ideas about physical reality.
Take a look at these three statements:
1. When someone observes an event happening, it really happened.
2. It is possible to make free choices, or at least, statistically random choices.
3. A choice made in one place can't instantly affect a distant event. (Physicists call this "locality".)
These are all intuitive ideas, and widely believed even by physicists. But our research, published in Nature Physics, shows they cannot all be true – or quantum mechanics itself must break down at some level.
This is the strongest result yet in a long series of discoveries in quantum mechanics that have upended our ideas about reality. To understand why it's so important, let's look at this history.
I read about it ... I'm not saying I understand it!!
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