Scientists have proved that reality depends on the observer and objectively does not exist

 We are used to the concept of "objective reality". Of course, each of us has our own ideas about the world around us, but there must still be some "general" reality! Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case.

A recent study by researchers at ABC Federal University (UFABC) in São Paulo, Brazil shows that any type of reality only arises when it is determined by an observer. The work has been published in the journal Communications Physics.

The task of Brazilian specialists was to test the "principle of complementarity" proposed in 1928 by the famous Danish physicist Niels Bohr. According to him, the same objects have complementary properties that cannot be observed or measured at the same time. For example, if you are experimenting with two electrons, you will only be able to determine the spatial position of one of them.

Back in 1927 in Brussels, during the fifth Solvay conference of physicists and chemists, a dispute arose between Bohr and Albert Einstein. It was a quantum theory that was only in its infancy at the time. Einstein argued that quantum states of particles have their own reality, independent of the influence of operators. Bohr argued that quantum systems obtain their own reality only after the creation of the experimental model, i.e. after scientists start working with them.

"God doesn't play dice," replied Einstein. "The system behaves like a wave or particle depending on the context, but you can't predict what it will do," Bohr replied, referring to a dualistic concept previously introduced in 1924 by French physicist Louis de Broglie. which showed that matter could look like a wave at one moment and a particle at another.

Then Bohr, who never agreed with Einstein, was able to formulate his principle of complementarity in detail and thus provided the medium for other scientists for numerous experiments aimed at confirming or refuting his hypothesis. So, in 1978, the American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler tried to rethink the experiment conducted in 1801 by Thomas Young to study the properties of light using the double slit. During this experiment, the operators directed the light at a wall in which two parallel slits were made. When light rays passed through one of them, as a result of diffraction, they overlapped the light from the other slit, disturbing it. This meant that the light moved in waves. It turns out to be both a particle and a wave.

In turn, Wheeler used a device that works in two measurement modes: waves and particles. His research only confirmed Bohr's complementarity principle. However, new researchers who have tried to apply the principle of quantum superposition to particle experiments have found that they can exhibit hybrid behavior such as wave superposition, rather than complement each other.

"We used nuclear magnetic resonance techniques similar to those used in medical imaging in the experiment," explains team leader Roberto M. Serra, researcher of quantum computing and technology at UFABC. a magnetic property similar to the orientation of a compass needle. We manipulated the nuclear spins of different atoms in the molecule with electromagnetic radiation. In this configuration, we created a new interference device for the proton's nuclear spin to study its wave and partial reality in a quantum field. '

The experiments yielded approximately the same observed statistics as the previous ones, but at the same time confirmed Bohr's principle of complementarity. At the same time, the fact that a matter particle can behave like a wave in certain situations and light like a particle remains one of the most intriguing puzzles in quantum physics. It turns out that reality really depends on the observer and objectively does not exist, and this to some extent broadens our possibilities.