How to see what's not there

• MUKUL SHARMA

VIRTUAL reality, the technology which allows us to interact with a computersimulated environment in real time, can only be experienced by wearing special goggles, earphones and gloves. Without them, for all intents and purposes, the simulacrum does not exist. Or does it? Some would say it does because the program codes for it are still there in the machine’s memory; others would argue it doesn’t because binary electronic states are not the same thing as an actual immersive feeling. In any case what can’t be disputed is that a human interface with the device makes the latent virtuality manifest itself. Now some scientists are discovering that the nature of our own everyday “real” reality may also be very similar. That is, it only comes into existence when it is perceived by our eyes or other sense organs. The ultra prestigious journal, Nature, reported last year that physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of theories that focus on realism — giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it. We thus have to face the possibility that there is nothing inherently real about the properties of an object that we measure since measuring those properties is what brings them into existence in the first place. But here’s a thought: If something does not exist in an ontologically real sense prior to observation, there is no observation. And if this logic is correct, we appear to have lost the meaning of the word “observation” and should, instead, speak of “creation” because that is exactly what happens when something pops into existence following an act on the part of someone’s consciousness. Or as quantum researcher Vlatko Vedral of the university of Leeds in the United Kingdom puts it: “Rather than passively observing it, we in fact create reality.” The notion that our measurements create reality could have major implications in our search for the underpinning of all philosophy. More importantly, science seems to be suggesting a huge interconnectivity operating here between all things. For instance, if a galaxy a zillion light years away from us can only become real and start existing when we observe it, then the Big Bang of creation must have also happened because something finally became conscious of it. That could be us. Meaning, we retrocreated a reason for our existence!