Well, dont everybody applaud all at once.
Its actually an amazing feat of science.
Lets start with a simple question.
How do you demonstrate that reality is real?
you’ve got the option to pinch yourself.
But that only demonstrates that youre capable of perceiving pain.
Fictional characters can experience pain, so that doesnt give us anything to go on.
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The problem is that reality isnt so simple as our ability to perceive it.
What you or I experience as objective reality can differ significantly.
Weve already established that our senses are meaningless here.
What we need are measurements.
Im sorry, what?
Okay, lets back up a bit and have some fun figuring out what all that means.
Measuring reality is a tricky endeavor.
We cant step outside of reality to grab a snapshot of what ground-truth looks like.
Were essentially like fish in a sealed aquarium trying to figure out whats beyond the confines of our perception.
Thats where quantum mechanics and Nobel laureateNiels Bohrcome in.
We can imagine our universe as encompassing every physical object in existence, including us.
The easiest way to visualize this is to imagine the famousdouble-slit experiment.
Essentially, you shoot a beam of light at a piece of cardboard with two slits in it.
The landing, in this case, would be somewhat analogous to waveform collapse.
But our pal Niels Bohr had a slightly different view called thecomplementarity principle.
At least, thats the premise put forth by Dieguezs team.
We can say with near total certainty that its possible to demonstrate classical outcomes through quantum measurements.
This unification isnt just the most important problem in physics, its the holy grail of science.
This work could be a stepping stone on the path to that enlightenment.
We may yet one day figure out exactly whats outside of the aquarium were swimming in.
