“Everything that we call real is made up of things that cannot be regarded as real. If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.” ~ Niels Bohr, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.

That famous quote, from one of the fathers of quantum physicists, is quite an incredible statement. He is explicitly saying that reality, as far as we experience it, isn’t actually made of real stuff. Famous contemporary physicist Carlo Rovelli also says: “We are nothing but images of images. Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which … there is nothing.”

If that doesn’t make you stop and wonder about the nature of your existence, I don’t know what will. And yet, some people don’t want to think about it. My wife says it fries her brains, and I agree. It is completely baffling. I mean, we live in a real world, made of real stuff, don’t we? If someone hits me on the head with a rock, it hurts. If my car is stolen, someone has nicked it. That’s the real world, not some scientific experiment with a slightly weird result. 

Einstein’s box

Even Albert Einstein agreed. When, in 1920, he studied the work of quantum physicists who theorised this new reality, he scoffed at them. This started a huge intellectual, (but good-hearted), debate about the nature of matter in our universe. Einstein said that fundamental particles of matter were like black or white balls held inside an invisible box. When the box is opened, the particles are revealed. Matter is indeed made up of different kinds of atoms that configure themselves into patterns and combine together to make all kinds of stuff we can sense. This is Einstein’s universe, and it’s the one we know and love. 

There is no box in Niels Bohr’s quantum world

But atoms aren’t the stuff the quantum physicists were talking about per se. In 1920, quantum physicist Niels Bohr challenged Einstein’s theories, telling him that the quantum world wasn’t like his invisible box with atoms in it. In the quantum world, there was no box at all. He said that matter, at the sub-atomic level, wasn’t the same as it is on our level, because those particles behave in two states simultaneously. They are both a wave of energy and a particle. At the most fundamental level, everything is made of giant fields of energy, and a particle is just a blip in a field caused by an excitation in it.

It took 60 years to prove Einstein wrong

Einstein disagreed, and said that there must be hidden variables in particles, that is, they must have unknown, existing properties that are influencing them. It took until the 1980s, for physicist Alain Aspect to prove Niels Bohr correct; there are no hidden variables. Entangled particles can interact with each other in such a way that they can exchange and share properties instantaneously, even when separated by large distances. Some particles seem to form relationships between them, and regardless of distance, they are affected by each other. And even more bizarrely, any such measurement of entangled particles causes the wave aspect of them to collapse and disappear. 

People make sensational claims

This has been taken up by many science commentators, looking to create sensational headlines, to imply that reality isn’t real unless a conscious mind is observing it, and other such claims. After all, how can physical matter only exist when it is being detected, but not exist when it isn’t? 

Well, first of all, most of this phenomena only applies to entangled particles, and not all particles are entangled. In fact, it isn’t known how many particles are like this in nature. 

Second, conscious human minds can’t see quantum particles because they are too small. Therefore, the particles are being detected by instruments, not observed by human eyes. Human observation doesn’t come into it. 

Third, we know that reality at our level can be measured, described, defined, and sensed in some way. This means that, irrespective of what is going on in the quantum world, reality as far as we can discern it happens, and it happens fairly consistently because some atomic configurations have lasted for billions of years. 

Furthermore, we know we don’t need detectors or observers to create reality in the universe because reality exists at our level regardless of whether quantum particles are being observed.

Summary

It is easy for imaginative humans to slip into science-fiction, or non-evidence based beliefs, simply because they fit our own world view and yet the reality is just as interesting. At the heart of everything we see, hear, feel, and touch in the universe are fundamental fields. 

Every single piece of matter is a product of interconnected and interwoven universal energies, which are dynamic, excitable states with particles constantly fizzing and popping in and out of existence. Solid matter, the particles from which our universe derives, are manifestations of disturbances in those fields. At that level, time and space don’t exist, and the physical world which we have become familiar with doesn’t exist either. In that sense, matter is pure energy. This is not to say that the universe isn’t real. Reality is made up of fields attracting each other or repelling each other; it is made of complex relationships, bonds, and interactions. The 3D world we exist in is like a chocolate Easter egg with a runny liquid centre, but it is still a real world nonetheless.