This is Crazy: Scientists See Two Versions Of Reality Existing At The Same Time In A Quantum Experiment

We are conscious of the distortion in our reality-perception. Our senses, communities, and knowledge all have an influence on how we perceive the world.

You might also want to reconsider your conviction that science will always present you with an objective reality. Today, physicists can confirm a theory that Nobel Prize winner Eugen Wigner first proposed in 1961.

The experiment's "Wigner's Friend" environment is not overly challenging. You start off with a quantum system that is superposed, which means that both of its states coexist simultaneously up until the point of measurement. The polarisation (the axis on which a photon spins) in this illustration is both horizontal and vertical.

The system will break down and the photon will become trapped in one of those two states when it is measured. The experiment is being conducted in the lab by Wigner's pal. For Wigner, who is not in the lab and is unaware of the results of the experiment, the quantum system—which is crucially also inclusive of the lab—remains in superposition.

Both are accurate even though the results are different. Therefore, it appears that Wigner's and Wigner's friend's two objective realities coexist. (This is similar to Schrödinger's cat, a superposition thought experiment, supposing that both Schrödinger and his cat-in-a-box were in boxes.) That presents a challenge.

For a very long time, it has been hard to test this notion. After witnessing his friend do an experiment, Wigner finds it challenging to calculate the quantum mechanics formula. But because to recent developments, it was possible to design a quantum mechanics experiment that would exactly reproduce that.

The system's four entangled observers and cutting-edge six-photon experiment showed that while one part of the system generated a measurement, the other indicated that the measurement had not been performed.

Two realities were simultaneously measured. This validates the assertion made by quantum theories, whose conceptual framework already takes observer dependence into account, claims the study.

The facts established by the two observers' objectivity are called into doubt by this, the researchers write in their report, which can be viewed on ArXiv.

Can their contradictory records be reconciled, or are they inherently irreconcilable, making it impossible to accept them as "facts of the world" that are objective and independent of the viewpoint of the observer?

Even if science is the best tool we have for comprehending reality, the effect and limitations of the observers are widely acknowledged. Relativity says that observers may not see simultaneous events at the same moment.

Quantum physics teaches us that experiments are affected by the observers' actions. Now, it appears that two worlds might coexist, at least on a quantum level.

Reference: MIT Technology Review