From Ars Technica:
For example, say I shoot a single photon at a single atom, which may or may not absorb the photon. According to quantum mechanics, the atom enters a superposition state where it’s both in its ground state and its excited state. We describe this superposition state with a wave function. One view of quantum mechanics states that the wave function really represents the atom. But an alternative interpretation is that the wave function represents what I, the observer, know about the atom—reality may be something else entirely.
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Now, a group of researchers has extended previous work to show that, yes, under a wide range of conditions, these two points of view do differ. They show that the wave function must in some sense represent the observed system rather than what the observer knows about the system.
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This paper is one of a series that is starting to reveal that our world is actually a quantum mechanical world at its very heart. Some aspects of it are non-local, some aspects of it are not real, and some aspects of it allow you to perform counterfactual operations.
The paper referenced is here.
See also: What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness
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