“No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”
— Niels Bohr
In quantum physics, the ‘observer effect’ refers to the way the act of measurement changes the thing being measured. At the subatomic level, this is not metaphor but law: observing a particle alters its behaviour. As physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote, “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” The very act of looking rearran...
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