Title: What Does "the Human Universe" Actually Mean? | HuffPost
Headings: What Does “the Human Universe” Actually Mean?
What Does “the Human Universe” Actually Mean?
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Content: Only by being detached and rational, taking precise measurements and collecting data that isn’t tainted by all the whims and uncertainties of our inner life can we hope to discover how reality works. This split between objective and subjective, however, was undermined by a phenomenon known in quantum physics as the observer effect, according to which the act of observing a particle like a photon or electron isn’t passive at all. Instead, the observer influences what he observes. At first the observer effect was chiefly related to the position of a particle. Where a photon is in time and space depends on how and when it is observed. This is a major attack on naive realism, because elementary particles apparently have two diametrically opposed aspects, known as wave and particle. When behaving like a wave, a photon exists as a “smear” extending infinitely in all directions; when behaving like a particle, it has a pinpoint location. What makes the difference, known as the collapse of the wave function, depends on an observer. One of the greatest quantum pioneers, Werner Heisenberg, declared something truly radical: “