Physical realism is the view that the physical world we see is real and exists by itself, alone. Most people think this is self-evident, but physical realism has been struggling with the facts of physics for some time now. The paradoxes that baffled physics last century still baffle it today, and its great hopes of string theory and supersymmetry aren't leading anywhere.

In contrast, quantum theory works, but quantum waves that entangle, superpose, then collapse to a point are physically impossible—they must be "imaginary." So for the first time in history, a theory of what doesn't exist is successfully predicting what does—but how can the unreal predict the real?

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Quantum realism is the opposite view—that the quantum world is real and is creating the physical world as a virtual reality. Quantum mechanics thus predicts physical mechanics because it causes them. Physics saying that quantum states don't exist is like the Wizard of Oz telling Dorothy, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

Quantum realism isn't The Matrix, where the other world making ours was also physical. Nor is it a brain-in-a-vat idea, as this virtuality was in play long before humans came along. Nor is it that a phantom other world modifies ours—our physical world is the phantom. In physical realism, the quantum world is impossible, but in quantum realism the physical world is impossible—unless it is a virtual reality—as these examples demonstrate.

5. Our Universe Has A Maximum Speed

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Physical Realism: Einstein deduced that nothing goes faster than light in a vacuum from how our world behaves, and this has subsequently been considered a universal constant, but it isn't clear why this is the case. Currently: "the speed of light is a constant because it just is, and because light is not made of anything simpler."

To answer "Why can't things go faster and faster?" with "Because they can't" is hardly satisfactory. Light slows down in water or glass, and when it moves in water we say the medium is water, and when it moves in glass we say the medium is glass, but when it moves in empty space we fall silent. How can a wave vibrate nothing? There is no physical basis for light to move in empty space at all, let alone define the fastest speed possible.

Quantum Realism: If the physical world is a virtual reality, it is the product of information processing. Information is defined as a choice from a finite set, so the processing changing it must also be finite, and indeed our world does refresh at a finite rate. A supercomputer processor refreshes 10 quadrillion times a second, and our universe refreshes a trillion, trillion times faster than that, but the principle is the same. As a screen image has pixels and a refresh rate, so our world has Planck Length and Planck Time.

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In this scenario, the speed of light is the fastest speed because the network can't transmit anything faster than one pixel per cycle—i.e., Planck Length divided by Planck Time, or about 300,000 kilometers per second. The speed of light should really have been called the speed of space.

4. Our Time Is Malleable

Physical Realism: In Einstein's twin paradox, one twin traveling in a rocket at nearly the speed of light returns a year later to find his twin brother an old man of 80. Neither twin knew their time ran differently and neither lost a heartbeat, but one's life is nearly over and the other's is just starting. This seems impossible in an objective reality, but time really does slow down for particles in accelerators. In the 1970s, scientists flew atomic clocks on aircraft around the world to prove they ticked slower than synchronized ones on the ground. But how can time, the arbiter of all change, itself be subject to change?

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Quantum Realism: A virtual reality would be subject to virtual time, where each processing cycle is one "tick." Every gamer knows that when the computer is busy the screen lags—game time slows down under load. Likewise, time in our world slows down with speed or near massive bodies, suggesting that it is virtual. So the rocket twin only aged a year because that was all the processing cycles the system busy moving him could spare. What changed was his virtual time.

3. Our Space Curves

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Physical Realism: According to Einstein's theory of relativity, the Sun keeps the Earth in orbit by curving space around it, but how can space itself curve? Space by definition is that in which movement occurs, so for space to curve it has to exist in another space, which is an infinite regression. If matter exists in a space of nothing, for that nothing to move (or curve) is impossible.

Quantum Realism: An "idle"