A new quantum experiment suggests the world doesn't actually have 'set' properties until someone measures them.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
Identical, independent quantum weak measurements violate objective realism
arXiv · 2603.22020
The Takeaway
Researchers used public quantum computers to demonstrate that 'objective realism'—the intuitive idea that objects exist in a definite state regardless of whether we look at them—is violated in the quantum world. This experiment removes previous technical constraints, providing stronger evidence that the universe is fundamentally 'unreal' by our everyday classical standards.
From the abstract
We demonstrate violation of objective realism in quantum world using unconstrained weak measurements. Instead of limited Leggett-Garg approach with artificial bounds on the observed values, we assume two identical and indepenent weak detectors and final conditioning. The experimental verification has been performed on public quantum computers, IBM and IonQ. Thanks to sufficiently large statistics, the violation is observed at the level of 10 standard deviations. The tests confirmed also high qua