Reality Doesn't Exist

Ryan sent me this email today. I posted it for two reasons.

1) Because it's totally interesting and somewhat disorienting.

2) My boyfriend sent me this. How cool is that? I get to have a boyfriend that's a nerd and totally hot.

"Reality doesn't exist when we aren't observing it. Or, so says a recent experiment in the
field of quantum mechanics.

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/4/14

The article is not very detailed, and I haven't read the paper, but
the result it talks about is really interesting. They proved that
both locality and realism are unimportant in quantum mechanics. So,
Schroedinger's Cat is neither alive nor dead, and may not even exist,
until it is observed.

Non-locality is the idea in QM that entangled or correlated particles
can transmit information to each other instantaneously (so locality is
the idea that they can't). Realism is the idea that the final
observed state of the particles is decided -- is real -- when they are created. These guys at the university of vienna showed that locality
is unimportant (particles can be any distance apart and still transmit
information instantaneously) and that realism is violated (the state
doesn't exist until it is observed).

What this means, roughly, is that the universe exists in a big quantum
haze where nothing is real until it is forced to be real and
everything is interconnected instantaneously. I think consciousness and free will are closely linked to these quantum phenomena. Our
reality exists only beacuse we force it to exist.

This makes me wonder what the universe considers to be an observer?
What criteria force reality to take on a definite aspect?

Are you all as turned on as I am?

_{Thank you Wikipedia!}