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Subject: [CLIPPINGS] Discover: Does the
Universe Exist if We're Not
Looking?
To: CLIPPINGS@LISTSERV.METANEXUS.NET
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DISCOVER Vol. 23 No. 6 (June 2002)
Table of Contents
Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?
Eminent physicist John Wheeler says he has only enough time left to
work on
one idea: that human consciousness shapes not only the present but the past
as well.
By Tim Folger
The world seems to be putting itself together piece by piece on this
damp
gray morning along the coast of Maine. First the spruce and white pine trees
that cover High Island materialize from the fog, then the rocky headland,
and finally the sea, as if the mere act of watching has
drawn them all into
existence. And that may indeed
be the case. While this misty genesis
unfolds, the island's most eminent resident discusses notions that still
perplex him after seven decades in physics, including his gut feeling that
the very universe may be constantly emerging from a haze of possibility,
that we inhabit a cosmos made real in part by our own
observations.
Full text of this article can be found in the current issue of Discover
Magazine.
Geons, Black Holes & Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics by John Archibald
Wheeler with Kenneth Ford. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. Also
How
Thoughts Shape Matter
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