What is reality?

New Scientist, October 1, 2012 - Special Issue

http://www.newscientist.com/special/reality?cmpid=NLC|NSNS|2012-0110-GLOBAL|reality&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&utm_content=reality

When you woke up this morning, 

you found the world largely as you left it. 

You were still you; 

the room in which you awoke 

was the same one you went to sleep in. 

The outside world had not been rearranged. 

History was unchanged 

and the future remained unknowable. 

In other words, you woke up to reality. 

But what is reality? 

The more we probe it, 

the harder it becomes to comprehend. 

In the eight articles on this page 

we take a tour 

of our fundamental understanding 

of the world around us, 

starting with an attempt to define reality 

and ending with the idea 

that whatever reality is, 

it isn’t what it seems. 

Hold on to your hats.

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• DEFINITION

   Even trying to define what we mean by "reality" is fraught with difficulty

• STANDARD MODEL OF PARTICLE PHYSICS
   Can we explain reality purely in terms of matter and energy, 

   asks Valerie Jamieson

• MATTER  - Is Matter Real?

   It's relatively easy to demonstrate what physical reality isn't. 

   It is much harder to work out what it is.

• MATHEMATICS - Is everything made of numbers?

   Dig deep enough into the fabric of reality 

   and you eventually hit a seam of pure mathematics, 

   says Amanda Gefter

• INFORMATION THEORY - A universe of information

   What we call reality might actually be the output of a program 

   running on a cosmos-sized quantum computer, 

   says Michael Brooks

• CONSCIOUSNESS - How does consciousness fit in?

   Some theories hold that reality and consciousness are one and the same. 

   Is the universe really all inside your head, 

   asks Michael Brooks

• EPISTEMOLOGY - How can we know reality exists?   

   Proving whether or not reality is an illusion is surprisingly difficult

• SIMULATION  

   It's possible that we live in fundamental reality. 

   Future beings almost certainly won't, 

   says Richard Webb