seedmagazine.com: by Joshua Roebke

A team of physicists in Vienna has devised experiments that may answer one of the enduring riddles of science: Do we create the world just by looking at it?

To enter the somewhat formidable Neo-Renaissance building at Boltzmanngasse 3 in Vienna, you must pass through a small door sawed from the original cathedrallike entrance. When I first visited this past March, it was chilly and overcast in the late afternoon. Atop several tall stories of scaffolding there were two men who would hardly have been visible from the street were it not for their sunrise-orange jumpsuits. As I was about to pass through the nested entrance, I heard a sudden rush of wind and felt a mist of winter drizzle. I glanced up. The veiled workers were power-washing away the building’s façade, down to the century-old brick underneath. [ read more ]