Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist

The headline (as is usual for phys.org) is clickbait. The paper's title is "Experimental test of local observer-independence", and a more informative version might be "Experimental implementation of the Wigner's Friend thought experiment".

The notion that that Wigner's Friend thought experiment "suggests" that reality doesn't really exist is tendentious. It just points out the same problems with the Copenhagen Interpretation as the Schroedinger's Cat experiment does, and they're answered in much the same way by other interpretations.

The experiment doesn't tell us anything we don't already know: that quantum mechanics works as the theory says it does, and that our classical-scale-inspired understanding of what "reality" means doesn't apply well at a scale where you can prevent decoherence. Wigner insisted that consciousness was an essential part of decoherence, and there's simply no support for that in this experiment.

This is neat science. The only problem is that some people read pop media articles about it and leap to unjustified conclusions that result in the kind of silly 'quantum spirituality' crap that Deepak Chopra is known for sometimes spouting.

A preprint of the paper is available on arXiv [1].

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080