How can we understand quantum reality if it is impossible to measure?

If you cannot measure something, you cannot know its essence.This fundamental limitation hinders our understanding of the quantum world, but it does not preclude scientific thinking.

To Thomas Lewton

Most of us intuitively feel that reality should be fine on its own even if we don’t see it. Even if a tree falls in the forest, the air still vibrates with sound waves even when no one is around to hear it, right? Thinking about things that can never be observed makes it more slippery. But by addressing the question of how we measure the immeasurable, we can understand what reality is like.

There are some areas where the laws of nature themselves forbid us to step. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. In other words, it never goes beyond the edge of the observable universe (the greatest distance that light can travel since the beginning of the universe to reach a telescope). According to general relativity, nothing can escape a black hole, so this is another no-go zone (see What’s Inside a Black Hole?).

But perhaps the most fundamental limit to what we can measure is due to the laws of quantum physics. These are the facts that if we measure some property of quantum particles today, it…