Mixed Reality

Scientists have finally grabbed their balls and done something to blur the line between reality and virtual reality. This is the kind of science that it's really beneficial to know about because you sound really cool at parties when you casually say things like "mixed-reality state" and "bidirectional instantaneous coupling":

Using a virtual pendulum and its real-world counterpart, scientists at the University of Illinois have created the first mixed reality state in a physical system. Through bidirectional instantaneous coupling, each pendulum "sensed" the other, their motions became correlated, and the two began swinging as one.

Awesome! Right? Uh....

From flight simulators to video games, virtual worlds are becoming more and more accurate depictions of the real world. There could come a point, a phase transition, where the boundary between reality and virtual reality disappears, Hubler said. And that could present problems.

As cool as that sounds (note: it sounds really fucking cool) I think that anyone who understands science knows what the most probable outcome of this type of experimentation is: