The Cosmos Chronicle

What if I told you that everything you believe to be real—everything you see, touch, and know—might not be real at all? You call a fire bright, a sunset beautiful, and a shadow dark. But why? Because you see them that way. Now, imagine I take your eyes away. Does brightness still exist? Is the sunset still beautiful? Or were these just labels assigned by your perception? Let’s go deeper. I replace your eyes with an infrared sensor. Colors disappear. Your world is now shaped by heat, where once there was light. Did reality change? Or did you simply switch to a new way of seeing? But sight is just one sense. What about sound? Imagine losing your ability to hear certain frequencies. A bat would still hear them. You wouldn’t. Would those sounds still exist? Or do they only exist for the observer capable of perceiving them? It is the same in the case of all senses—if they change, then reality changes. But this raises a terrifying question: Is this reality really real? What if we’ve never a...