Human consciousness and the effect of "observation" is key to understanding quantum physics.

There is a reason the philosophers ask the question, "if a tree falls and there is nobody there to hear it, did it make a sound?". It's because they know what the scientists haven't completely figured out...that the tree does NOT make a sound, because without an observer there is no tree.

The act of observation collapses the wave function of light turning it from a wave into mass.