Why Objects Don’t Really Exist | Leonard Susskind

Why Objects Don’t Really Exist | Leonard Susskind

Objects feel like the most basic elements of reality. Tables, chairs, planets, particles — the world appears to be built from things. It seems obvious that objects exist. But modern physics tells a very different story.

In this video, we explore why objects may not be fundamental at all. “Don’t exist” does not mean imaginary. It means that objects are not the deepest level at which reality is defined.

Drawing on ideas associated with Leonard Susskind, this documentary-style exploration explains how physics has gradually moved away from an object-based view of the universe. At the quantum level, particles are not solid entities with fixed boundaries. They are excitations, interactions, and mathematical descriptions that only appear object-like under specific conditions.

Even at larger scales, what we call an object is not a single thing. It is a temporary pattern — a stable configuration of underlying processes. The atoms that make up your body are constantly exchanged with the environment. The particles inside an object are not fixed, and their identities are not preserved over time.

Black hole physics pushes this idea even further. When objects fall into a black hole, their information is not stored as objects inside it. Instead, it is encoded on a surface. This suggests that objects are not fundamental carriers of reality — information is.

From this perspective, objects are useful approximations. They allow us to navigate the world, build technology, and describe everyday experiences. But at the deepest level, reality is not made of things. It is made of relationships, interactions, and information.

This video avoids equations and focuses on intuition. Through clear explanations and conceptual reasoning, it shows why the idea of objects breaks down — and why physics no longer treats them as the building blocks of the universe.

Understanding this changes how we think about reality itself. If objects don’t really exist, then the universe is far stranger — and far more abstract — than it appears.