PHYSICAL RELIABILITY LIMITS OF OBSERVATION

This paper examines observation itself as a physical process performed by finite matter–energy systems. It demonstrates that all observation necessarily involves energy exchange, back-reaction, structural stress, and entropy production, and therefore cannot be extended indefinitely in precision or duration. By applying only established physical mechanisms, the paper shows that idealized observers with infinite capacity are physically unrealizable, and that empirical physics is bounded by the reliability limits of the observer. The work does not modify physical laws; it constrains which predictions can be physically instantiated by any real observer.