Mmm, Have you read My Big TOE? I think my husband finished it, but I never read it. We were talking with Tom in some places, and it was fun because he had also had some of the same types of experiences as me.
Honestly I don't know much about the various theories...I am mainly talking from experiences, what I have seen, dreamt, been shown in various states.
It seems though, as if it might go both ways. Yes, there because we observe it...but also there in some other state when we don't. Like it is all there in one space, but then while observing, it spreads out in linear streaks into a form we can comprehend.
For instance, I dreamt of the earthquake in Haiti about a week before it happened. Somehow I experienced it, quite literally, the bodies, the smell, and so many more details that I won't go into here. But, somehow I found myself there walking around in that little patch of time, though it had not happened yet in the time my body was in. It only took being conscious to observe it seems. However, it did not manifest while I was experiencing/observing it, in the physical linear sense, because when I woke it took a few days for it to become physical.
If I try to follow it in science, it always brings me to cold fusion, dark matter and things like slow glass. And a bunch of math that makes no sense to me whatsoever ;)
I hope Stephen finds something that brings it all together.