"On the other hand, nothing can escape from the event horizon that envelops this universe"

Actually some physicists believe gravitons can escape in a multibrane universe and interact with other universes. Hence my statment about some testability to at least this concept.

There are so many ways to try to map the universe into some form that we can understand, and like fractals it is possible to have something that is infinite that can be understood (or at least reduced to recursive concepts). I can't escape that the universe is information.

Theoretically if you had enough band width and the ability to provide all sensory input to a human being through a controlled interface, you could create a virtual reality that provided a private universe for that individual. (Yes, I know there has been a lot of bad science fiction based on this concept, but nonetheless conceptually it is valid.) If you follow through on this thinking the universe that this person exists within is really made up of information provided by whatever means by the enveloping universe that the simulation is contained within. His observatons could drive the simulation and sense time is arbitrarily controlled by the simulator (as subjectively felt by the hooked up person), the universe could literally be reinvented continuously.

As far as particles being "observers", I understand, but still from the perspective of an individual "consciousness", that is not necessary. Also, what about such things as vacumn energy where pairs of particles/anti-particles are constantly popping in and out of existence. What is observing the vacumn energy? What I get in the gist of quantum theory is that you have wave equations of state that describe statistically the universe, but particles don't collapse out of the wave until observed. I think the referenced experiments try to separate out the underlying reality of paritcles and the information they carry from interactions (observation).