Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Is the Simple Explanation of the Infamous Double Slit Experiment the correct one?

First, we restrict ourselves the single photon because it ultimately still displays wave nature despite it's apparent singular nature.

Explanation: Each photon has a wave front. The wave front travels through both slits, and so despite the fact that you only send one single photon, it still interacts with the wave front which passes through both slits. (You have a particle, you have it's wavefront; it is quite natural then to have wave-particle duality.)

Your Question: What is the wave front?

Answer: The ripple of time-space itself is the wavefront.

Furthermore, everything produces ripples in time and space regardless of our labeling of it as being massive or massless. Everything responds 'gravitationally.'

Answer2:
Let 5.81 x 10-69 Kg = hypothetical photon mass. Let 1x10-81 Kg = hypothetical graviton mass.
Then, time space consists of grains, but due to the effective infinitely small mass, it simply doesn't register on our crude detector (appears continuous and non-grainy). And so, the gravitational wavefront exuded by every photon ultimately causes changes in the photon direction and produces the interference pattern despite there only being one single photon going through one slit at a time. While the photon only travels through one slit, it is still 'communicating' gravitationally through both slits; hence the interference pattern of a single photon particle.

Test: Canceling out the gravitational wavefront with one that is equal and opposite should cancel out the expected interference pattern. Or adding the wave fronts should enhance interference.

Hi thomasweikle,

A few comments... first, your profile says that you're a grad student, which seems in line with the advanced level of the ideas you're describing. We're primary here to assist K-12 students -- so, before college/undergraduate level, up to age 18 or so. Although we assist people with other sorts of questions as time permits, we definitely do not have the expertise to deal with theoretical physics at the graduate level.

Second, I'm not sure what your question to us is. The only comment I can make is that as far as I understand things, photons are carriers of the electromagnetic force, and EM waves are oscillations in the value of the electromagnetic field over time and space, but not changes in the structure of spacetime itself. Gravity is often said to "bend" spacetime. According to the standard model, which deals with all forces except gravity, photons have no mass. Trying to unify gravity with the three other forces is a BIG DEAL, and you probably ought to be talking to a genuine theoretical particle physicist if you want useful feedback. These are some key words that might be useful in reading/thinking about this kind of thing if you haven't come across them before:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_unified_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_gravity

Good luck with your work.

Amanda

Thomas, if you haven't read them yet already, I would highly reccomend Einstein's original papers on special and general relativity.