Giorgio wrote: Applying your logic will give completely new meaning of the basic experimental results of quantum mechanics, starting from the double-slit experiment.
You are totally correct. You can see the explanation for the double slit experiment on my website extract 35. I will thus not expand on it here, except to state that a light or a matter wave can only diffract through a double slit when the wave actually do split up into two components and move through both slits while remaining a single holistic entity which is in immediate contact with itself; even though it is now consisting of two fractions.
That this is possible for an electron wave can be seen from the orbitals which form around a nucleus: For example, a p-orbital consists of two separate fractions; but it is still a single holistic wave which responds as an entity when it is disturbed.
When you try to measure through which slit a wave has moved, it collapses so that the two lobes disappear. We then conclude that the "electron" has ONLY moved through one slit while it is our measurement which CAUSED it to change its shape and size.
What people forget is that one cannot specify any wave without specifying its boundary conditions; and when doing a measurement on a wave one changes its boundary conditions. It is exactly here where quantum mechanics went wrong and quantum field theory led us further into the quagmire.
How can interstellar light propagation work the way it does if the particle aspect of light disappear? What I mean is, how can the light of a star (considered only as an electromagnetic wave) travel across our galaxy for tens of thousand of light years without getting modified and reach us in his original state?
Obviously, the light emitted from excited atoms on the surface of a star is emitted as quantum units: BUT this does not mean they are particles. They are still waves whch start to spread out. But since there are billions of them leaving the surface, those of them which are in phase entangle to form larger wave entities. In the process these photons disappear as separate entities. The larger entangled wave entities have wave-fronts which spread out towards us. When such a wave reaches an absorber which can abosrb a single quantum of energy and resonates with it, it can disentangle such a quantity of energy to be absorbed.
Let us look at a more mundane case: A radio tower emits a single macro sine-wave, which we can hear on millions of radios without requiring the whole wave to be absorbed by a single antenna AND without requiring that the wave must be broadcasted as separate bits (obviously I am talking about a REAL harmonic wave) of energy each of which is absorbed by only a single antenna.
Similarly with a laser beam: It does not consist of separate photons since the laser beam itself is a SINGLE coherent wave: However, when it encounters an absorber which resonates with it, the laser beam can disentangle to release a light wave having only a quantum of energy to be absorbed. Thus a laser beam can split into two beams moving through a double slit and interfere with itself, but when it reaches the diffraction screen it disentangles into light entities which can be absorbed by the absorbing "pixels" within the screen.
Obviously where the wave front has a high entensity there will be more pixel-spots. We eventually see the intensity of the wave-front appearing from the pixels and then conclude that the wave's intensity is a probability distribution. This is absolute nonsense since this would mean that the same spots will form around a small screen than on a larger screen. Spots will only form on a screen. What we measure is thus determined by the measuring apparatus NOT the wave intensity on its own.