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confused2
Jul 21, 2026 01:13 PM
Moving on from slits .. for reasons that (hopefully) will become clear..
We shine light through a pinhole small enough that diffraction dominates the pattern of light that we see on a screen some distance from the pinhole. Assume our screen is big enough that any photon that goes through the pinhole will be detected somewhere on the screen. We're going to put the screen some distance from the pinhole .. distance #1 requires a screen of 100 square feet to detect the photon with 100% probability. Assuming an equal distribution .. in any square foot the probability of detecting the photon is 1%. If we detect the photon in our chosen square foot the probability of detecting it anywhere else falls to zero.
Options include .. the photon just happened to be heading for our chosen detection zone .. there is no mystery EXCEPT .. the double slit experiment shows the idea of photons as particles is wrong, we make up a mish-mash of particle/wave stuff which doesn't really help to explain why the particle we detected could not also have been detected somewhere else .. the 'waves' need magical properties which require a lot of (probably) bullshit. Another possibility is that the field that covers the 100 square feet has the property that removing the photon from it removes the entire field instantly .. otherwise the photon might be detected twice. Syne mentions 'spooky' .. if instantly vanishing a field isn't spooky .. we have different definitions of spooky. The photon field at 100 square feet can be extended to (say) 100 square light years .. it would take (roughly) ten 10 years for information about the removal of the photon at one edge to reach the other edge .. and yet it must happen instantly to avoid duplicate detections .. or the concept of the 'single photon thing' is simply wrong. Personally I think it is correct but hellava spooky.
