I’m replying from a phone so it’s very difficult to manage embedded quotes, but in response to James:
For a pattern to form, there has to be a reason for all electrons to avoid particular regions on the screen, regardless of the initial angle they entered the slots.
It’s just the geometrical pattern formed when two (or more) waves meet; the same pattern can be seen in waves of water or waves of anything.
The electron could be anywhere in its electromagnetic field; does that make sense? It’s still sort of ‘just making sense to me’ (and I first heard about it years ago). It has made sense to me before in the past, but then I either forget it (since it’s counter-intuitive) or doubt it and try to re-think it through. Reading this today helped as it describes an actual test of the experiment (instead of just being a thought experiment): http://www.hitachi.com/rd/portal/research/em/doubleslit.html
One electron at a time (allowing for two “wave-fronts”) doesn’t form a pattern (by the theory you are suggesting).
Each new electron takes a different path and thus has a different interference.
…not to mention that an electron isn’t a wave.
It’s not dependent on the path of the electron, it’s dependent on the size of the slits and distance the slits are away from the detector.
I actually got to see the double-slit experiment performed in a class in high school; although it was done with a laser (not an electron microscope). The slit itself is actually incredibly small, and if I remember it took quite a bit of monkeying around with aiming everything just right to get the interference pattern.
A laser is an actual wave and continuous, thus a pattern is easily formed, just as expected, just like water waves. But single electrons is an entirely different issue. They happen to show a similar pattern, but the cause is entirely different. Currently QP proclaims that the cause can never be known. The best they have come up with is to presume that particles ARE waves (so as to make the wave theory work for particles). The problem with that is that particles are NOT waves, except to the Quantum Magi and even if they were, single wavefronts (not being continuous) wouldn’t make a pattern anyway.
Science is merely their religion, making excuses for their theories. They are Theists.
Although I don’t think they have a consciousness or whatever, what I think you were actually trying to get at initially (before you decided to start rambling emotionally instead) was your concerns regarding unforeseen consequences with particle accelerators and the like - which is a concern I share.
We simply do not know what is beyond these particles we are tampering with. There is nothing for us to compare it to, it is entirely new territory. And all of the theories in physics we depend on to tell us that what we’re doing is safe and won’t accidentally suck the planet into a black hole are only theoretical - they’re assumptions built off of assumptions built off of assumptions, built off of assumptions; and in order to verify those assumptions, we use another body of assumptions.
Does the same type of particle annihilation occurring in a collider ever occur in nature? Suppose the Higg’s boson is self-perpetuating and could cause a cascade of mass-creation? We are talking about a particle proposed to play a role in the primordial mechanics responsible for space, time, matter, and energy themselves - the creation of the very fabric and laws of existence. With those kinds of mechanisms at play, how can we at all convince ourselves that what we are doing is safe?
To claim that what physicists are dabbling in is “safe” would imply that they already know the bounds and limitations of what they are working with – even though unknown bounds and limitations are precisely what they are trying to look for!
The existence of “dark energy” and “dark matter” that physicists have to assume (in order for many of their equations to make sense) can only mean in my opinion that there are still more subatomic particles and possibly even more subatomic forces we haven’t discovered yet.
Basically I think saying there is ‘dark energy and dark matter’ is just a way for physicists to bundle together everything they haven’t accounted for yet. It’s like the ultimate “we don’t know”; it’s just a convenient placeholder.
An electron’s electromagnetic field is a wave as well.
The electron itself isn’t actually bumping into the walls of the slits, it’s electromagnetic field is.
In a very rough sense, the ‘point particle electron’ is told where to go by its electromagnetic field.
The influence of this electromagnetic field propagates out as a wave; thus, when we fire an electron at high speeds (fast enough to make a trip around the earth something like 10 times in a single second, to put it in perspective) at a double slit apparatus, this wave interferes with itself causing the electron to hit the back wall in locations we’d expect from an interference pattern produced by multiple waves.
I remember making sense of all this years and years ago, but for some reason like a year or two ago I shed doubt on what I knew and started trying to think of it in different ways.
There’s really no other way to think about it though…
Also, you said earlier that an electron doesn’t ‘emit’ its electromagnetic field; do you think that it ‘is’ its electromagnetic field? I view subatomic particles like electrons as point-particles, and their wave-like properties are the result of forces.
The big problem with thinking that a particle such as an electron ‘is’ the wave of the electromagnetic field is that the negative charge throughout the electron cloud should repel other parts of the electron cloud causing it to disperse.
What do you guys think of this for an explanation why positives and negative charges attract and how electromagnetic interactions work?:
First, let’s think about what a photon is; photons are like packaged inertia - light (in the entire electromagnetic spectrum) is like a wave of inertia. When light comes in contact with a particle, the particle is accelerated in the opposite direction.
Photons are both positive and negative. When a photon comes in contact with an electron, the negative element of the photon causes repulsion, resulting in acceleration of the electron. The positive element of the photon however, continues propagating uninterrupted. The negative electromagnetic field of the electron propagates in the opposite direction of where the photon made contact with the electron; this negative electromagnetic field coincides with the positive element of the photon - and what this means is that the acceleration of the electron produced a photon. This way of viewing electromagnetic interactions is similar to the various proposed theories of ‘virtual particles’; the negative element of the photon is disbanded from the photon, while the positive element of the photon joins the electron - although it may appear to be the same photon, it is actually a newly formed photon resulting from the electron conjoining with the positive element of the old photon. This new photon also has a lower frequency.
Now, why do positives and negatives attract? Why do particles with a negative electromagnetic charge (electrons) stay bound to particles with a positive electromagnetic charge (protons)? My answer is simply that charged particles follow a path of least resistance, and there is the least resistance in the direction of an oppositely-charged particle.
Consider an electron bound to a proton; for the electron, every direction besides the direction of the proton is more negative than positive - the direction of the proton is the least negative, and therefore less resistance.
Positive and negative electromagnetic fields never interact with each other - only like charges interact, producing repulsion. There is no such thing as ‘attraction’, only path of least resistance.
Thinking about my first paragraph some more, I think it would imply that there is no such thing as ‘speed’ for an electron, only relative velocity.
So by your theory, why don’t electrons collide with protons?
I have nothing supporting this, it’s all just speculation, but first of all, what do you mean ‘collide’? At this scale, you need to be specific. Kinetic interactions are mediated by electromagnetism, so if that’s what you mean by ‘collide’, I already explained that.
Anyways, I’m guessing your question was something like, why doesn’t an electron fly into the proton and displace the quarks inside of it, and here is my answer for you:
The three quarks which constitute the proton are in a sort of equilateral triangle formation. If the down quark were to move closer to one of the two up quarks, the up quarks would have to move away from each other due to their own repulsion, and therefore the down quark makes no progress in distance getting closer to either of the up quarks… An up quark couldn’t move closer to either the down quark or the other up quark for similar reasons - all the charges are balanced and no headway can be made. An up quark can’t move closer to the down quark, because it is being repulsed by the other up quark.
Now realistically, these quarks are inseparable. Because there is nothing between them, they will stay in their arrangement more or less indefinitely.
As an electron approaches, it doesn’t matter how close it gets, its not ever going to separate the three quarks, because if one quark moves, the other 2 quarks move right along with it, and nothing short of a particle accelerator can make it otherwise.
Just keep in mind that the quarks in a proton are literally as close together as they can possibly be, and only when you fire two protons directly at each other at high speeds does quark displacement become a possibility.
Then you have the weak nuclear force, protons changing into neutrons, neutrons changing into protons, and I have no friggin idea how to explain that at all.
Another explanation is that the repulsion from the negative charge of the down quark is enough to maintain a distance between the proton and a nearby electron. Remember, I am assuming that there is no such thing as electromagnetic attraction - only electromagnetic repulsion and path of least resistance, so nothing would be causing the electron to accelerate closer towards the atomic nucleus other than that direction being the path of least resistance; once it came within a close enough proximity to the negative charge of the down quark, it would no longer be the path of least resistance.
Also, here are a few other things that might play some sort of role in everything: down quarks are more massive than up quarks; someone once told me that the ‘flavor-charge’ of quarks should not be considered the exact same thing as electromagnetic charge
One could fire 10 million electrons directly at a proton and not a single one of them would actually hit the proton despite the apparent attraction to it combined with the aiming at it.
There is an interestingly unnamed “force” that prevents them from colliding. It isn’t named because you aren’t supposed to know about it. It is used in secretive ways in order to do “magical” things (until the enemy discovers how it all works anyway). Quantum physics and its proposed entities is merely a clever distraction.
Again, what do you mean by ‘hit’!?!?
At such a scale, there is no such thing as ‘hit’ or ‘collision’! These particles are only interacting with each other via electromagnetic fields; “hit” and “collision” describe macroscopic phenomenon - like charges repel each other with increasing intensity the closer they are together.
And now, I’m not positive about this, but in a hadron collider when two protons are forced within a proximity of each other not otherwise achievable, they annihilate (or ‘hit’ as you put it) because the quarks in the two different protons are forced so close together, that the quarks in one proton are actually able to displace the quarks in the other, breaking the near-perfect ‘equilateral triangle’ formation of the quarks in each proton. The quarks disperse; when not paired with other quarks in a hadron, a lone quark has an incredibly short lifespan, and dissipates/annihilates or whatever very shortly after all of the quarks dispersed.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I just gave you several decent explanations for why electrons can’t cause the quarks of a proton to disperse (which is what I assume you mean with the word ‘colliding’).
Draw a sketch of it happening while making sure the following remains consistent:
Great, so you’ve given the most negative possible view of science, but your headline promised a comparison between science and religion. Sadly you have said nothing about the latter.
Care you say what religion is?
Science cannot and will not tell you why things happen. It is interested in describing nature and this description leads to explanations. There is no purpose to electrons colliding, they just do. There are causes for effects but no underlying reasons.
Actually, they don’t, but “purpose” wasn’t the question. It was a question concerning “why by what cause”, not “why for what purpose”.
The word “reason” is used for both “cause” and “purpose”, to be applied rationally.
The use of earlier science.
“Hit” as in bullet entering your forehead.
A “lone quark” isn’t even a particle, which is why it immediately dissipates. But I wasn’t asking about why protons breakup when they collide, but rather why electrons can’t collide with something it is so strongly attracted to. If the electron were to get close enough to the proton, those “quarks” would go bonkers and become very quarky. The proton would most probably break up. So the question is still, “Why can’t the electron get to the proton?”
That was kind of my point. 
No. I don’t think that you did. The electromagnetic field causes them to ATTRACT, not repel. And I am not necessarily talking about the proton breaking up. An electron ORBITS a proton at an extreme distance considering its size (like about 1000 times). Why is it staying away and not getting closer?