Thanks for your thorough post! If I may, I would like to hear what you think of the following:
Important features about the double-slit experiment are: the slit width, and the velocity of the particle (when the particles are larger such as a molecule, they must pass through smaller slits at slower speeds in order to produce an interference pattern).
What that tells us is that: diffraction is gravitational lensing. If the slit is large, the vast majority of the particles will pass through the slit at a distance from the walls of the slit that is too large to be substantially gravitationally lensed by the local gravity when passing through the slit. If the slit is sufficiently small, any slight variation in the flow pattern of the particle from the exact center of the slit will cause a local gravity variation on the particle that will arise in the observed diffraction. This would lead to a wave such as we see. If the particle is high in mass, it must travel slower so as to be exposed to the local gravity for longer so as to go from a particulate result to an interference pattern.
In this way, light is a wave of particles, in the same way as a wave in the ocean is a wave of particles. Other particles can also produce interference patterns when they are small enough in mass and/or travel slow enough to have the actual local gravity of the slit influence the trajectory of the particles.
-Steve
Hi Steve,
Sorry for the late reply. I must say what you said is very interesting, though I think if diffraction is gravitational effects then the observed diffraction pattern will not be vertical lines but a continuum instead.
Dicken
Hi Dicken, thanks for the response!
I agree, that's how it would seem but maybe there is something missing in the way that small particles interact in this way; like within certain ranges of the electromagnetic field of the slit material--within each "ring" of the field--they are gravitationally lensed similarly akin to orbitals. Not to say that that is what is going on, but there could be something missing in a particle interpretation based on gravity that is not immediately obvious. We happen to interpret interference patterns as the result of waves, but that does not preclude them from being the result of particles traveling together as waves on such a small scale level. Even single slits produce interference patterns, after all. Just some thoughts, still contemplating that exact thing myself.