Pseudo-Interference in a Single Slit Experiment with Classical Bodies

This is also an old idea of mine, namely, that we should make sure that the interference fringes of the dougle slit experiment are not in fact produced by the particles that ricochet on the slit walls (in which case they would be “reflected images” of the slit walls on the screen). Lately I was able to implement this idea in an Ejs simulation. You can see it here.

The following is an excerpt from the text of the presentation.

The double-slit experiment with particles was one of the most important in the development of modern physics, since it proved the wave-particle duality theory. However, when you have such a critical experiment that opens the door to completely new non-classical conceptions, I think it is wise, before your reach any conclusions, to repeat the experiment with classical bodies so that you know which is your “base line”. In this way, you will be able to see clearly any departure from what classical theory predicts, and you will know which “component” is due to non-classical phenomena. This is analogous to the control conditions in a controlled scientific experiment.

Am I proposing that there is no wave-particle duality? Not exactly. I am proposing that there should be a double-slit experiment with classical bodies that will allow us to study pseudo-interference so that we will know what to expect. And then a double-slit experiment with particles that will take into account pseudo-interference and will “subtract” it from the screen pattern, so that we can see what remains. We may very well see a legitimate genuine interference pattern, but until these experiments are performed I would say that we may be on shaky ground.

New Special Relativity Simulation Version 2.5

On July 10 I communicated with one more physicist and asked her opinion about the views expressed here. She viewed the simulation in its 2.1 Version, in which the first page presented the “real time” formation of the unadjusted Lorentz axes by the adjusted axes, and she answered that the applet is nice, but she has no idea what I am trying to say. So I built a page with a small presentation of the theory using the simulation, with links in the text that made things to happen in the applet.

I liked this idea, so I built a more extensive presentation of the theory, making improvements and enhancements to the applet, and this became Version 2.5. You can view it by clicking here.

History of the Visual Physics Project

This post is rather long, but this is unavoidable, as it gives a basic background on the Special Relativity project presented in this site.

Original Idea 

I had the basic idea on which the Special Relativity Simulation is built many years ago, back in 1971, when I was 17 years old. At that time I heard of “curved spacetime” for the first time, and as I was trying to understand what it is I had a very clear picture of a vertical time axis and, perpendicular to that, a horizontal space axis; and the accompanying thought that if all points of the space axis are projected on the same point of the time axis (that is, if the space axis is perpendicular to the time axis, which means that all its points have the same time coordinate), this spacetime is non curved (it is Galilean). If, however, the points of the space axis have different projections on the time axis (which means they have different time coordinates), this spacetime can be “curved”. (Although there is also the theoretical case to be a straight line that meets the time axis not perpendicularly but at an angle.)

This idea remained in the back of my mind ever since, but I had no way of checking if it is correct or not. I have been using computers in my work since the early days of DOS. My first PC was an Amstrad 1512 with BW monitor and two 5” drives for 512K floppy disks, and of course those days our word-processing program was Volkswriter. As time went by, PCs got better, and at some point I got my hands on Excel. I realized that it would allow me to check my idea, but I had to wait again until I could learn to use it. Of course, all this was slow progress as I could only work on this on my spare time, which, as any freelancer knows, is practically nonexistent. After I familiarized myself with Excel, I was able to graph my idea and I saw that most probably it was correct. However, the picture was far from clear.

Easy Java Simulations

The big break came when I was googling for a simulation software that would allow me to put a working simulation on a web page, and I came upon Easy Java Simulations (Ejs for short), a program that is part of the Open Source Physics project and was built by Dr. Francisco Esquembre, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Murcia, Spain. This solved the problem of presenting my ideas in the form of a web simulation (something that you cannot do with Excel or other even more advanced programs), and that made me decide to have a go at trying to build a simulation that would present my ideas.

August 2005: Visual Physics Site

Ejs has a different philosophy than Excel, and it made me think more clearly what I was trying to say. It took me about 2 weeks to build the first version of the simulation, and 2 more weeks to build the web page that hosts the applet (learning Java, HTML and Javascript as I went), as well as the explanatory pages of text. I finished the first version of the simulation on August 30, 2005, and I uploaded it on this domain, www.visual-physics.com, that I registered on the same day.

September-October 2005: Efforts at Feedback

The same day, August 30, I informed Dr. Esquembre about the simulation, and I posted a short message at sci.physics.relativity and sci.physics.research (it appeared on September 1 and 2 respectively), where it attracted a lot of visitors from universities and research centers, as well as a dismissive comment by an avid poster of these groups.

During September 2005, I started sending emails to known physicists, asking them to look at the site. I will not mention any names, I would not want to embarrass any of them 🙂 . I started with 5 isolated people. Only one of them visited the site for 5-6 minutes, and then answered my email without commenting on what I am proposing. He just said to let him know if I do a general relativity simulation. (I have to note though, to his credit, that he is one of the most famous, and even this was more of a response than I got from most other physicists, who did not bother answering.) Then I emailed some of the physicists who have contributed to Living Reviews in Relativity, but I had no answer.

I realized that what seemed like obvious conclusions to me may not be as obvious to others, so I started working again on the simulation. I built SpecialRelativityV2, that also depicts the axes (the coordinate system) of the body of each system, as well as the axes calculated on the basis of the Lorentz transformation, and it shows, convincingly I think, that the latter are produced by the projection of the axes I propose for the Moving Body (or Moving Observer, if you like) on the x axis of the Stationary Body (or Stationary Observer). And this proves that the phenomena of Special Relativity are due to the curved expanding universe. I uploaded this version on October 30, 2005.

On the same day I sent a new email through a mailing list to a number of physicists, again most of them authors who had contributed to Living Reviews in Relativity, as well as to the 10 editors of the journal. Again I had a few visits but no response.

November 2005: Closing Down the Site

The site had several hits that were not from universities, so that I do not know who these people were. Then I started having hits from some group discussion in Orkut, which I could not follow since I am not a member. And so at some point in November of 2005 I closed the site putting up a blank homepage that said that access to the site has been restricted. For a while I stopped thinking about this project.

Spring-Summer 2006: Reopening the Site, Publication Efforts, Feedback

However I could not abandon it. Besides, I had a few more simulations that I wanted to build, as mentioned on the homepage of the site, on the basis of some other ideas I had had in the meantime. I decided to write a paper with the basic views presented by the simulation and try to deposit it at arxiv.org or publish it somewhere. I wrote the paper and I opened again the site. I also made a minor correction to the simulation, that brought it up to the 2.1 version. On May 17, 2006, I uploaded the paper to arxiv, and on May 19 it was rejected. The reason was that, since I have no institute affiliation, I should at least have an endorsement.

I made a new version of the paper with black & white figures and I submitted it to IOP on June 4, 2006. It was rejected on June 5 ( “we do not publish this type of article in any of our journals”). On the same day, June 5, I submitted it at the PhilSci Archive. It was rejected on June 7 ( “lies outside material suitable for our philosophy of science preprint archive”).

Since I was obviously considered a crackpot, I decided to try my luck among others who have unconventional views. So I sent an email to a “maverick” professor at Cambridge, and to two proponents of Euclidean Relativity. The professor downloaded the paper, but did not answer. The same with the first of the “Euclideans”. The second, however, wrote right away with his objections, explaining why what I am proposing is impossible. (I was not convinced.) But he also made a valuable comment, that the simulation is not very intuitive and that I should add some buttons that would play some predefined simulations. I implemented his suggestion building the “running” simulation that shows the formation of the axes in “real time”. Also on June 7, 2006, I submitted a post to the Independent Research forum of Physics Forums. (It was rejected on November 5, 2006: “There is no clear distinction between the submission and currently accepted theory”. Also, “there needs to be a discussion of experimental results within the proposal”. I did not resubmit.)

On June 8, 2006, I sent again an email to the authors of Living Reviews in Relativity about the paper, without any response. I started sending emails at two or three people at a time. Some came and downloaded the paper, but no one answered. On June 12 I emailed a physicist at CERN who is also working on Special Relativity. He downloaded the paper but disagreed with my conclusions and stated that he cannot endorse it for arxiv. His objections also did not convince me, since he had not viewed the simulation. What I am proposing is very different from the way people are used to think about Special Relativity, and it seems that this makes the whole thing incomprehensible.

As a last step, I decided to make this blog so that visitors will be able to leave their comments even anonymously, if they do not want to use email. The post is open to your comments about the simulation and the proposed theory.

The History of the Visual Physics Project from this point on can be seen in the subsequent posts of the blog. You can also read a concise presentation in VPWiki here.

About the Aims of this Site

As mentioned in the Home Page, this site intends to present a series of simulations and thoughts that will look at some interesting subjects of physics from new angles. Right now there are a lot of very smart and very highly trained people who explore a number of avenues and branches of research. Here we will follow roads less traveled by, to see what we can find in some unexplored and uninhabited areas of physics. And we will do this by means of thought experiments in the form of simulations. So in a nutshell, as stated in the blog’s subtitle, here you will find “Unconventional explorations into uninhabited areas of physics by means of thought experiments in the form of simulations.”

The first simulation concerns Special Relativity and the second the Double Slit Experiment (see next posts and the Simulations section on the left). Then I hope to build a simulation about the photoelectric effect and quanta, and about electromagnetic waves and gravity. The views expressed through these simulations are NOT the ones of mainstream physics –this is not an educational site. The simulations express my take on these subjects, which differ in many ways from the conventional view of things.