John von Neumann states a paradox. Why does measuring something disrupt the smooth Schrödinger wave, causing it to collapse for no mathematical reason? This paradox is embedded in the double slit experiment. When a dot appears on the target screen, how does that cause the Schrödinger wave to collapse everywhere else, faster than the speed of light? Von Neumann didn’t follow his mathematics to its logical conclusion. If wave function collapse irreversably changes reality, then the math is telling us that the timing and location of that event cannot be at the target screen. An event fitting that description happens only once: at the gun. A gunshot CAN change history. We propose a new mathematics of Schrödinger waves. Zero energy waves from the target screen pass backwards through the double slits and impinge on the gun prior to the gun firing. A particle randomly chooses one to follow backwards. The particle’s choice of wave is proportional to the amplitude squared of that wave at the gun, determined by the superposition of the two waves moving backwards through the two slits. Why follow a wave of zero energy? Because Schrödinger waves convey amplitudes determining the probability density of that path.
John von Neumann states a paradox. Why does measuring something disrupt the smooth Schrödinger wave, causing it to collapse for no mathematical reason? This paradox is embedded in the double slit experiment. When a dot appears on the target screen, how does that cause the Schrödinger wave to collapse everywhere else, faster than the speed of light? Von Neumann didn’t follow his mathematics to its logical conclusion. If wave function collapse irreversably changes reality, then the math is telling us that the timing and location of that event cannot be at the target screen. An event fitting that description happens only once: at the gun. A gunshot CAN change history. We propose a new mathematics of Schrödinger waves. Zero energy waves from the target screen pass backwards through the double slits and impinge on the gun prior to the gun firing. A particle randomly chooses one to follow backwards. The particle’s choice of wave is proportional to the amplitude squared of that wave at the gun, determined by the superposition of the two waves moving backwards through the two slits. Why follow a wave of zero energy? Because Schrödinger waves convey amplitudes determining the probability density of that path.
John von Neumann states a paradox. Why does measuring something disrupt the smooth Schrodinger wave, causing it to collapse for no mathematical reason? This paradox is embedded in the double slit experiment. When a dot appears on the target screen, how does that cause the Schrodinger wave to collapse everywhere else, faster than the speed of light? Von Neumann didn’t follow his mathematics to its logical conclusion. If wave function collapse irreversably changes reality, then the math is telling us that the timing and location of that event cannot be at the target screen. An event fitting that description happens only once: at the gun. A gunshot CAN change history. We propose a new mathematics of Schrodinger waves. Zero energy waves from the target screen pass backwards through the double slits and impinge on the gun prior to the gun firing. A particle randomly chooses one to follow backwards. The particle’s choice of wave is proportional to the amplitude squared of that wave at the gun, determined by the superposition of the two waves moving backwards through the two slits. Why follow a wave of zero energy? Because Schrodinger waves convey amplitudes determining the probability density of that path.
This is one of a series of articles building a map of elementary waves, based on experimental data and quantum mathematics. Previous articles showed that elementary waves carry no energy. Particles follow them backwards. Why? Elementary rays consist of probability amplitudes, which influence particles because that is what probability amplitudes do. Elementary waves are that part of nature corresponding to quantum mathematics. Since these waves are the physical analogs of quantum equations, those equations provide a roadmap to the world of elementary waves: a map written in hieroglyphs. Quantum math is our Rosetta stone. The quantum world is far, far more similar to the world of everyday experience than quantum experts think. Waves are in a superposition. Particles are not. Wave function collapse does not occur when we measure something. It had occurred much earlier, when the object came into existence. This resolves insoluble problems that stumped John von Neumann. The smooth functioning of a Schrödinger equation abruptly collapses into one specific eigenstate when a gun is fired, not when the bullet hits the target. The bullet that caused World War I is an example. That bullet caused an abrupt collapse of the smooth probabilities of commerce and diplomacy.
This article proposes a solution to the double slit experiment of Quantum Mechanics. We attack the problem from a previously untried angle. Unsolved math problems must be attacked from unexpected angles because every conventional approach has already been tried and failed. Richard Feynman warned that the quantum world is such a strange place that humans can’t understand it. There is empirical evidence of particles following zero energy waves backwards, although that is counterintuitive. Schr˝odinger waves carry zero energy: they carry probability amplitudes instead. In our proposed model zero energy Schr˝odinger waves emanating from every point on the target screen pass backwards through the two slits, interfere at the particle gun, and a particle randomly chooses which wave to follow backwards. Once that decision is made the particle follows its wave with a probability of one, through only one slit (it doesn’t matter which slit) and inevitably strikes that point from which its wave emanates. This produces the same math and same pattern on the target screen. We propose three Axioms of the Theory of Elementary Waves (TEW) as a better platform for mathematics in this experiment than the Axioms of QM. This constitutes a paradigm shift.
Abstract Since it was born before its physical achievements, light waves, which have almost no physical properties, are an abstract mathematical concept rather than an objective description. Confused by a set of dark and light streaks and a sketchy schematic that had little to do with the actual result, the double-slit test was misjudged as being caused by interfering light waves, so this plausible principle implied disastrous flaws. For example, (1) Just after passing through the double-slit device, the pattern is generated by light early or before interference. By changing the distance between the device and the screen, the pattern is only scaled synchronously without being reconstructed by interference, and imagined light-wave interference does not occur. (2) Interfering light waves can be subdivided into multiple parts and proliferate greatly. (3) A headless wave of light left outside the screen after the head disappears can still induce much interference. (4) There is no interference effect caused by reflected light waves. (5) The effect of polarization direction on interference is neglected, and the interference condition is incomplete. (6) In the mathematical model, not only are the spots with the highest brightness in the position where dark stripes should appear most, but the principle of generating multiple regular dark stripes cannot be found. (7) Since the quantum property must be carried out in the process of interference, if all conditions are not met at the same time, interference will not be triggered, and therefore, the principle of interference will be rejected. (8) Since light comes only from the radiation of the electron transition, it is impossible to generate a light source in a slit that may be a vacuum. (9) In the causality test, to verify the effect of collapse, the photon that has collapsed into a particle should be tested again with a double slit test. (10) Whether the phenomenon of "observed tampering results" obtained by observation has been tampered with. (11) When the phase is shifted π or the signal is reversed, waves become negative waves capable of annihilating themselves, which is typical of antimatter. In this case, matter and antimatter are conjoined. (12) If the general law of waves is followed, not only the targeted light wave passes through the slit. (13) The original version of the double-slit test cannot be reproduced, and the test results are different from those presented by contemporary technology. (14) Waves must obey Fourier's principle, but light waves, quantum waves and matter waves do not. (15) The modulation effect that waves must produce is not present in optical fiber communication. (16) If the light from different slits must interfere with each other, a mask full of slits will cause the lithographer to fail. (17) Since the size is much smaller than the wavelength, the photon is only a sampling of the light wave, but the corresponding physical properties are not presented. (18) The fact that the two stars orbiting each other do not change color only proves that the phenomenon of redshift is impossible but does not support the inference that the speed of light is constant. (19) The Michelson-Morley test process is not open and transparent enough, and pinhole diffraction and mechanical processing using broken lines instead of curves cannot be ruled out. (20) Kepler's law can block Hubble's law and its derivatives, dark matter and dark energy. In conclusion, Newton's particle model was wrong, but neither was the light wave theory.
The real random number generation is a crucial problem in computer science. The current generation methods are either too dangerous or too expensive, such as using decay of some radioactive atoms, they are also hard to control. By the uncertainty principles in quantum mechanics, real probabilistic events can be just replaced by the collapse from a superposition to an eigenstate it consists of, such as double-slits interference of a single photon or electron, when the photon or electron hit onto the screen from a free moving state with certain momentum, is from a momentum eigenstate which is a superposition of position eigenstates to collapse onto a position eigenstate which is a superposition of position eigenstates. Schrödinger’s cat paradox is not a paradox, it is an effect, there is something different happens in each half-life period before the atom decayed, to make the atom choose either decaying or not decaying in this half-life period to stay in the next half-life period, whether decay or not is purely probabilistic like an ideal dice. Same matter is able to possess different kinds of properties, because same matter can stay in different states which have different properties, such as wave-particle duality. One eigenstate of a physical quantity can be a superposition of eigenstates of another physical quantity, and the collapse from a superposition to an eigenstate it contains is purely probabilistic like an ideal dice, such probability can be used to generate real random number, and double-slits interference of single photon, with a screen that has photoelectric effect with this photon, real random number may be generated thereby for our computer and other smart things today.
The double-slit experiment has stood for a century as the paradigmatic demonstration of quantum superposition: the standard interpretation holds that a particle passes through both slits simultaneously, existing in a superposition of two spatially separated states. This paper proposes a physically distinct alternative: the particle's matter wave — a real physical wave propagating through space in accordance with de Broglie's relation λ = h/p — passes through both slits, while the particle itself (matter) remains in an undetermined state until a constructive interference maximum is formed at the detection screen. The particle does not simultaneously occupy two locations; the wave does. This distinction eliminates the need for superposition as an ontological commitment while fully reproducing the observed interference pattern. We further show that the disappearance of the interference pattern upon which-path measurement is explained without invoking wavefunction collapse: the measurement interaction redirects the matter wave to a single-slit geometry, eliminating the two-wave interference condition. Three experimentally testable predictions distinguish this framework from the standard interpretation: (1) weak-measurement trajectory reconstruction should reveal single particle paths inconsistent with simultaneous two-slit passage; (2) diffraction fringe spacing should depend on the mass density of the slit material, because denser slit edges generate a steeper refractive-index gradient for the matter wave; (3) the fringe pattern should exhibit a density-dependent phase shift measurable with current matter-wave interferometry technology. This reinterpretation requires no new mathematical formalism — the Schrödinger equation and Born's rule are retained — but replaces the ontological claim of simultaneous multi-location existence with the physically consistent picture of matter-wave propagation through an undetermined-state particle.