Let's Clear Up the Fantasy of "Duality"

It's astonishing that the hard-core no-nonsense field of physics has embraced such a fluffy, fairy-tale concept to describe reality.   Wave-particle duality is taught in every college.  Every textbook says it's simply a proven fact.  The quantum world is weird.  Get used to it!  Light must be described as a wave but at the same time it's actually made of tiny particles.  Light is magical.  Our universe is strange and incomprehensible.

"Wave–particle duality is the concept in quantum mechanics that every particle or quantum entity may be described as either a particle or a wave. It expresses the inability of the classical concepts "particle" or "wave" to fully describe the behaviour of quantum-scale objects." [Wikipedia].

The black dots are not photons
GIF By Thierry Dugnolle - Wikipedia

When a top scientist says light is both a wave and a particle, it reminds me of Catholic religious dogma.  "Jesus is both God and the Son of God."  That's logically impossible but religion is not constrained by logic.

Physics can not possibly be that way.   Science can't give up logic and realism just like that, without very solid evidence.  Science can't be unscientific.  It took civilization thousands of years to reach enlightenment.  We can't just throw it away now and say "get used to it."  Because if we do that we open the door to chaos.  Devils become real.  Angels and demons will rule our life.   We can no longer trust our own logic, our own reality.  We lose our grip on what is true and what is myth.  

If any measurement produces self-contradictory results we absolutely need to question the assumptions and measurement methods before we conclude that our whole world is not logical.   Even if the instruments are reliable, the data is repeatable and the results are confirmed by others.  I am thinking of Young's double slit experiment and Bell-type locality experiments.  If the conclusion violates logic or causality we need to reexamine our assumptions very, very carefully.   As Carl Sagan said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” 

Remember the neutrinos that traveled faster than light?  It eventually turned out to be a faulty optical cable.  In the double slit experiments and Bell-type locality experiments it turned out to be a faulty assumption, that light is a particle.   If you begin an experiment with a wrong assumption, you get nonsense.  If you begin assuming light is a wave, the experiments make sense.  They don't violate anything.

Physics is full of mind-blowing concepts like black holes, gravity waves and neutrinos.   Black holes are weird but they are not logically impossible or self-contradictory.  None of these phenomena require us to give up our basic logic.   

The argument for the "Wave-particle duality" of light goes like this:

1.  Light has a wavelength, frequency, interference, diffraction and refraction.  Therefore light is a wave.

2.  Light makes black dots on film, makes clicks in a Geiger counter, knocks electrons out of metals.  Therefore light is made of tiny indivisible particles.

Instead of concluding that light is two things in one (like Jesus) let's reexamine the experimental evidence for tiny light particles.  It's pretty weak.

In the case of photographic film, the black dots are not made by single "light particles."  They are silver crystals in the film emulsion.  The black dots are actually grains of metallic silver.  Film is coated on one side with a gelatin emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals.  After exposure to light, the film is developed.  It's a very sensitive chemical mechanism.  If you are interested, here is a detailed explanation: FILM. [Wikipedia].  Anyway, film can't distinguish between particles and waves.

The "clicks" in a Geiger counter or photomultiplier tube are not single "light particles."  When a burst of electromagnetic waves enters a photomultiplier tube, one or more electrons are knocked out of the metal cathode and the electrons are multiplied by a series of high voltage dynodes.   This is the photoelectric effect.  The incoming light pulse could be either a wave burst or a "hard" particle.  Either way it gets counted.   The tube can't tell the difference.  This is not proof that light is made of tiny particles.

But aren't there hundreds of modern experiments that "prove" wave-particle duality?  On the contrary, more and more recent papers agree that light particles don't exist.  Light is just an electromagnetic wave.

Maybe there are two theories, two models, and both are right, depending on the situation?

We have two theories of gravity,  Newton's theory and Einstein's theory.  We can choose the right one for any given situation.   In fact the two theories give the same answer for low fields.  But in the end we have to say that Newton was fundamentally wrong.  Space is not absolute.  Experiments agree with Einstein.  That's the bottom line.

Why can't there be two theories of light?  Yes, there are some experiments where particle theories and ray tracing theories give correct answers, like optical mirrors or lenses.  But the particle explanation is fundamentally wrong.  It leads us to nonsense conclusions like violations of logic, causality and locality.  If we continue teaching the light particle picture, it makes the universe unintelligible.  

Is there any experimental evidence that the particle picture is wrong?  Yes, lots of it!  It is recent and you have to search for it.  Remember, the vast majority of physicists still believe in "Duality."

NOTE:  I am not saying that all of Quantum Mechanics is wrong.  The statistical equations and the quantum formalism works very well.  I am just arguing that the Copenhagen interpretation that light is made of tiny particles is fundamentally wrong.   Of course atoms are "quantized."  Light is emitted from atoms in bursts of electromagnetic waves with a fixed energy equal to the difference in atomic energy levels.  It's just not made of tiny indivisible particles that suddenly appear when a measurement is made.   

More here.  Are there particles of light?

So what should we do about this?  We need to be very careful when we write about photons.   Photons are bursts of electromagnetic waves.  Never call them "particles."  A photon of light is like a cup of milk.  It's a convenient unit of measure.