Does a particle really try every possible path?

[airydisc]

Yeah, I think that way too. My logic is that if you move the wall a bit closer, you still get an interaction. Move it a bit closer and you still get an interaction. And so forth. So clearly it's THERE in some sense.

The mistake would be to connect the dots between all those interactions and think that you have found even one path that the particle took on the way to the wall when it was farthest away. There's no path, there's nothing until you get an interaction, but I'm agreeing w/ you that it is in some sense there even if that is undefined and not useful in practice.

From a non-physicists (but interested layman) point of view. It appears from this and other threads that it serves little purpose in using common language to describe QM. It appears to be only describable using mathematics. Our language serves only to misdirect or mislead when attempting to explain how particles/waves move or what their state is when they are not moving. Using language that describes states or motions we understand in our macro universe, we appear not be able to describe the state or motion of Q particles/waves. As a previous message says, concerning the journey between outset and arrival of a particle or wave, the theory is 'silent' about it. If there is no theory concerning the route taken from A to B, and no evidence to show which path is taken (does it take one of an infinite number, does it take all possible paths), then what evidence exists to show that a wave or particle arriving at a detector is the same wave or particle that left the source? If a wave or particle does not indeed travel (in the conventional sense) between two points in space, then the source and detector have a messenger between them, and so the discussion then moves to how the messenger communicates or travels. The difficulty is how do mathematicians translate their language into meaningful and unambiguous spoken language.

AD2004