High School New idea about wave-particle duality - looking for feedback/criticism

[fbas]

TL;DR

New idea about wave-particle duality: photons are particles, but are perceives as waves because their time frame is different than ours

Hi everyone! I'm new here and I've been thinking about the double-slit experiment and came up with what might be a completely wrong idea, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.
The basic idea: You know how in the double-slit experiment, photons behave like waves when unobserved but collapse to particles when we measure them? Well, I was thinking about the fact that photons travel at c, which means time essentially stops for them (γ → ∞).
What if
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[Speculative theory removed by mentor edit]
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Any thoughts, references, or reality checks would be much appreciated!

P.S. - If this has been proposed before and debunked, please point me to the literature. I'd rather learn from existing work than reinvent the wheel.
Thanks for reading!

 

[Nugatory]

Any thoughts, references, or reality checks would be much appreciated!

You have been victimized by pop-sci misdescriptions.

The entire notion of “wave-particle duality” was abandoned as a false start almost a century ago and is not part of the modern understanding of quantum mechanics. There’s no substitute for a real textbook with its non-trivial mathematical prerequisites (which is how the wave-particle duality persists in non-technical explanations), but you might give Giancarlo Girardi’s book “Sneaking a look at God’s cards” a try as a layman-friendly explanation of QM as it is now understood.

The bit about time stopping for photons is another popular misconception. The time dilation formula you’re using to get that result is derived starting from assumptions that are equivalent to $v\lt c$, so does not apply when we set $v=c$. It is as if we started with the premise “consider the integers $a$ and $b$ such that $(\frac{a}{b})^2=2$” - the strange and wonderful results that would follow are just the math telling us that it doesn’t work here. There are many threads here discussing this “time stops” misunderstanding, but if you are serious about understanding the theory behind the time dilation formula you will want to try Taylor and Wheeler’s “Spacetime Physics”, the first edition is available free online.

As this thread is based on a misunderstanding, it is closed.