[donh]

I'm not sure how you reach that conclusion, so it's kind of hard to respond. When you think about graininess, though, the fact that the universe is grainy at some level doesn't in any event necessarily mean that there is nothing smaller than that grain. There might be something smaller, but you can't discern it because of the graininess at the larger level.

What you can or cannot detect is irrelevant. If the universe isn't stochastic, than it's deterministic. If it's deterministic, stuff is made out of stuff. If it were truly the case that you are somehow limited by nature from seeing any smaller than some given limit, than you have just hit the heisenburg uncertainty limit, whether you are willing to name it or not. If it looks like a horse, and smells like a horse, and sounds like a horse, it's a horse.

I don't see why anything I've said is inconsistent with the two slit results. In fact, the two slit experiments are perfectly consistent with the notion that particles are waves in an elastic field.

Waves would be spread out, and of course, would go thru both slits. It's the idea that particles are not waves that runs into problems with the two slit experiments.

I don't understand what the argument is here. Are you going to describe 60-atom bucky balls as purely a wave phenomenon so you can avoid acknowledging the quantum nature of light?

[Brilliant]

I don't deny the Heisenburg uncertainty principle. But it's a matter of not having the tools to measure. Even Einstein had no problem with that. That's not the same thing as saying that the parameter is simply not defined.

Let me qualify the last remark... I can envision a situation where a parameter is not defined, without resorting to randomness as an explanation. When you are dealing with waves, it really is misleading to say the wave is here or the wave is there. The truth is that the wave is everywhere. It's just a question of what the displacement is at that particular point. You might be able to detect a certain displacement, but not a smaller one. But that doesn't mean that the wave is where you can detect it, and not where you can't.

Are you going to describe 60-atom bucky balls as purely a wave phenomenon so you can avoid acknowledging the quantum nature of light?

If a particle is a wave, then an atom is simply a group of waves stuck together. It really doesn't matter whether it's 60, or a mass the size of the earth. I don't know why you think that denies the quantum nature of light, though.

In my view, a particle is a buckling of the field, while light is simply a displacement not rising to the level of a buckling. Since a particle involves a buckling, it is more like a standing wave that fills all space, than it is like a moving wave. Clearly a particle can move, but motion is not essential to its existence.

Whether it's light or a particle you're talking about though, it makes sense that there would be points at which the displacement was much greater than at other points, particularly if you are talking about a field that is partially discontinuous at the finest level, like a three-dimensional matrix of force lines, which are connected only at their points of intersection. Obviously, the place where the displacement is greatest is most likely to be at the interval between those intersections, and so the waves are going to appear to be very focused on that interval, and thus the particle nature.