In the double slit experiment, the puzzle is to explain why measurement of which way the particle went destroys the interference pattern.
Interference pattern
Let's first challenge the usual assumption that the interference pattern is the results of wave phase interference between particles, even when they are passing one by one. The classical interpretation is that the wave of the particle interferes with itself, that is a little far fetched for me. The interference appears for photons, electrons and even bigger molecules.
As the slits are rather tight (fractions of millimeters), we can imagine that the particle has a certain phase that interferes with a certain phase of the walls of the slits. Depending on the timing of the interaction, the particle's wave is deviated by an angle that depends on the periodicity of the two waves - the particle and the walls of the slit.
When there is a single slit, the particle tends to synchronize the walls of the slit with its own phase, so there is no visible interference pattern.
With two slits relatively close to each other, each particle will impregnate the slits walls by its phase, making possible for the next particle to interfere with the previous particle phase. The two ways makes this impregnation to have a little shift, depending on which slit was previously used by the particle.
One possibility is that the particle only passes one of the slits, being "absorbed" by one slit depending on the phase delta in the moment of passing. We can still imagine that the particle's wave passed both slits, however one slit might "absorb" a higher amount of this wave - depending on phase delta between particle and slit's walls.
The observer
Once an observer can determine witch slit the particle went, the interference patterns disappears. The act of observance requires an interaction with the particle.
In order to know precisely the path of the particle, one need to have a strong interaction with the particle. Such interaction might shift the phase of the particle to the phase of the measurement apparatus, effectively making the phase of the observed particle to not have the same periodicity with the particles passing the other slit.
This could explain the disappearing of interference pattern when one observes witch path the particle went.
The Mach–Zehnder interferometer
We can imagine a similar phenomenon even when there are no slits involved. The photons passing one path would impregnate the atoms of the second beam splitter, creating the interference, up to sending most lights to a single direction.
When the second path is closed, the photons only passes the remaining path and the impregnated phase is synchronized with this path, resulting in normal distribution of the particles on the two directions.
The "phase" of macroscopic objects
AFAIK, such phase is not currently observed by mainstream physics. We can still postulate such phase, at least for the part of the Universe where we do our physics experiments. Periodic rotation of Earth might synchronize some phase of the matter on Earth, the same with the macroscopic phase sync of the Moon rotation.
One cue that such phase for macroscopic objects exist is the phenomenon of creating magnets from iron. Another one is the apparent levitation of objects on very low temperatures.
We can imagine that even Gravity is the result of some phase synchronization between the matter in this corner of the universe - combined with electromagnetic force with phase.
Disclaimer
This is my personal hypothesis, that might be clearly refutable of it might need some adjustments to explain all the currently observable known physics facts.
Looking forward to your arguments for and against this pure speculation. Physics is rather far from my domains of expertise.
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