Yep. It wouldn't impact entanglement experiments, however, and wouldn't impact wave physics characteristics, but rather the particle physics characteristics of the experiment.
The two-slit experiment depends upon the assumption that photons (wave or particle) are above the Planck threshold - if they're beneath it, they wouldn't have sufficient energy to reliably induce a reaction in the screen behind the plate, meaning a strict wave interpretation could be valid (the intermittent reactions could be the product of sufficient energy build-up in the receiving electrons, rather than photons intermittently striking different parts of the screen). In regard to wave characteristics of photons, statistically this would be nearly identical to particle emissions - we should expect "blips" in a distribution roughly equal to the distribution we should expect from particle emissions. I say nearly identical because I assume some underlying mechanism by which electrons lose energy over time, meaning the least-heavily radiated areas to lose energy at a rate rapid enough to prevent valence shell shifting and hence fewer blips.
...which might be evidence for my theory, actually, since we do indeed see fewer reactions than we might expect in the least-radiated portions of the screen, per that open problem/unexplained phenomenon whose name I can't recall that Eliezer goes on about a bit in one of the sequences. (The observed reactions are the square of the probability, rather than the probability itself, of a particle hitting a given section of the screen. I'm mangling terminology, I know.) Laziness is now competing with curiosity on whether I go and actually pull out one of my mathematics textbooks. If I were in therapy for crackpottery this would set me back months.
(Note: Having looking up the experiment to try to get the proper name for the screen behind the plate (without any success), it appears I was mistaken in my initial claim - the -original- intended purpose of the experiment, demonstrating wave characteristics of light, remains intact. It's merely wave-particle duality, a later adaptation of the experiment, which loses evidence. Retracting that comment as invalid.)
I have a question. My meta-question is whether the question makes sense in light of what you said. (I like working in low-information conditions, downside being dumb questions.)
Wouldn't this still be a testable difference? If electrons can briefly store energy, you could send a steady stream of below-Planck photons. Standard QM predicts no spots on the photoplate, but you predict spots, right?
Today's post, Tolerate Tolerance was originally published on 21 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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