Quantum Physics: virtual particles explained, sort-of (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, August 23, 2016, 01:44 (3013 days ago) @ BBella

This article explains in easier terms what virtual particles are in space:-http://www.livescience.com/55833-what-are-virtual-particles.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20160822-ls-"Take, for example, "virtual particles." The term is supposed to answer a very old question: How, exactly, do particles interact? Let's say we have two charged particles, and let's call them Charles and Charlene. Let's continue to say that both Charles and Charlene are negatively charged. Maybe they're electrons; maybe they're muons. Doesn't matter. What matters is that if Charlene comes racing toward Charles, they bounce off each other and end up going their separate ways. -***-"The modern perspective of quantum field theory recognizes photons — bits of light — as the carriers of the electromagnetic force. Charles and Charlene are charged particles, so they interact with light. But obviously, Charles and Charlene aren't shooting lasers at each other, so the trite explanation for their brief dalliance is that "they exchange virtual photons."-"What in the name of Feynman's ghost does that mean?-***-"each charged particle generates an electric field, which is basically an instruction sheet for how other particles can interact with it. In the case of a particle, this field is strong nearby the particle and weaker farther out. That field also points out in every direction away from the particle. -"So our Charles particle produces a field that permeates all of space. Other particles, like Charlene, can read this field and move accordingly. If Charlene is super-duper far away from Charles, the field she reads has very, very small numbers, so she barely notices any effect from Charles. But when she gets close, her field reader goes off the charts. Charles' electric field is very clearly saying "GO AWAY," and she obliges.-"In this view, the field is just as real and important as the particle. The universe is full of stuff, and the fields tell that stuff how to interact with other stuff.-"In the early to mid-20th century, physicists realized that the universe is a much, much stranger place than we had imagined. Marrying special relativity with quantum mechanics, they developed quantum field theory, and let's just say the results weren't what anybody expected.-"As the name suggests, the field got a promotion. Instead of just being the bookkeeping device that showed how one particle should interact with another, it became — and here come some italics for emphasis — the primary physical object. In this modern, sophisticated view of the universe, the electron isn't just a lonely particle. Oh no. Instead, there's an electron field, permeating all of space and time like milk in French toast.-***-"This field is it — it's the thing. Particles? They're just pinched-off bits of that field. Or, more accurately, they're excitations (like, wiggles) of the field that can travel freely. -***-"Since he's charged, by definition he interacts with light, which is the electromagnetic field. So wiggles in the electron field (a field made up of electrons) can affect wiggles in the electromagnetic field. So, literally, as Charles zips around, he spends some of his time as an electron-field wiggle and some of his time as an electromagnetic-field wiggle. Sometimes he's an electron, and sometimes he's a photon — a bit of the electromagnetic (EM) field!-"Charles-turned-EM-wiggle can become other wiggles, like muon wiggles. For every fundamental particle in the universe, there's a corresponding field, and they all talk to one another and wiggle back and forth constantly.-***-"The fields wiggle to and fro (and sometimes fro and to). If the wiggles persist and travel, we call them "particles." If they die off quickly, we call them "virtual particles." But fundamentally, they're both wiggles of fields.-"When Charles encounters Charlene, they're not like two little bullets ready to slam into each other. Instead, they're complicated sets of wiggles in all sorts of fields, phasing in and out from one type of field to another.-"When they do get close enough to interact, it's … messy. Very messy. Wiggles and counter-wiggles, a frenzied mishmash of intermingling. The machinery of quantum field theory — after many tedious calculations — does indeed provide the correct answer (Charles and Charlene bounce off each other)-"So, the shorthand — "they exchange virtual particles" — rolls off the tongue quite easily, a little slip of jargon to package up a very complicated process.-"But, unfortunately, it's not very accurate."-Comment: Clear as mud!? Our concept of reality and our language can't really handle it. A particle is primarily the 'strong area' in an energy field and quantum calculations of it require much time on giant computers. Read the whole article for full flavor if not full understanding. And another complication is that the EM force and the weak force ( of the four basic forces) are two parts of the 'electroweak force'. All as the basis of our reality, and I view it planned by God. This is a beginning of our knowledge, but someday we might understand the 'why'.