Virtual particles

They're random excitations in the gluon field.

The perturbations are in three dimensions, not 2D like a wave that you might be more familiar with, giving them the "appearance" of being particle-like objects in space.

https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/virtual-particles-what-are-they/

>>8743715

All particles are "virtual", they're just fluctuations in an invisible field that permeates reality. "Virtual" particles are just really short-lived.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3xLuZNKhlY

this explains it coolly

>>8743715
Well to understand them you have to look at the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. IT states that the more precisely you know a particle's energy, the less precisely you know how long it exists for.

I will stress that this is NOT a failure on our measuring precision, but rather a fundamental law that all things in the universe obey. The uncertainty in a particle's energy is the lack of constraint it has due to both its intrinsic nature and its physical circumstances. I say again, this has nothing to do with measurement. It is an impartial property of the nature itself.
So if you know something's energy to a high precision, you know its "lifetime" to a less high precision and vice versa.
Say a particle is created with a relatively uncertain energy. Then it might "decay" out of existence before the universe even "knew" it was there.
A virtual particle is just such a case. It borrows energy from a field that permeates all space (and has a non-zero base energy) and has a high enough corresponding uncertainty in its lifetime that it returns the energy before the vacuum knows it was there.

In the case of gluons, the virtual glouns that appear around a proton or neutron are excitations in the strong nuclear field (which is perturbed due to the proton or neutron itself) in the vicinity.
Each of these virtual gluons can be "dragged" into reality by the local excitation, but only if a corresponding gluon is returned to the vacuum.
This is why quarks (which make up protons and neutrons) appear to be contantly changing their quantum state; because they are constantly exchanging gluons with the surrounding shell of virtual gluons. it is equally valid to describe this as the quarks directly exchanging gluons between each other, through conservation of COLOUR CHARGE.

>>8743888
Thank you. That was interesting. I feel like I'm beginning to grasp this a little bit.

Still confused as to why this shit is even there in the first place. The fields themselves that are doing the vibrating, I mean. But I guess that would be the same as asking why is the universe even there in the first place.

>>8743715
Virtual particles arnt real, they are a mathematical tool used to describe fields. You take the field interaction, Taylor expand it and do some manipulation to get terms that look almost like what would be considered single particle states if they were isolated. These terms must all be summed to get the total interaction, but since no one wants to do the whole Taylor expansion every time Feynman noticed that you can draw diagrams following some simple rules where each line is one of these states that looks like a single particle state. These virtual particles are just a book keeping mechanism to do the underlying Taylor expansion. They dont even act like real particles since they can have things like negative energy. People like to past on the uncertainty principle and say that explains virtual particles, but it doesnt, virtual particles are fundamentally different than normal particles, you can even violate the spin statistics with virtual particles, which has nothing to do with uncertainty. Im sure someone will link the popsci article claiming virtual particles are proven to exist because you can make particle anti particle pairs in a strong electromagnetic field, but that doest prove anything, creating particle antiparticle pairs are real, not virtual, and are a result of the field interaction.

>>8744143
This was much more helpful for me to understand what they are and how they work than the other post. Thank you very much.

>>8743832

Not all particles are virtual. Virtual particles are unobservable particles, typically represented by the interior lines in a Feynman Diagram.

I dont believe in anything below protons electrons photons and neutrons. All that shit is kooky physicist religion

>>8746062
What makes you so sure? I really wish that the uninitiated would refrain from commenting unless they are willing to do work on these subjects themselves.

File: download.jpg (7KB, 317x159px) Image search: [Google]

7KB, 317x159px

>>8746103
Particle physics is a cult

>>8746129
You believe you know the answer without studying the subject. You don't. You're guilty of the very thing you're accusing me of.

>>8746244
U dont have to read the bible to know that god isnt real