If the virtual particles can push physical objects together in a vacuum, why cant physical objects push virtual particles in a vacuum?
>Well you see, at the quantum level things work differently, quantum weir....
Nice try, but that cope only works when it doesn't rise to the level of Newtonian physical reality, which in this case, it does.

Muh virtual particles is a bunch of nonsense people made up in the 50s to justify the emergent perturbative QFT calculations. It's literally just quantum fields interacting non-linearly and plenty of non-perturbative effects have been described since, none of which are explained via muh vitual particles.

The reason why this virtual particle nonsense still proliferates is
1. experimentalists spend like a semester on introductory qft material that doesn't have the time to actually explain things on a proper level
2. pop sci faggotry is easier to present with le funny particles than a bunch of abstract operator stuff in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space

>>16705354
Basically this but less cynically.

Virtual particles were never meant to be interpretted literally. Since their inception they were a convenient vehicle to describe quantum "weirdness."

>>16705354
They do explain some things neatly like electron's position being indeterminate when you probe it with sufficiently high energy. There's a precedent in physics for mathematical tricks to turn out to be physical phenomena and I think you're too eager to jump to conclusions.
The concept is abused and I hate popsci as much as you do but it's not total BS.

>>16705893
It's not total bs in the following sense. In perturbation theory (just general QM, not specific to QFT), you get the leading-order correction
[eqn]E_n^{(1)} = \langle \psi_n | V | \psi_n \rangle[/eqn]
The next order term is
[eqn]\sum_{m\not=k}\frac{|\langle \psi_n | V| \rangle \psi_m \rangle|^2}{E_n^{(0)}-E_m^{(0)}}[/eqn]
Notice the sum. You have to sum over ALL states in the Hilbert space, regardless of what they are. When you do the next order, you get two sums and so on.

This is a consequence of using the completeness property of the Hilbert space to derive the perturbative corrections. It's something that shows up because we want to do perturbative theory and for no other reason.

Now, when you move on to more complicated examples of the same idea, you get the Born series, the Lippmann-Schwinger equation, the Dyson series and so on. But the idea remains the same: whenever you go to higher-than-leading order of corrections, you end up summing over states.

Now in QFT we interpret states as particles (via Fock spaces). So in this technique, we are "summing over all possible particle states" even though those particles are "virtual" and "off-shell". This is often mystified by saying le quantum woo produces particles out of thin air because muh weird quantum mechanics. No, you're literally just doing an approximation and your approximation technique has you make these expansions. There's absolutely nothing "weird" about this, because it's you doing these approximations, not Nature. Nature doesn't even know what perturbation theory is.

I have no idea why the second equation doesn’t format. Fix your shit, jannies. Works on the preview for me.

>>16705346 (OP)
NASA's investigated this a while back and concluded it might be possible, but that acceleration would be so ungodly low that building up significant speed would take billions of years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Propulsion_Physics_Program

>>16705916
Would this be saying that it is invoking an abstraction of particles that haven't been confirmed to be there? And maybe a step further, we wouldn't expect any actual particles to be there because they are a mathematical tool mimicking a better function that could have a physical analog? This physical analog and function currently being unknown.
So if I had a computer and I wrote a physics simulation in object-oriented programming, the invocation of objects doesn't relate to the computation results. That is to say, using some other paradigm, I could arrive at the same physical simulation.

>>16705962
>invoking an abstraction of particles that haven't been confirmed to be there?
It's invoking a calculation. These "particles" can't be there in the first place. Virtual states are off-shell, which means they "violate" energy conservation. But this is not an actual violation of anything, because these particles don't "exist" or "pop out of the vacuum". You can literally never observe them by their very construction. It's just a thing you introduce to make an approximation.

Think of it like this. People in the aerodynamics community will tell you that wings generate lift due to the Bernoulli equation. Then some guy will immediately go
>akshyally the Bernoulli equation doesn't explain everything about wings
Well, it's a good approximation. You cannot use it to explain how a bumblebee flies, because there's more complicated dynamics involved. Virtual particles are the Bernoulli equation of QFT if you wish. They show up in perturbative QFT, but just because they're tautologically there by the very technique of perturbation theory.
>because they are a mathematical tool mimicking a better function that could have a physical analog?
We still don't have a good notion of non-perturbative QFT and it's actually a Millenium prize problem (the Yang-Mills one). Only certain effects have been derived, notably the Casimir effect and the Schwinger effect.

Some approaches to rigorous QFT such as AQFT don't even have a notion of a particle, because they don't even construct a Hilbert space. They only work with operators (quantum fields) themselves and don't both with eigenstates (particles). But it's an active area of research and AQFT has its own problems.
>That is to say, using some other paradigm, I could arrive at the same physical simulation.
Science is inductive by nature. You can never be sure you have "the theory" because it would require you to make an infinite number of infinitely-precise observations. That's not how empirical observations work.

>>16705354
Sounds like modern physicists have inferior genetics to historic ones. Dysgenics and its consequences.
That and government welfare for scientists.

>>16705346 (OP)
>repeatedly running up against the limits of evaluating photons and electromagnetism as granular
>because the only means of detecting it is granular
Photons are not discrete packages of energy. The electron is the limiting factor, not the wave.

>>16705962
btw that "off-shell" condition is somewhat akin to the
[eqn]\sum_{n\not=m}[/eqn]
bit in the "baby's first" perturbation theory of quantum mechanics. You're excluding states on the poles of the energy spectrum.
>>16705976
This is my own opinion and I'm going to sound very salty, but bear with me.
1. HEP experimentalists don't give two shits about QFT because "the theorists will do it". Their job is a combination of a "data scientist" and an engineer. That's very important on its own, but the people involved often don't give two shits about the formalities.
2. There is a very noticeable aversion to mathematics in the modern HEP community, even among theorists. Many factors play into this, mostly publish-and-perish and ambulance chasing.
3. There was a "schism" within the HEP theory community around the 80s-90s where "phenomenologists" (absurdly tautological name) split off from string theorists and various other brands of supersymmetry guys. The second camp sucked in all the talent from the first camp, but ended up completely disconnecting from reality into their applied mathematics larp. As a result, the first camp was left without the cream of the crop and degraded into cobbling up "models" on a whim without trying to constructively approach anything of what they're doing.

>>16705982
Dunno mate, but I heard from Norman J Wildburger that modern mathematics have bad foundations, same probably goes for physics

>>16705971
>because these particles don't "exist" or "pop out of the vacuum".

Like w and z bosons that appear during a symmetry breaking event to restore vacuum equilibrium and then disappear to never being detectable again being called fundamental particles?

The Core Contradiction
We are told that:

The W and Z bosons — which are ephemeral, massive, and unobservable except through statistical decay channels — are fundamental to the mass-generation mechanism of the universe.

This means:

The entire mass-bearing structure of the cosmos arises from fields that don’t persist in reality,

Mediated by bosons that only exist during symmetry-breaking events that happen at energy levels far beyond anything observed in normal conditions.

And yet — we’re to treat this as the explanation for everyday mass.
That is:
All atoms, all structure, all beings, all meaning = downstream of ghost bosons that flicker into pseudo-being during moments of artificially broken symmetry.

“They don’t exist...
until we need them to...
and then they un-exist again...
but everything real depends on them.”

That’s not physics.

>>16705971
Science was better when it was deductive. Sadly it hasn't been much for many decades

>>16706170
To continue on this train of thought. These w and z bosons require a symmetry breaking event caused by mass-mass impact in the first place.


Something ain't adding up here in QFT, Kip.

from nothing, two protons smash to conjure ghost bosons out of thin air to fix the nothingness

High-energy collisions:

Begin with two protons carrying:

E = √((mc^2)2 + (pc)^2)
Two protons in at 14TeV

per proton — mostly kinetic energy at LHC scales.

Post-collision:

Some energy goes into short-lived particles (W+, Z0).

Some becomes heat, neutrinos, gamma rays, etc.

Some escapes detection, increasing entropy.

What's left is often less coherent, less structured, and less recoverable than what went in.

There’s no mass surplus. No new ontological "stuff." Just energy playing dress-up in different quantum outfits.

W/Z Bosons Don’t Make Mass — They Cost It
W and Z are not building blocks — they’re expensive field transitions.

Their presence burns energy, increasing the entropy of the field configuration.

And they decay rapidly — nothing stable about them.

So:

If W and Z are the foundation of mass, then mass is built on temporary, unstable ghosts.
That’s not physics — that’s a narrative patch.

The actual outcome of most collider events:

InitialCoherence
Fragmentation+Radiation+Heat+Noise
InitialCoherenceFragmentation+Radiation+Heat+Noise
In other words:
Not creation.
Not symmetry breaking into being.
Just symmetry collapsing into noise.

Take a bunch of real, stable mass smash it into a high-energy entropy explosion get less mass and more noise declare the invisible middlemen (W/Z) to be the true creators of mass pat self on back for explaining reality.

Void Logic Summary:
Start with real things.

Destroy them violently.

Observe some transient mirage.

Say the mirage caused the real things.