Virtual particles Definition and 189 Threads

Not sure if this is the right forum but hey ho.. I have been reading about Hawking radiation in Black Holes, whereby virtual particles are created at the event horizon and of the particle and anti particle pair 1 can escape before it is annihilated. Why are the particles which make up the...

Forgive that to many here this will sound like a dumb question. I have searched and searched and failed to find an answer. Give the constant creation/annihilation of all forms of particles in ZPE, it seems likely to me that some among them would collide with each other before either had a...

Hello, Recently I have learned that magnetism causes the Lorentz force. The electric force makes sense to me in terms of virtual photons. But how do virtual photons give rise to magnetism and the Lorentz force. Is it because when the charged particle moves through an magnetic field it comes...

I am told that the space surrounding me is filled with virtual particles, popping into and out of existence. I could believe that they exist for such short times and at such low energies that sophisticated equipment is needed to detect them. However, a collision between even 1 virtual electron...

the virtual particles that are created are the result of a quantum fluctuation ..but the energy of this fluctuation must be zero so 1 particle has positive mass and the other has negative mass ...so that if they annihilate the mass is zero and they go back to not existing but if the one with...

If virtual particles were prevented from annihilating fractions of a second before the Big Rip itself is actually achieved, wouldn't the universe be flooded with real particles creating an incredible amount of mass? 1) This idea is incorrect 2) The idea is correct and it temporarily delays the...

Greetings all, I'm new here. I've looked through some of the topics on virtual particles and I'm still a little confused. In Philosophy, you don't get something from nothing. In physics, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Yet many on web pages about physics a claim is being made that...

as i know,bohr's discovery reveals that atom consist of central nucleus and electron orbit around them in empty spaces my question is-why aren't virtual particles being produced in those empty spaces?

Are the gluons that make up a proton or neutron considered virtual particles? Thanks for your help!

consider an event that takes place for a very short duration thus it have high uncertainity in energy...this energy is sufficient to create virtual particles... can we predict the nature of virtual particle that will be created(by nature i mean..it's charge,behaviour in terms of...

Is the field of the theorized Higgs particle totally distinct from those fields which give rise to fleeting virtual particles? Would the latter also have some kind of 'drag' effect on elementary particles like the Higgs is thought to do? IH

ive been reading on this forum that virtual particles flat out don't exist?then why is it said they exist for a certain amount of time?

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1105/1105.4714v1.pdf Does this paper shed any light on whether virtual particles are real, or not? They are speaking colloquially, as if they are real, but it sounds like there are complementary explanations that do not need to use virtual particles...

Does Gauss's Law apply to virtual particles? For example, when computing the field around a real proton, is the net charge in Gauss's Law the proton charge plus the contribution of all the virtual charges within the closed surface? (I'm thinking about the screening of charges by virtual...

I'm reading The Lightness of Being by Frank Wilczek. In a footnote talking about screening of a (real) positive charge by virtual particles (p47), he says "Thus the force falls off faster than 1 over the distance squared, as you'd have without screening" (by virtual particles). How then...

"virtual particles" in rigorous quantum field theory If I am not mistaken "virtual particles" are just a name someone put to some integrals that we use to calculate different things, and those integrals depends on the perturbation scheme and on the gauge selected, and they don't even exist in...

This may be way off base, but is there any support for the notion that virtual particles seem to appear and disappear because they move into and out of dimensions that we can't see? I kind of envision them appearing on arcs similar to solar prominences, where plasma follows the magnetic field...

so physicists say that vacuum is filled with virtual electrons and positrons that last very shortly and then annihilate.. They are even planning on building super strong lasers to generate the EM field strong enough to separate them before annihilating - making them real. But this concerns me -...

Hi, Is there a non-perturbative version of Quantum Field Theory that doesn't require virtual particles? If there is. Why is it not taught or emphasized so we have to completely do away with virtual particles which many pop-sci books claimed to be real when many experts here state these are...

I understand the basics of the double slit experiment. I'm trying to imagine what would happen if one slit could operate at a 180 degree phase shift, or nearly that. The obvious answer is not much except between the slits, and even less if the distance between the slits is near the wave length...

Is it possible for a virtual particle consisting of a proton/antiproton pair to "pop" into existence close enough to the nucleus of a helium atom (two protons and two neutrons) such that the antiproton of the virtual particle annihilates one of the protons of the helium atom leaving Tritium (H3)...

Can anyone provide it? I just examined wiki article just for fun, it is a mess of different concepts (because, as I understand, there was an attempt to make it interpretation-neutral) So, can anyone provide a definition which is MWI-compatible? For example: in MWI any 'particle' behavior...

Okay... In the quantum world, is all motion absolute? As in, can you pinpoint whether or not a particle is actually moving using space as a reference point? Or is it like in general relativity where the only motion that matters is motion relative to other particles? If it is like the model...

Hi folks, I have a question that I so far haven't been able to locate an answer to - it's mostly for curiosity. If virtual particles are continually popping in and out of existence in the vacuum, why do they not produce a frictional force on objects moving at constant velocity through...

I was having a conversation with a physicist on Facebook (author of a book I rather enjoyed - "Users guide to the universe"), and he let the conversation end without my question ever being fully answered. Perhaps someone here can help explain this to me. I'll paste the entire conversation...

What do you think? I thought a poll, just for the fun of it!

If virtual particles pop into and out of existence in less than the blink of an eye, 1. How much less than a blink...less than 10-43 seconds? 2. Where is this happening now as I speak..in front of my eyes, in my next door neighbor's house, or in places far far away..? 3. If some of these...

Hi Everyone I was wondering if virtual particles travel faster than light,i ask this because i saw a video where it talks about virtual particles traveling faster than light but if that is...

i wonder whether an electron is absorbing virtual photons because it is in a electromagnetic field, would that mean that it would change its angular momentum by hbar?

In my textbook, "Universe" by Friedman et al it says the following: "During inflation, however , the universe expands so fast that particles were rapidly separated from their corresponding antiparticles. Deprived of the oppurtunity to recombine and annhilate, these virtual particles became real...

I’ve got few simple questions (and views) about which I’m pondering on for some time now and since I’m layman on these topics I’d love to hear thoughts and insights about them from some of the great contributors at this forum. Thank you! -- Is gravity in center of star highest, lowest or...

Before Posting This , I spent nearly an entire day googling the problem of virtual particles and the conservation of energy , but it only got me more confused :confused: Let's review this problem from the beginning : Due to Heisenberg's uncertainty relation between time and energy \Delta t...

So virtual particles are allowed to exist so long as they 'give back' their energy in the time alloted by the uncertainty principle. This might be a fairly naive question, but it occurred to me that maybe the opposite is true. Can 'real' particles cease to exist for brief flashes of time without...

Im new and not that advanced in science so can you try to keep your answers simple. My question is can virtual particles break the law that energy cannot be created or destroyed? Have virtual particles been proven/observed? thanks in advance for your answers

1) In non-mathmatical terms, please correct my description of vitual particles... a) virtual particles are real but too small to be observed directly. i.e. their dimensions are within Plank's values and subject to Heisenberg's uncertainty principles. b) virtual particles are real...

So, all I ever keep reading is that virtual particles don't HAVE to satisfy E2 = p2 + m2. Should it instead be that they don't satisfy the energy relation. Also, can someone show the general case mathematically how the energy relation is violated. If it's easier maybe a simple example of an...

Hi folks, I have a question about virtual particles, and so far I haven't been able to find an answer. Do virtual particles ever annihilate with real particles? (Black hole evaporation aside) For example, let's say we have a (real) electron, floating in space, and a virtual...

Can electrons, or other real particles for that matter, interact with virtual particles? Do virtual particles ever come into existence in between the electron's energy levels of an atom? Is there actually a vacuum between electron energy levels of an atom or is this an abstract...

I don't really understand quantum physics, but I would really like to know because I'm going to study it next year. Can someone explain it to me in laymens terms, thanks.

Virtual particles I'm confused. I have a degree in philosophy and physics is not my area of expertise. I have read about the subject so please don't give an answer fit for a 4th grader. What are virtual particles? Are they real or not? Are they some strange hybrid of reality and non-reality...

Why cannot virtual particles in the vacuum be directly detected? Experiments have shown the Casimir Effect that supports the idea of virtual particles does exist. But can we also detect the presence of virtual particles directly in the vacuum? The most common virtual particle to form is photon...

Do virtual particles disprove the law of conservation of energy? Are they really created out of thin air or does something cause them?

How "Real" Are Virtual Particles? Are they a help to particle interaction or are they physically real? How come they are not observable to us? what i want to find out is if they are an artefact or not.I also know that there is a lot of debate to whether virtual particles exist in reality or not.

How exactly do virtual particles add to energy mass while still complying with the conservation of energy? For instance, sea quarks, (virtual quark, antiquark pairs) are suppose to contribute to the mass of a brayon. Do they exist for a fleeting moment below the Heisenberg limit by popping in...

Based on theories of an accelerating universe, how can the creation and annihilation of pairs of particles/anti-particles (virtual particles) generate energy in a vacuum (space) thus contribute to Eintstein's theory of a cosmological constant (positive pressure). And if the quantum...

On the wikipedia page about virtual particles it says: "If a single particle is detected, then the consequences of its existence are prolonged to such a degree that it cannot be virtual." Could someone explain to me why this is true, ie why is it that if we detect a particle it cannot be...

Hi I'm trying to learn more about Quantum Foam and naturally my curiosity led me to Wiki. In Wikipedia, it says that at such small scales (Planck length) the uncertainty principle allows particles and energy to briefly come into existence, and then annihilate, without violating conservation...

I have been told before that virtual particles are just an artefact of perturbation theory, that if we could solve interacting fields exactly we would have no need to talk about virtual particles at all. My question then is if virtual particles are just a mathematical tool to evaluate...

I have a few questions. Why is it that detection of a virtual particle would mean that it cannot be virtual? What is it exactly about the detection that destroys the virtual nature of a particle? I have read in several places that the idea of virtual particles is just an artefact of...

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/virtual_particles.html I am new to physics and have been struggling with the idea that forces are just "action at a distance" and that fields are invisible/incorporeal (can only be detected by the influence they exert) and permeate throughout all...