This is an amazing article that's made a lot of things much clearer for me. To stop thinking of particles as "things" and start thinking of them as certain configurations of a field. Perhaps it makes sense to think of them as configurations that the mathematics ensures are somehow stable.
And then virtual particles and other interactions make a lot more sense. They are just other configurations.
My new understanding might not be correct but this article has certainly opened my eyes and suddenly a lot of previous things make a lot more sense!
Strassler has a lot of articles of this kind on his site, highly recommended. Check the articles menu on his homepage. There's a nice series on dark matter.
Comments
This is an amazing article that's made a lot of things much clearer for me. To stop thinking of particles as "things" and start thinking of them as certain configurations of a field. Perhaps it makes sense to think of them as configurations that the mathematics ensures are somehow stable.
And then virtual particles and other interactions make a lot more sense. They are just other configurations.
My new understanding might not be correct but this article has certainly opened my eyes and suddenly a lot of previous things make a lot more sense!
Strassler has a lot of articles of this kind on his site, highly recommended. Check the articles menu on his homepage. There's a nice series on dark matter.
There's also this page with various links: http://profmattstrassler.com/about/about-this-site-and-how-t...
Nice summary. It's really interesting stuff isn't it?