Talk:Virtual particle

message: What sort of definition is this, I think it sounds confusing:
"exhibits some of the characteristics of an ordinary particle, while having its existence limited by the uncertainty principle".
What is an "ordinary particle"? Also as far as I understand all subatomic particles are limited by the uncertainty principle aren't they?   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.181.33.59 (talk) 22:44, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately large parts of the article are based on popular science descriptions, which means we have a lot of nonsense. But these popular science descriptions are defended vigorously by some users, and of course these users find plenty of references for the nonsense. Virtual particles are mathematical tools in perturbation theory, their existence is limited to our calculations. "Ordinary" refers to real particles here, I assume. --mfb (talk) 18:33, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm prepared to believe this, but there's one thing I don't get. I came here from the article on Hawking Radiation. By my understanding (I took three physics classes in college and got C's in all of them) it involves virtual particles causing radiation that leads to black holes evaporating over time. This phenomenon--again by my understanding--has been theorized but not observed. However, it should be observable. That is, it's a falsifiable claim. How is it that we can flatly say virtual particles are just a mathematical tool when their (possible) existence has testable implications? Is it that the physics community has reached a general consensus that Hawking Radiation doesn't exist? Or is the math behind this radiation using a similar mathematical trick, and I'm wrong about there being an implication that virtual particles would have to exist? Is this the product of different schools of physicists who both think they're the main body of physics and the other is the fringe? Am I just a big dumb baby?173.66.39.252 (talk) 19:20, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Hawking radiation has absolutely nothing to do with virtual particles. Not even the calculations involve them. It's purely a popular science myth. --mfb (talk) 04:49, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Confusing first line

message: If Einstein lived today he'd have become an alcoholic at the ridiculous state of physics. I was the person who added the last paragraph of the introduction which called into question the foundation for the origin of virtual particles. I put it there based on my own understanding of physics, and though I didn't cite a reference I thought it was an innocuous commentary that just gave more context to the subject. After all, a virtual particle has never been observed, and by its own clever conception it cannot even exist if its observed. If that's not a catch 22 situation I guess they don't exist. I now see that the writing is "literally" on the wall that a citation is required. Well, I don't have one other than my own published writing and I refuse to cite my own writing based on a general cringing at self promotion. 
So Wolfkeeper, remove that paragraph if you must and we can all chalk it up as a further example of physics moving in lockstep over the cliff. Physics has now become so absurd that as long as you cite an important person as ignorant as oneself you can pontificate on anything, including multiverses which by definition, being separate universes, have no causality with our own. What a sad situation where a science beloved by many of us has been taken over by accountants without the slightest shred of common sense or genuine intuition.75.7.4.16 09:28, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was going to leave it, or just remove some of the weasel words, but based on the evidence presented above, I'm taking it out entirely.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 10:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Oh and BTW, in physics we don't play 'count the universes' any more than we play 'count the atoms'. We play 'count the assumptions'. That's how physics works, that's how it has always worked.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 10:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "but based on the evidence presented above, I'm taking it out entirely." In other words, Wolfkeeper, you are mad so you are you using that as an excuse to take out needed contextual counterbalance on the subject of virtual particles. Another sad commentary on the state of discourse in physics today. Your actions follow your emotion of the moment rather than logical thought processes. 75.7.4.16 19:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it was mainly the fact that you admitted you were never, ever going to cite it, together with your admission that it was OR; but if you give us a link here to any published paper we can still evaluate it for notability, but otherwise it's staying gone because it's unverifiable.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 19:57, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

text:  Wolfkeeper, you are not thinking logically, but emotionally. Otherwise you'd realize the absurdity of talking about the "verifiableness" of my comments. We are talking about a subject, virtual particles, whose main definition is that they aren't verifiable. Haven't you figured out yet that all you are protecting on this subject is the idea of "precedence", in which a cockamamy idea which by definition couldn't be proved became accepted without proof. If you had  any sense at all you'd realize the burden of proof is on you and the people who have accepted this idea. Virtual particles are a bookkeeping mechanism required because of our ignorance of what is really going on in this area of physics. Why are you pretending that it isn't, and instead acting like the burden of proof in denying the "bookkeeping" reality isn't on you and not me. You are just compounding ignorance with stubornness.75.7.4.16 20:37, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hey, the main point of quarks is that they aren't verifiable, either. Does that make them a mere bookkeeping device? For that matter, you've never seen an isolated real photon, let alone a virtual one. Are "real" photons mere bookkeeping devices to "explain" that energy is absorbed out of the EM field only in chunks? Why not just leave it at that, instead of making the "chunks" into clunky particles? And now, let's start on electrons. Ever seen one? How do you know they aren't just a bookkeeping device? And even more importantly, why doesn't we agree to let bookkeeping have two p's, so we can have four sets of double letters in a row, instead of just three? SBHarris 18:03, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: To take a more everyday argument, when you unevenly cool a lump of iron, internal forces are set up which don't have any external effects, you never have internal forces entering or leaving the lump of iron, and internal forces never appear in a non perturbative calculation, so it's questionable whether internal forces exist at all, right? It's just a bookkeeping thing; but you can measure the distortions due to them. And lumps of iron frequently crack open due to them.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 18:25, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

text: The argument against virtual particles in the article is of this same form, and is completely unreferenced.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 18:25, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: SB,Being a physician it seems strange to me that you would try to correct a physicist's arguments about physics. I don't try to correct your ideas about medicine. I'm referring to your comments on the discussion page about "virtual particles". What you are doing in that discussion is taking ideas that have been superceded and taken them as gospel. I'm sure there are things in medicine that I could quote from a 40 year old book, and do it in the most literal way and pretty much offend you by telling you that you are a quack because you don't agree with me. Well, that's what you and many other people are doing on the subject of virtual particles. To get a better idea of what is really going on in physics read the wiki article "zero-point field" which I've contributed about 90 percent of.75.7.27.34 (talk) 09:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Being a physician I'd be glad to be taught by a real physicist. Are you one? What are your credentials? My name is on my userpage. All I see from you is a mix of IP-hopping like I'd expect from a banned sock or a vandal. Surely if you're an authority on physics you'd be proud of that? And people wouldn't laugh at you, but would take you seriously, like new-age guru Hal Puthoff? Wups, no, strike that: they do laugh at Puthoff, even though he is a physicist. Free energy suppression consipracy and New Age. My, my. Is this where physics is, today? From reading all the unreferenced stuff in the zero-point field article I'd guess perhaps you are Puthoff. If so, good luck, but the community of respectable physicists (not to mention physicians) is not backing you, and you well know it. PS: Where's your free energy, baby? We need it. SBHarris 21:14, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sad state of physics 

message: After an evening of reading I connected the dots from virtual particle to off the mass shell. I can't believe it was so hard to find an explanation of this anywhere on the net. I thin an explanation like the following, would clear things up for many newbies: 
http://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2014/apr/06/off-mass-shell-pythagoras-to-the-lhc-via-einstein-and-feynman
:Yeah, I think not too many understand the difference philosophically. The page On/off shell is not very good either, being mostly just mathematics. Discusing virtual vs real particles as if vitual means imaginary or unreal, is not very useful. I think the word "virtual" here is not a very good name for the "particles". My (I'm not very much of a quantum physicist) understading of "virtual" is more like the particles being vague or incomplete (of shell) and in many ways more wave-like than classical particle-like. The jargon itself does not help much in understading this philosofically, and it is easy to get the impression that the physicists that originally discovered these consepts in the mathematics, did not really know how to interpret it very well either. Yikkayaya (talk) 21:25, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explaining the relation to off/on shell would clear up everything instantly. 

message: The section Pair production has some claims that bear on the reality/nonreality of virtual particles. I looked for citations that discuss the relevance of the Unruh effect to virtual particles, but in the sources I found they weren't mentioned. Similarly, the article on vacuum decay doesn't mention virtual particles at all. Can anyone find sources that explicitly relate these phenomena to virtual particles? RockMagnetist(talk) 18:13, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pair production 

message: see The Physics of Virtual Particles https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/physics-virtual-particles/  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:62A:4:2F00:223:24FF:FE74:F329 (talk) 18:24, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: See also

message: There should be two different pages on virtual particles, one called  virtual particles (physics), and one called  virtual particles (popular science).
The meanings assigned are completely different in both cases, and mixing up these different notions causes considerable confusion and misunderstandings.
See "Misconceptions about Virtual Particles" 	https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/misconceptions-virtual-particles/
The same applies for the treatment of virtual particles in various related pages, in particular
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_Radiation [se below]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron#Virtual_particles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information
:: I don't know about a split, but this would be a really helpful section in themain article. 2601:647:4501:2510:A50B:52A3:3E37:1D2D (talk) 06:01, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion to split the page 

message: The last sentence in the intro about virtual particles being unrelated to anti-particles seemed like a non-sequitur, until I got down to the "History" section, which seems to be entirely about anti-particles (or, even more confusingly, solid-state electron holes) -- and some comments here indicate that either these concepts are very frequently confused, or I am not understanding something properly.
So, I'm just removing the history section.
2601:647:4501:2510:A50B:52A3:3E37:1D2D (talk) 05:57, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  History / anti-particle confusion 

message: "However, all particles have a finite lifetime, as they are created and eventually destroyed by some processes."
This is the first time I've seen this claim. As far as I know no one has ever observed electron or proton decay, and not for lack of looking. If whomever made this entry can provide a citation I would love to read it.
19:00, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I second this concern. Is a philosophical point being made? Several particles are believed to have infinite lifetime.  Spiel496 (talk) 22:33, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

text: It is "technically correct" in the way the author probably meant it: any interaction "destroys" the original particle (it can "create" a different particle of the same type, but with different momentum, spin or whatever). It is misleading in the way it is written, however. Maybe something like "all particles have interactions with other particles". --mfb (talk) 17:23, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  All particles decay?? 

message: Several places in the article mention that a characteristic of virtual particles is that they exist for a very short time. Is that a real testable fact, or is it a poetic interpretation of the math? Can this time be quantified?  Spiel496 (talk) 22:38, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The article needs an overhaul, and you have a couple of points above. But this last point is a fact linked to what ought to be the definition of virtual particle. In terms of Feynman diagrams, they are represented by internal lines. There is no precise upper limit for how long they can exist though (in this model) as far as I know. YohanN7 (talk) 11:29, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

text: They don't exist, and they certainly don't exist for a quantifiable amount of time. --mfb (talk) 17:25, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  This article needs a major overhaul. For instance it also lists just random QED phenomena as "manifestations of virtual particles", because they can be calculated using them, when they are just that.. random QED phenomena, not consequences of virtual particles. Specifically the Casimir effect is often mentioned as relying on virtual particles actually "popping out of the vacuum". 92.196.127.198 (talk) 07:48, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  exists for a limited time 

message: The section "Manifestations" suggests that gluons, as the boson force carrier for the strong force, are massive whereas they are theorectically massless.
Spope3 (talk) 21:42, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. --mfb (talk) 08:14, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section "Manifestations" and gluon mass 

message: After looking at both talk pages, and wikifying the sole instance of a mention of this article's topic on the others page: I've hopefully gleaned a laymen's basic overview to a degree that there is some weight in thinking these two topics may be similar enough to warrant an amending summary. If only to give  some content with distinctions for how to regard one against the other and what distinguishes them.
Unless there is something more fundamental that I am missing, it seems that quasiparticles occur within particles as composite energies, internally, and virtual particles occur between particles, externally, through space or a medium not intrinsic to the particle itself. Otherwise they both share a transitory nature whose states cannot be readily verified as a stand alone entity but which nevertheless have properties related to some particle in their effect.
If this reasoning isn't viable; whether by being overtly simplistic, just off the mark from the inherent difference entirely or wholly erroneous with there being any rationale whatsoever to compare the two. I would very much like to know. Nagelfar (talk) 00:46, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Virtual particles are mathematical tools in perturbation theory. Quasiparticles are ways to describe the behavior of many particles (e.g. atoms in a crystal) in ways similar to real particles. What makes up quasiparticles is real, unlike for virtual particles. --mfb (talk) 02:05, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Virtual particle vs. [[quasiparticle]] 

message: It should be stated that "virtual particles come from Quantum Field Theory". I will add the sentence to the article, but if you think it can be worded better or placed in a better location, feel free to move it / rewrite it. Qsimanelix (talk) 18:31, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Virtual particles come from Quantum Field Theory