Virtual particles, existence of -- concepts vs objects

About the concept of virtual particles in quantum mechanics, is the concept purely in the mind of man or it has objective existence outside the mind?

What does it explain in the objective world outside our minds, I mean phenomena or events or things outside our minds, so that even though there are no humans to talk about virtual particles, these particles objectively exist in concrete objective reality independent of man's mind, and they have a role in the workings of the physical material world of things and events and whatever else existing independently of our human mind thinking about them.

originally posted by: Pachomius
About the concept of virtual particles in quantum mechanics, is the concept purely in the mind of man or it has objective existence outside the mind?

What does it explain in the objective world outside our minds, I mean phenomena or events or things outside our minds, so that even though there are no humans to talk about virtual particles, these particles objectively exist in concrete objective reality independent of man's mind, and they have a role in the workings of the physical material world of things and events and whatever else existing independently of our human mind thinking about them.

profmattstrassler.com...

a reply to: Pachomius

I can say with 100% certainty, 'we' do not know all there is to know about reality.

I can say with 100% certainty, although I do not know all there is to know about reality, I know that reality always equals itself.

Reality cannot be anything other than tautological.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed (though, it may be able to leak out at the furthest edges of the absolute most zoomed out picture of the totality of all stuff).

Theory regarding the most fundamental nature of reality, or at least, our universe, consists of the terms particles, waves, and fields (generally and at least). Everything that exists must be composed of the most fundamental, (everything big, is composed of much small...all that 'exists' is the most small fundamental, though in greater and lesser quantitative and qualitative relations of stability, which creates 'bigger than the small fundamental' objects.)

From the little I know regarding virtual particles; I think it is theorized that... Well, for starters, we cannot 'know' 'something' 'exists' 'somewhere' without at least attempting, to detect it.

So I for one cannot say whether or not I know the theory, and whether or not I know the theory equals reality. In regards to, if there is a fundamental substance (field, which is a brand of energy/matter) that pervades every infinitesimal point of/in our universe.

Or, if in our universe, there is, perfect/true/pure/absolute/real nothingness space. That would be a 3d area of any size, that contains absolutely no semblance of particle, field, energy, wave, etc. absolute absolute nothing nothing nothing.

Regardless;

Therefore... it is not known, by me at least, how the charged particle, let us use electron for example, is attached, to that component, which when the electron is accelerated, allows/is forced to perpetuate the verifiable existence of what we call 'EM radiation'.

How is the electron attached/coupled/connected to that 'field'/continuous medium of fundamental particles/discrete or continuous medium of energy substance?

Ok, so my theory about these theories, is that some physicists, maybe the amateur ones who discuss this stuff in plain sight, cant bring themselves to believe in an all pervading EM field, because it took them a lot of time to feel cool and smart learning that the aether theories were proven wrong, so they cant believe that the most modern theory of field theory, is a rehashing of aether theory, so they are forced to say 'a virtual sea of photons exist', and when the electron is accelerated, it interacts with 'virtual particles' which turn into real particles, that propagate away as EM radiation.

Oh and I forgot to add. The reason the concept is of 'virtual', is because if there is an energy field of sorts for EM radiation, the EM field which actually exists throughout space, as the gravity field is thought to exist as an energy dense medium throughout space, independent of mass, the EM radiation, or EM field is thought to be its own structure that exists apart, though coupled to charge, (in kind of a weird chicken or the egg thing), so regardless of that detail of fundamentality, we know when a charged particle is accelerated, we can detect, at a distance away from that particle, the propagating energetic result of the acceleration of that particle, which is that the movement of the charged particle, moved the medium it is attached to, and the medium is now rippling, or 'virtually created in that moment', at a frequency directly related in some mathematic and qualitatively geometric way, intimately to the way and ferocity in which the charged particle was accelerated; The reason they are referred to as virtual particles, is because 'what it is', 'where and what the energy comes from' that is the virtual particles (which are real 'tangible' 'things', greater than 0 value, or else there would be no need to have a word referring to anything, for that word is and always will be nothing and the concept of nothing, virtual particle, the term, is not referring to nothing; its a virtual particle, because 'before the electron accelerated to make the immediate medium it is coupled to vibrate thus turning into a discrete packet or specific frequency, which propagates away from the point of acceleration, that area of medium was 'not a particle'. See, because the term and concept even for EM radiation, wave, photon, particle, is so messy and unsure and loose and sloppy, as in, the standard concept of a particle, may not appropriately apply to what EM radiation most fundamentally is, so prior to EM radiation occurring, that being, the EM field at a near standstill, or its energetic density average, that would be deemed 'a sea of virtual particles', and so when the Electron is accelerated, it 'actualizes virtual particles', or takes the potential energy of the field it is coupled to, and turns it into detectable energy.

it is my position that 'virtual particles', God Particles, Higgs Bosons and all those exotic Quanta which sometimes pop into existence in this observable universe are condensed, particulates of energy...components of the Deep Waters


there is a unseen 'soup' from which all matter got made from... in Genesis this mysterious substance is called
the waters of the deep... which only now the theoretical physicists and multi-dimension quantum physicists are hinting at incorporating into their creation models (by a different name however, As they (in secular science) can't give Genesis or ancient creation texts any status/merit)

a reply to: Pachomius

Is the concept purely in the mind of man or it has objective existence outside the mind?

All concepts are mental. The question really is whether they correspond to a physical reality of some kind.

Real physical effects, such as Hawking radiation and the Casimir effect, are attributed to the action of virtual particles.

That suggests the objective existence of something.

a reply to: Pachomius

Now you are talking my language!

I believe this is just the start of a whole new field within physics; symbols and their potential instances as created by the observer. These are initially hard ideas to imagine, but are well documented within philosophy and more practically withing semantics. One easy way of imagining these concepts are as Templates and the actual Object(s) you make from the Template, where the Template is the Concept and the Object(s) are the instances you create from the templates as the Observer. As such, the template is is only the blueprint of the actual object instance and not the object instance in itself.

This also corresponds well to the Esoteric Planes where the objects are manifested in the Physical Plane, while the concepts exists in the Mental Plane.

-MM

"Virtual particles"

And these particles obey the laws of Physics and physics is based on maths right !

Well our DNA is a form of 4 bit computer code and we know our brains work like a computer and MR scanners linked to a computer can even read the brain.

The conclusions are obvious that we live inside some type of advanced sim-city and this will screw with your brain at first but then you realize that just because a table feels real even if its not physical in anymore scene that a table in a computer game, it does not matter because your affiliation to atoms is no more important than your affiliation to bits and bytes.

I don't want to be someone's avatar in a game or part of a simulation to see how a fungus spreads on an petro dish so this leaves two options but I will only cover one option

We are connected to our real selves and have some type of sole but the true being is just a child in his world and is being trained by a type of computer simulation and when you in this world remember a part of a dream then its because the memory garbage collector has left fragments of data in memory that have not been cleaned up.

Wait a moment or two and the memory disappears as the garbage collector does its job and removes all traces of the previous simulation.

Row, Row, Row your boat gently down the stream..................... life is but a dream

I mean phenomena or events or things outside our minds

Everything is outside our minds else you would have one hell of a headache and our mind just crates a visual illusion so that we can interpret data from the network and with a few tricks of the brain like watching 3D TV we get to visualize everything as 3D and if you buy a high-tech virtual glove then even today you can feel virtual objects.

I fear for where we are going with machines as a species / simulation but stop it I cannot

originally posted by: Pachomius
About the concept of virtual particles in quantum mechanics, is the concept purely in the mind of man or it has objective existence outside the mind?

Everything about the description of physics is in the human mind.

But virtual particles (as described by humans) correspond to actual physical behavior.

The problem really comes up by trying to 'expand' solutions of partial differential field equations (in principle, potentially infinite dimensional) in terms of accumulations of 'point' or discretized entities (components of a sum). Just like the Fourier Transform can turn a PDE into a set of algebraic ODE's (finite dimensional) if you give a cutoff.

Is it about the math? Yes. Should you take these 'virtual particles' to be anything philosophically important? No.

It's unfortunate to be named 'particles', as really they are 'virtual solution components', only the real ones should be upgraded to 'particle status', ones which can propagate consitently.

There is an analogy in classical electromagnetism: these en.wikipedia.org... are non-propagating solutions to the Maxwell equations. The propagating solutions (EM waves) correspond to real particles. The evanscent solutions correspond to virtual particles. Just stuff that happens when you expand PDE's into sums of interacting modes.

What does it explain in the objective world outside our minds, I mean phenomena or events or things outside our minds, so that even though there are no humans to talk about virtual particles, these particles objectively exist in concrete objective reality independent of man's mind, and they have a role in the workings of the physical material world of things and events and whatever else existing independently of our human mind thinking about them.

Yes. If you use certain representations, it is necessary to include 'virtual particles' (certain terms) in calculations to get the most accurate physically observable results.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Let us say that we are allowed only 100 words to explain what are virtual particles the concept that is, and how they explain things in the world of everyday life, like the physiological heart of man and the mechanical heart pacemaker.

What is the role of virtual particles in the physiological heart and in the mechanical heart pacemaker: if we do not have the concept of virtual particles, but we have an explanation for the working of the heart and the working of the heart pacemaker, is this explanation (without the participation of virtual particles) already complete and it enables man to improve the physiological heart as also the mechanical heart pacemaker?

Would a heart surgeon and a mechanical engineer still understand the working of the heart better with the concept of virtual particles?

a reply to: Pachomius

I'm not seeing the link between virtual particles and hearts/pacemakers.

a reply to: GetHyped

You see, the more man knows about things, the better he can make use of new and better knowledge to improve his life and everything that makes life more livable and enjoyable.

Now, my point is that all this talk about virtual particles, if the knowledge involved is good for nothing like improving the expertise of heart surgeons and the expertise of engineers who device all kinds of cardiovascular contraptions to keep the heart beating right or even substitute for the heart, then that kind of knowledge is good for amusement only, like say, science fiction.

Do you get my drift?

Or to be undiplomatic, do experts in virtual particles just want to wow us lay folks with virtual articles that pop in and out of existence from no cause at all, when if we be really clever, they are just pulling our leg in order to get more money from us by way of government grants to continue with their useless speculations. and living a comfortable and honorable and glamorous in a way existence.

a reply to: Pachomius

Do experts in virtual particles just want to wow us lay folks with virtual articles that pop in and out of existence from no cause at all, when if we be really clever, they are just pulling our leg in order to get more money from us by way of government grants to continue with their useless speculations. and living a comfortable and honorable and glamorous in a way existence.

Oh, it's much worse than that.

The entire establishment of theoretical physics exists in order to make you — yes, you — feel like a klutz.

They stay up all night planning it. 'What shall we say next to make Pachomius look silly?'

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: Pachomius

I'm not seeing the link between virtual particles and hearts/pacemakers.

Good. You're on to something.







(there isn't one)

originally posted by: Pachomius
Thanks everyone for your replies.

Let us say that we are allowed only 100 words to explain what are virtual particles the concept that is, and how they explain things in the world of everyday life, like the physiological heart of man and the mechanical heart pacemaker.

Virtual particles: A bad name arising from a particular mathematical summation expansion of a field. Everyday life? Your laser equations are a bit more accurate when you do the full calculation---including "virtual particles" just means a more accurate solution of the field equations.

You see, in the name of virtual particles which in media hype pop in and out of existence without a cause, quantum experts like Krauss tell mankind that the universe came forth from nothing.

I want to tell everyone here, it takes Krauss to tell folks like us by writing a book which he sells and makes money from other folks who love to read that the universe came forth from nothing.

I ask you folks who do not buy his book and do not accept his statement that the universe came forth from nothing, don't you see that it must be some kind of semantic sleight of hand, with him telling mankind that the universe came forth from nothing?

Now, from what I read in reviews, the man is not really saying that the universe came forth from literally nothing, but from a quantum fluctuation or vacuum fluctuation: so it is not nothing.


Krauss expatiates to readers, and you should not have missed it, namely, that it is because folks used to take it for granted that in empty space there is nothing, so everyone thought so, but now physicists or astrophysicists have realized that empty space is not nothing, there are many things in what appears to us to be empty space -- in fact space itself is something, it is not nothing.

And that is what Krauss is saying, but you have to be a careful critical reader to see into that.

But why does he put as the title of his book, in big font, A Universe from Nothing?

Why There IS Something rather than Nothing
A Universe from Nothing


He wants to tell mankind in so many words i.e. loosely, at least his fans who love to read that science has established that the universe came forth from nothing, therefore no God is needed.

There must be fans of Krauss or atheists here who endorse the idea that because virtual particle can pop in and out of existence from nothing, so the universe could and did pop into existence from nothing.

I like to ask them, fans of Krauss and atheists, what is your proof that the universe popped into existence from nothing, aside from what you read in media hype that virtual particles pop in and out of existence without cause, so also therefore the universe could and did.

I think we can have a good exchange on why it is so or it is not so, namely, yes or no, the universe popped into existence from nothing.