Particles vs Fields

The cluster debates whether subatomic particles like electrons and photons are real discrete entities or merely excitations and manifestations of underlying quantum fields in quantum field theory.

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Keywords

AFAIK e.g sciencemag.org arxiv.org i.e QFT wikipedia.org EM particles particle photons quantum field fields mud charge electrons mass

Sample Comments

pg_is_a_butt • Jan 26, 2020 • View on HN

Why aren't electrons photons?

blueprint • Feb 5, 2022 • View on HN

Particles don't really exist - they're merely what it looks like when we make a measurement of a field.

1718627440 • Jul 30, 2025 • View on HN

Why do there need to be particles? I don't think there are.

phkahler • Jul 10, 2021 • View on HN

What if that's what subatomic particles actually are?

maxerickson • Sep 9, 2021 • View on HN

Is "particle" the correct model, or is it just very useful?

amerine • Sep 10, 2021 • View on HN

Are virtual particles a real thing or just a description of the underlying system?

ChrisClark • May 25, 2025 • View on HN

Yeah, everything is just like photons, everything is a wave/particle

tsimionescu • Jun 20, 2022 • View on HN

Are these physical objects? Do they have mass, energy, volume, a position or speed, charge, color charge, weak hyper charge, spin etc?

dschuetz • Dec 1, 2023 • View on HN

What the hell are "quantum particles"?

lawrenceyan • Feb 20, 2020 • View on HN

Particles don't really exist. Nor do waves for that matter either. Generally these days, it's considered more correct to think in terms of fields and excitations. Even then though it's important to realize that what we're working with are models. Very powerful and extremely accurate models, but still models nonetheless at the end of the day.