Notes - on the virtual and the real

        You had Smashburgers for an early supper. Carol has been readying for the trip to Kim and Paul's in the morning. Aunt Patsy left you her grandmother's rocker from Denmark and a charming and clean wooden bench that will seat two; it reminds you of a bench seat one might see at a local Presbyterian or Methodist church; you are picking them up tomorrow with Kim's Odyssey and are leaving them at KanP's into Spring. - Amorella

         1858 hours. "Virtual particle" struck my interest a few days ago. It is from the conclusion of an article I posted on 17 November 17. The concept of the virtual particle coincides, in my mind, with the possibility that 'consciousness' (a self-fulfilled noun) may fit in such territory -- partially real in a scientific sense. Consciousness is 'real' in terms of heartansoulanmind, my 'elements' as it were of the human spirit.

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. . . So there was an ingenious idea that came along.  Suppose there’s a force field filling the universe that somehow slows particles down to below the speed of light.  This would make them have mass, and that was basically what this Higgs field introduction was to be.  So here’s kind of a graphical representation of this.  Particles are moving through the universe through the vacuum – we call it a vacuum – and there’s a field, there’s this Higgs field that permeates the entire universe, and some particles interact with it more than others.  And the more they try to increase their momentum, the more they interact.  Other particles don’t interact.  The photon, for instance, doesn’t see this at all, but all the other particles that have mass, all the fundamental particles, interact with this field, and it slows them down. 

OK.  Is it a field or a particle?  Fields have very small packets of energies associated with them called quanta, as Secretary Chu mentioned.  Elementary particles interact by exchange of field quanta.  So here I show, for instance, the exchange of a photon for the repulsion of two electrons, OK?  This is not so hard to believe, OK.  But it gets a bit more counterintuitive with more complicated processes.  In fact, it gets very, very, very, counterintuitive.  So, OK – I already told you that E equals MC squared.  Now it turns out that a particle and an anti-particle could just pop out of empty space and then return.  We call this the vacuum – and this is a vacuum fluctuation – and then vanish again, OK?

These are virtual particles, and it’s a very important part of the universe.  It has very far-reaching consequences.  The structure of the universe actually depends on particles that don’t exist in the usual sense but did when the universe was very hot and very young.  And in some sense, this is the reason we do what we do.  We’re trying to understand what particles could exist because they actually have an impact on the structure of the universe and particles that do exist that we use and see. . . .

Selected and edited from --  https://energy.gov/videos/science-lecture-talking-higgs-boson-dr-joseph-incandela  (dropped in 17 November 17 notes posting)

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         Virtual particles, to you, are quasi-reality physics wise, the closest to metaphysical where you put heartansoulanmind. - Amorella

         1951 hours. It's an arbitrary region, Amorella. Perhaps 'non-physical' is better a nomenclature than metaphysical.

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metaphysical -| adjective 1 relating to metaphysics: the essentially metaphysical question of the nature of the mind. • based on abstract (typically, excessively abstract) reasoning: an empiricist rather than a metaphysical view of law. • transcending physical matter or the laws of nature: Good and Evil are inextricably linked in a metaphysical battle across space and time.

Selected and edited from the Oxford/American software

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         1957 hours. This is a surprise. The 'metaphysical' definition above will work but I'm better with non-physical. Where else would I put heartansoulanmind but metaphysical. Consciousness, on the other hand, may be non-physical in 'being'; not perhaps a noun, but surely it is clearly a process-of-being not 'being' as such. Even 'thought' could be a process; perhaps something akin analogous with being a particle or a wave.

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Virtual particle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In physics, a virtual particle is a transient fluctuation that exhibits some of the characteristics of an ordinary particle, but whose existence is limited by the uncertainty principle. The concept of virtual particles arises in perturbation theory of quantum field theory where interactions between ordinary particles are described in terms of exchanges of virtual particles. Any process involving virtual particles admits a schematic representation known as a Feynman diagram, in which virtual particles are represented by internal lines.

Virtual particles do not necessarily carry the same mass as the corresponding real particle, although they always conserve energy and momentum. The longer the virtual particle exists, the closer its characteristics come to those of ordinary particles. They are important in the physics of many processes, including particle scattering and Casimir forces. In quantum field theory, even classical forces—such as the electromagnetic repulsion  or attraction between two charges—can be thought of as due to the exchange of many virtual photons between the charges.

The term is somewhat loose and vaguely defined, in that it refers to the view that the world is made up of "real particles": it is not; rather, "real particles" are better understood to be excitations of the underlying quantum fields. Virtual particles are also excitations of the underlying fields, but are "temporary" in the sense that they appear in calculations of interactions, but never as asymptotic states or indices to the scattering matrix. The accuracy and use of virtual particles in calculations is firmly established, but as they cannot be detected in experiments, deciding how to precisely describe them is a topic of debate.

Manifestations

There are many observable physical phenomena that arise in interactions involving virtual particles. For bosonic particles that exhibit rest mass when they are free and actual, virtual interactions are characterized by the relatively short range of the force interaction produced by particle exchange. Examples of such short-range interactions are the strong and weak forces, and their associated field bosons.

For the gravitational and electromagnetic forces, the zero rest-mass of the associated boson particle permits long-range forces to be mediated by virtual particles. However, in the case of photons, power and information transfer by virtual particles is a relatively short-range phenomenon (existing only within a few wavelengths of the field-disturbance, which carries information or transferred power), as for example seen in the characteristically short range of inductive and capacitative effects in the near-field zone of coils and antennas. . .

Compared to actual particles

As a consequence of quantum mechanical uncertainty, any object or process that exists for a limited time or in a limited volume cannot have a precisely defined energy or momentum. This is the reason that virtual particles – which exist only temporarily as they are exchanged between ordinary particles – do not necessarily obey the mass-shell relation. However, the longer a virtual particle exists, the more closely it adheres to the mass-shell relation, so a "virtual" particle that exists for an arbitrarily long time is simply an ordinary or "real" particle. In that sense, electromagnetic waves consist of real photons rather than virtual ones. For example, a typical 700 W microwave oven emits photons with wavelength roughly λ = 3 cm, and produces about 10⁺²⁶ real photons every second.

However, all particles were created at some point and will eventually be destroyed in some processes. Since all particles have a finite lifetime, there is no absolute distinction between "real" and "virtual" particles. In practice, in particle physics processes, the lifetime of real particles is vastly longer than the lifetime of the virtual particles and as such the distinction is useful to make.

Selected and heavily edited from Wikipedia

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         You took time out to watch last night's "The Good Doctor" which, to you is critically, one of the best shows ever made. - Amorella        

         2217 hours. So, the real difference between virtual particles and real particles is the length of their particle lifetime. Real particles exist longer. Consciousness, as I would rather see it, is the opposite. Consciousness, like, or as, part of the spirit lasts longer than the real, the physical.

         You 'learned' (or surmised) something in any case. Not bad any day of the week. Post. - Amorella