so I've read a lot of things about QED and stuff, and I've clearly understood that charged particles are in fact "charged" because they exchange virtual photons, small packets of energy with each other, and that's ok. But I've always asked myself: how can two charged particles exchange the same virtual particle and act differently (attraction / repulsion). I've already seen the boat example of the conservation of momentum, but that makes me think that maybe charge is related to the quantum spin and orientation of the particle and direction of emission of the photon? So then why are some particles that don't have spin charged? I'm having a hard time with this. Please don't answer if your response is: "They act like this because that's how they are built", because i could say that protons are charged because that's how they are built, but we all know they are made of quarks, so I'm searching of a correlation with what I've just said.
1 Answers
I've clearly understood that charged particles are in fact "charged" because they exchange virtual photons, small packets of energy with each other, and that's ok.
You are confusing the natural reality which has recorded charged and neutral particles with measurements and observations, with a Quantum Field Theory model for fitting those observation in a confused manner.
In QFT the charge of the particle can be modeled as virtual photons , but not as
are in fact "charged" because they exchange virtual photons, small packets of energy with each other
but virtual particles are not small packets of energy. They are part of the mathematical model of QFT which uses Feynman diagrams for its calculations, and are called virtual because they are off mass shell and exist only in the mathematics of the calculation of particle interactions.
My answer here goes into the Feynman diagrams whose calculations will allow attraction and repulsion, and a bit about the boat analogy.
- 236,935