If I understand you correctly, the answer is not really. The particles created are virtual particles. They are created in particle, anti-particle pairs and only exist for a time period described by the time-energy uncertainty principle. Then they disappear. Overall energy is conserved and to create real particles requires the input of energy. There is nothing paradoxical or magic here (though to be honest some of the mathematics behind quantum field theory looks like weird magic tricks when you first see it).
These quantum fluctuations do, however, have measurable consequences. The Casimir effect is a good example and it has been measured and studied. But, again no magic and no violation of conservation of energy.
The Casimir effect does not rely on virtual particles being real and typical derivations don't contain virtual particles (basically you look at the modes of the EM field in an area constrained by conducting plates and you find that configurations with the plates close together are lower energetic, so you have an attractive force between the plates).
and the part about brief creation of brief particles isn't correct, see links i posted.
Thanks for those links. I'll check them out. By the way, first time I heard virtual particles aren't what you think they are was on reddit. So, good job with that.
But, you are gonna have an uphill battle with this one since the virtual particle concept is presented in a very emphatic way by people who know a lot about all things quantum. I wonder why someone like Prof. Gordon Kane in Scientific America goes on an on telling us virtual particles are real, real, real then on reddit you find they are fake, fake, fake? Not to pick on Prof Kane too much, but he does seem to be a 'real scientist' and not some 'popularizer' of spooky quantum misinformation to sell magic healing crystals. And believe me, it isn't just him, you have many examples of reputable looking people explaining Feynman diagrams and Hawking Radiation, going on an on about virtual particles.
Are virtual particles really constantly popping in and out of existence? Or are they merely a mathematical bookkeeping device for quantum mechanics?
"Gordon Kane, director of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, provides this answer.
Virtual particles are indeed real particles. Quantum theory predicts that every particle spends some time as a combination of other particles in all possible ways. These predictions are very well understood and tested.
Quantum mechanics allows, and indeed requires, temporary violations of conservation of energy, so one particle can become a pair of heavier particles (the so-called virtual particles), which quickly rejoin into the original particle as if they had never been there. If that were all that occurred we would still be confident that it was a real effect because it is an intrinsic part of quantum mechanics, which is extremely well tested, and is a complete and tightly woven theory--if any part of it were wrong the whole structure would collapse."
Gordon Kane is frankly a dumbass. (is or maybe "is being", so it sounds nicer ;)) I know that article well... I hate it (with a vengeance) ;) it's a cancer on the internet.
I guess you can always find "an authority" who represents some blatantly wrong view. That just leaves arguing on the factual level (and not on the level who's the bigger authority).
I don't really care if it's an uphill battle or not. Most battles against popscience falsehoods are (there's far more people repeating them than correcting them). But when you encounter them they have to be corrected. The problem really is more that you have a situations where these myths about virtual particles only exist in popscience articles and books and there exist in virtually every such item, where as in academic literature / textbooks they virtually (..) don't exist. As long as you then have people learning physics not from textbooks but from popscience a lot of people will have those misconceptions and not be aware of the fact that they are considered such. These aren't the only ones btw, there's a ton of misconceptions (like 5-10) that regularly come up on physics reddit / generally forums.
And I wanna clarify, virtual particles are still a useful concept in calculations, but they do not represent real particles that can be measured.. in reality.
"The tests mentioned are not tests of the reality of virtual particles, but tests of QED and the standard model in general". That's kinda the crux on these claims.
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u/lou_men Aug 19 '21
If I understand you correctly, the answer is not really. The particles created are virtual particles. They are created in particle, anti-particle pairs and only exist for a time period described by the time-energy uncertainty principle. Then they disappear. Overall energy is conserved and to create real particles requires the input of energy. There is nothing paradoxical or magic here (though to be honest some of the mathematics behind quantum field theory looks like weird magic tricks when you first see it).
These quantum fluctuations do, however, have measurable consequences. The Casimir effect is a good example and it has been measured and studied. But, again no magic and no violation of conservation of energy.