AaS! 35: What are "virtual particles"?
Ask a Spaceman!
Paul M. Sutter
4.8 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2016
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What are virtual particles? What do they have to do with waving fields around? And why can’t physicists use meaningful jargon words? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!
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Music by Jason Grady and Nick Bain.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You know what time it is. It's time for Ask a Space Man. I'm your host, Paul Sutter. You've got questions and I've got answers. You know how the show works, but let's go through it again in reality. |
| 0:22.7 | You go online to Twitter or Facebook. Use the hashtag Ask a Space man and send some questions my way. |
| 0:28.3 | And I will pick ones out to answer on this very show. Sometimes a bunch in one episode, sometimes |
| 0:34.0 | one at a time depends on my mood that particular week. You can also follow me on |
| 0:39.6 | Twitter and Facebook. My name is Paul Matt Sutter, P-A-U-L-M-A-T-T-S-U, two more T's, and then an ER. |
| 0:46.6 | You can also find the show at Ask a Spaceman.com. There you'll find show notes. You can make |
| 0:52.4 | comments. You can ask questions there. You can follow up. |
| 0:55.1 | By the way, I really like it when you follow up. When I say something that you didn't quite get, or I said |
| 1:01.1 | something that you just want to know more and you want to have a little discussion about it, send me an |
| 1:06.0 | email at Ask aSpaceman at gmail.com or posted on the website, Ask a Spaceman.com. Or go to YouTube. |
| 1:12.6 | YouTube.com slash C slash Paul Matt Sutter. That's my YouTube channel. It has clips from this show and a few other shows on it. Just start the conversation. I love talking with you on Facebook, Twitter, email, whatever, even in person, I will talk with you about science, I promise. |
| 1:30.1 | Now, we have a very simple goal with this show. |
| 1:34.0 | Complete knowledge of time and space. |
| 1:37.3 | And on the road to complete knowledge of time and space, we have today's set of questions. |
| 1:47.4 | We have at Tanya Davis. What is a virtual particle? At Astromat 99 didn't want to know about just one particle. He wanted to know |
| 1:53.8 | what are virtual particles in general. Thomas Andauer just said virtual particles followed by three question marks. I think that technically counts as a question. A ray Nandall by email said, what are virtual particles? I mentioned virtual particles in an episode. I honestly don't remember, but at some point I did. And I said, hey, if you want to know more about virtual particles, |
| 2:19.0 | drop me a line. |
| 2:20.1 | Apparently, some of you actually are curious about this strange |
| 2:23.9 | phrase virtual particles. |
| 2:26.8 | So let's dig into it, shall we? |
| 2:29.0 | Because, well, that's the point of the show. |
| 2:33.9 | Now, what I'm about to present, I've spent tens of minutes preparing, which is more than usual, because it's a tricky subject. |
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