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The question of meaning is a question for philosophers. Physicists deal with what they can model / explain.

> They are obviously "communicating" somehow. The mechanism is simply unknown.

The mechanism is the "virtual particles". Whether those particles have physical existence is a question physicists avoid.

The best answer is that the model (i.e. the explanation for reality) matches reality.

Does this mean that the model accurately and correctly describes the underlying mechanism for communication? The best answer to that is "Yes, so far as we can tell".

It's one of those dark, dirty corners of physics theory that doesn't have a great conceptual explanation (like wave function collapse). The math works but we honestly don't have a great understanding of "what's really happening".

Virtual particles are an artefact of the calculation method usually used, perturbation theory, and the Feynmann diagrams that produces. They needn't exist with other methods.

Why is physics is not an artifact of the calculation method used?