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Sorry to be a pendant, but the forces holding things together is just ordinary EM (well, QED probably better stated) while virtual photons are different (virtual since they only appear in higher order corrections in qft).

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I love pedants, don't apologise! Happy to be corrected and keep learning. It's been quite a few years since I was in physics classes, so I went and looked this up, and I think my memory was right, as for example, descriptions of the Coulomb force (electrostatic repulsion and attraction as in my foot example) all seem to be phrased in terms of virtual boson exchange.

I agree the forces holding things together is "ordinary EM", but virtual particles as force carriers seems to be ordinary, not rare.

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