Not being a Physicist, I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing.
Might there have been a point in time (long ago) where the “wave photon” and the “particle photon” seemed like possibly different things?
Might there have been a point in time (long ago) where the “wave photon” and the “particle photon” seemed like possibly different things?
I think it is a reasonable answer to tell people "if you're looking for the short list of simplest things, the number of types of fields there are is probably what you're looking for".
That doesn't invalidate this question in general, though the number of different answers from people looking at the same thing suggests it may be underspecified.
Or wave. Everything is a quantum wave.
https://www.vlatkovedral.com/everything-in-the-universe-is-a...
"I insist upon the view that 'all is waves'."
Letter to John Lighton Synge (9 November 1959), as quoted by Walter Moore in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989) ISBN 0521437679
"All is a wave" is the unifying principle. I am no mathematician, but the math needs to start with that fundamental principle.
The very notion of calling it "qunatum" physics is probably wrong since quantum is "a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents."
And if everything is a wave there are no discrete quantities beyond our definition of what constitutes the end, or borders, of the wave.
This is a weird sort of hubris. “I’m not qualified to do this job but I can certainly tell you how it needs to be done.”
> And if everything is a wave there are no discrete quantities beyond our definition of what constitutes the end, or borders, of the wave.
This is not true in multiple ways. First, it’s known that these particles exhibit quantum behavior. This is measured and confirmed over and over. Many measures are in fact quantized.
Second, existing as a wave does not mean no discrete quantities. Even in everyday materials we observe situations like standing waves that are effectively quantized.
A quantum state is a mathematical entity that represents a physical system. Since waves are not physical can you see where I can assume that the math needs to start from a different place? If it is even useful at all?
> it’s known that these particles exhibit quantum behavior. Many measures are in fact quantized.
To measure is to quantize, so this is circular reasoning. If particles are always waves we would still see the quantum behavior.
> Second, existing as a wave does not mean no discrete quantities.
Where is the precise point a standing wave ends and begins? The best we can do is guess with calculus and differential equations. Again, yoiu are quantifying things that in and of themselves are not quantized outside of our conception.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding. Measurement (which is a precisely defined mathematical concept) is not the same thing as quantization. For a very basic example, in all known physics theories, including QFT, SR, and GR, space and time can be measured, and they are not quantized. In fact, there is no theory compatible with SR in which space and time can be quantized, given the nature of the Lorenz transform: SR predicts continuous length contraction from the PoV of observers moving at any velocity relative to each other; for any distance of length 1, some other observer can exist for which the length would be 1/x, with x as a real number.
Yet…
Because we do not have the formulas does not mean they are not quantized.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-time-quantized...
Now, we do know that QFT and GR are not consistent with each other, so at least one new theory is necessary, at least one of them must be wrong. So the new theory could involve quantized space or time - but it could very well not. We don't know at the moment, and all we know is that our best theories, limited as they may be, require continuous space and time (and other quantities).
Which is why we need new theories, and "everything is a wave" is a new theory.
Waves aren’t physical but everything is waves? We can’t measure standing waves but have to “guess” with calculus and differential equations?
Do you agree or disagree with that statement?
You seem to be avoiding the question of how we can know the exact area of a circle knowing that pi is infinite.
I am saying that the area of a circle is impossible to know. And that has both philosophical and physical ramifications.
Very fact that this well-known scientific truth is hard to accept those people is telling.
https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/can-the-area-of-a-c...
“Hence, not only is it impossible to ever determine the exact value of the area of a circle, but it is equally impossible to measure any area with 100% accuracy.”
Your own link confirms this is not true. Irrational is not the same thing as infinite.
> You seem to be avoiding the question of how we can know the exact area of a circle knowing that pi is infinite.
I’m not avoiding it. I’m saying it’s a meaningless question. 16 digits of pi will be more precise than essentially anything we can measure. Just 3 digits of pi will probably be more precise than you can measure at home.
If you need perfection, you stick with symbolic math. If you need to convert to absolute physical units, your ability to measure will be your limit, not the irrationality of pi.
> Very fact that this well-known scientific truth is hard to accept those people is telling.
It’s not hard to accept. It’s not interesting. There are no physical problems related to this fact. And no interesting philosophical problems.
Your problem isn’t that you lack the knowledge but that you are overconfident in your ignorance. You lack the curiosity to ask why no one is impressed or convinced by your beliefs, instead assuming everyone else is missing the deep insights you believe you possess.
This is why you can cite someone’s article about everything being quantum waves as support for your personal beliefs while also confidently stating that the article’s author is completely wrong for believing in quantum waves. Because you are not looking for information. You are looking for confirmation. You are rendered blind by your hubris.
Huh? From the article:
"Pi is a non-terminating and non-recurring irrational number. When we say that pi is infinite, we intend to say that pi has an infinite expression, not an infinite value."
That is what I meat by infinte, as in the number never ends.
I am not commenting about being more precise. I am talking about exactness. Yes, with every didgit we add to pi we become more precise, and there is a limit to what we need, but to know that there is not exact value we can give to the area of a thing, how can we say that is a thing at a deeper level? If we know things because we "measure them" and measuring is never exact, what do we really know?
Pi has an exact value. It is irrational, not inexact.
This is increasingly irrelevant and inaccurate rambling I’m engaging with. I’m out. Take care.
You're confusing "quantify" with "quantize".
To measure is to quantify, not to quantize.
In quantum physics, "quantized" means that a field has a smallest possible excitation, called a quantum, rather than being able to vary continuously.
For example, the quantum of the electromagnetic field is the photon.
A quantum field is fundamentally quantized, so the waves that arise in quantum fields are similarly quantized.
> Again, you are quantifying things that in and of themselves are not quantized outside of our conception.
No, we have extremely strong evidence that the physical fields themselves are quantized. If you try to model physics using classical waves - which we do, e.g. in semiclassical electrodynamics, which models the electromagnetic field as continuous instead of quantized field - you find there are limits to what can accurately be modeled. To get an accurate model, you need to quantize the field.
This sounds like you're about to try selling me a crystal and a magic ritual. The wording here is far too grandiose, and I assure you physicists are not "refusing to see" that "everything is a wave". Whatever you imagine that might mean.
> The very notion of calling it "qunatum" physics is probably wrong since quantum is "a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents."
> And if everything is a wave there are no discrete quantities beyond our definition of what constitutes the end, or borders, of the wave.
Mumbo-jumbo.
It's called "quantum" physics because of the discovery that many parts of nature do indeed exist in discrete steps. Yes, electron orbitals are described with wave functions - that is, the electron exists as a probability cloud, but the functions themselves are still discrete! When an electron gains energy, it jumps from one orbital to another without passing through a continuous state in the middle. That is the fundamental insight of Quantum Mechanics - energy, momentum, etc are all quantized and not actually continuous.
The wikipedia article on quantum mechanics literally covers this in the intro - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
The field is the continuous state so nothing has to jump through anything.
For example the hydrogen wave function does not tell us where the electron will be located, only where most likely will be located. What is discrete about that?
No.
> The field is the continuous state so nothing has to jump through anything.
No.
> For example the hydrogen wave function does not tell us where the electron will be located, only where most likely will be located. What is discrete about that?
Read what I wrote again. The wave function itself is continuous but the jump between states (aka between wave functions) is discrete. This is because energy is quantized and does not exist in continuous quantities. The transfer of energy in quantum systems is therefore discrete, which is the whole reason it is called quantum mechanics.
What exists between the wave functions?
> This is because energy is quantized and does not exist in continuous quantities.
"Quantized" in quantum mechanics means that a physical quantity can take only a discrete set of values rather than any value from a continuous range.
Yes, energy is quantized because we see it separate from a continuum. Because we SEE it as separate from a continuum does not mean it is separate from any continuum. This is the theory of everything is wave in a nutshell.
Since you have another theory, that the wave function can have properties of a particle and a wave, so you disagree with me. To me, the wave function only shows the properties of a wave, after you have made a measurement, the probability of what you have measured suddenly changes to 1, and the wave function appears as a particle, but still has the properties of a wave, which are there, but ignored.
There is no state between the stable wave functions, because when energy is delivered to an electron in an orbital it comes as a discrete quantity all at once.
> Yes, energy is quantized because we see it separate from a continuum. Because we SEE it as separate from a continuum does not mean it is separate from any continuum. This is the theory of everything is wave in a nutshell.
Sure, and your "theory" is wrong. Energy only exists in quantized steps, it is not continuous. That's not just an artifact of measurement, it's an artifact of reality.
If you have serious disagreements about quantum physics, derive the math to describe your theory and publish a paper. Show some math. Show some evidence. You're one step away from being written off as a crank right now. Don't just go around talking about how you and you alone have somehow "cracked the code" that physicists just can't get. It's nonsense.
The fact that you think I disagree with this means you do not understand me, nor the idea of the wave function.
You said
> Yes, energy is quantized because we see it separate from a continuum. Because we SEE it as separate from a continuum does not mean it is separate from any continuum. This is the theory of everything is wave in a nutshell.
It's not that I don't understand you, it's that you clearly don't even understand what you're trying to say.
Right here, you say energy is not quantized but we think that it is because "we SEE it as separate from a continuum does not mean it is separate from any continuum". You are contradicting yourself because you are very far outside your limit of understanding.
Incorrect.
I say when we see (measure) energy we separate it from a continuum (of probabilities) and it is quantized.
Basic:
https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/mathur.16/quantummechanics27-...
E=hf...you do not get that E without measuring f. That is the quantum in quantum physics. And I think that is why we do not have a unifying law of physics yet, because this measurement is the basis for all quantum physics. We are trying to take particles to a place that is only waves.
Read what you wrote. This is not what you said before, and it’s still wrong either way. Energy is not quantized because we measure it, it is quantized because it is quantized. You’re so far out of your depth here that no productive exchange is likely to take place.
(The philosophy of that admittedly gets messy, though, e.g. "are fields real objects?")
There is no "quantum wave", there are only waves. Immeasurable, undefinable waves.
Earlier you wrote, "Everything is a quantum wave." You also linked to an article titled, "The Everything-Is-a-Quantum-Wave Interpretation of Quantum Physics."
You seem to be contradicting yourself.
I quoted your own comment: "Everything is a quantum wave."
Dude, this is an answer to an entirely different question. He's proposing an interpretation of QM, which is independent from "how many fundamental particles".
[Edit: I suppose I'm imagining waves or frequencies of waves, rather than fields, hence why in my imagination there would be an infinite variety]
There might be any number of graph components with no connectivity to our fields at all, and we’d never know. Assuming, of course, that we’re including gravity in this logic.
There’s also might be any number of arbitrarily complex components which are only connected through gravity. That’s a decent candidate for what the dark sector actually is.
If you pick and choose which properties to select as unique fields, maybe you can get the number 37, but at that point why not 118 fields?
Without qualification, that's false. 17 is a simplified or compressed view of what the Standard Model describes. I gave more detail in this comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48700610
37 is what you get from counting Dirac matter fields (24) plus gauge fields (12) plus the Higgs. That's post-symmetry-breaking, and doesn't account for chirality.
If you count fundamental field components in the electroweak-symmetric Lagrangian, you get 43. I broke down both of those numbers in my comment linked above.
> If you pick and choose which properties to select as unique fields, maybe you can get the number 37, but at that point why not 118 fields?
There's no picking and choosing involved - quite the opposite. It's counting what the QFT math specifies. Particles with e.g. different color charges can't share the same field. To get to 17 from either of the above, you have to ignore quark color charges and the different gluon types. It's essentially a classification of types of particles that combines field together, it's not a count of fields.
"Field" is being used there in its general sense, of a quantity that has a value for every point in space and time. It's saying that in a (region of a) quantum field that contains no activity, there are nevertheless random fluctuations, which can themselves be modeled as a field. But they're not separate from the quantum field that gives rise to them - they have all the same fundamental properties.
Other fields can be seen as attributes of the space itself, and "elementary particles" as wrinkles on it. Gravity is special because it bends the very geometry of space.
It's important to remember that this is not true in QFT, and QFT is not true in GR. That is, the math of QFT does not work if spacetime can become curved (at least, if it can become significantly curved).
We should also remember the enormous cosmological curvature in which testable quantum systems exist; it's not just about compact objects. Significant? There's observed H-sources above z ~ 15, and of course the CMB photons at z ~ 1100. Indeed, B&D deals with Robertson-Walker spacetimes over several chapters before they get to black holes.
Also at the weak but measurable curvature regime there's e.g. Pound-Rebka, time metrology[1], and so forth, and lots of spacecraft confirming the strong equivalence principle (e.g. MESSENGER, LAGEOS) and thus supporting the LLI one expects to find in relativistic QFTs of the sort one would use to describe the behaviour of laser altimeters, distant astrophysical masers (and the Lyman-alpha forest), the spectral lines in stellar atmospheres and so on.
[1] just because it's neat and directly relevant to your comment: https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/q188-b1... [2025]
Definitely. It's rather strange that the OP article doesn't even mention the word "field". It seems that people in general have a hard time letting go of the idea of particles as fundamental.
A good overview of this is "There are no particles, there are only fields" (https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616) by physics prof Art Hobson.
Fields collapse the zoo described in the article significantly, because particles and antiparticles arise from the same field, and similarly, spin, polarization, and helicity are properties of the same field. Taking this into account, the 118 particles number that the article reaches at one point drops to 37 fields.
Anyway: Would you list them? Or supply a link to somewhere that does?
Here's how the list of 37 typically breaks down:
18 quark fields: 6 flavors x 3 colors
3 charged leptons: electron, muon, tau
3 neutral leptons: neutrinos corresponding to the charged leptons
12 gauge bosons: 1 photon, 3 electroweak bosons (Z, W+, W-), 8 gluons
1 Higgs boson
(Note: this refers to fields as we observe them today, essentially counting what are known as Dirac fields. These are not the more fundamental fields that were present before the electromagnetic force separated from the weak nuclear force in the early universe, a process known as electroweak symmetry breaking. More on this below.)
In writing that list out, I realized that it skips one of the properties the article mentioned: chirality. If we take that into account, the number of charged lepton fields doubles to 6, and we have 40 fundamental quantum fields.
The reason that distinction is often ignored is that at everyday energies, the left- and right-handed components of particles are essentially blended together, so experiments don’t see them as separate particle types. Treating left- and right-handed chirality as a single field is a simplification of the underlying electroweak theory. Treating them as distinct particles, as the article does, is actually a bit dubious.
Re electroweak symmetry breaking, if we're really looking for "fundamental", then it makes sense to look at the fields before symmetry breaking. In a very real sense, these are more fundamental, because they give rise to the fields we observe.
But, that gets into fields that most non-physicists won't recognize, and that don't even have good names: the weak isospin gauge fields W^1_\mu,\; W^2_\mu,\; W^3_\mu,\; and the hypercharge field B_\mu.
In that scenario, there are 4 Higgs fields, which brings the total field count to 43. After symmetry breaking, those extra 3 Higgs fields became longitudinal polarization modes of the electroweak bosons, which are not counted as extra fields. The article mentions this, "the W+, W−, and Z bosons have a third, “longitudinal” polarization state as well," and adds them to its particle count.
We can relate this all back to the article as follows:
1. To count antiparticles, group the quarks and leptons into fermions - 18 + 3 + 3 = 24, and double that to count antiparticles, giving 48. Bosons are their own antiparticles, so their count doesn't change. The total particle count is now 48 fermions + 12 gauge bosons + 1 Higgs = 61.
2. For spin/polarization, double the number of fermions again to 96, double the number of gluons from to 16, multiply photons by 2, multiply the 3 electroweak bosons by 3 giving 9. This gives 96 fermions + 2 photons + 16 gluons + 9 electroweak bosons + 1 Higgs boson = 124 particles.
That 124 is 6 more than the 118 mentioned in the article, but again it depends on exactly what you're counting. Chirality in particular complicates things, because of the blending issue I mentioned earlier.
72 quarks: 6 flavors x 3 colors x 2 (particle/antiparticle) x 2 (spin up/down)
12 charged leptons: 3 flavors x 2 (particle/antiparticle) x 2 (spin up/down)
6 neutrinos: 3 flavors x 2 (particle/antiparticle)
2 photons: 1 photon field x 2 polarizations
16 gluons: 8 types x 2 polarizations
9 electroweak bosons: 3 types (Z0, W+, W-) x 3 polarizations
1 Higgs boson
That totals 118. Here's a summary of how those come from the 37 fields I listed:
4 x 18 quarks
4 x 3 charged leptons
2 x 3 neutrinos
2 x 1 photons
3 x 3 electroweak bosons
2 x 8 gluons
1 x Higgs boson
"No idea, bro!"
It's one of the biggest open questions about the Standard Model, and it's considered an indication that the model is probably incomplete.
Btw you mentioned "weightier generations", but mass is a consequence of the difference between the generations, not the fundamental difference. Before electroweak symmetry breaking, those particles had no mass, but they already existed as three distinct generations, with different Yukawa couplings. When the Higgs field acquired a vacuum expectation value, those different couplings became different masses.
The Standard Model treats the number of generations and the Yukawa couplings as fundamental inputs to the theory. There's a Nobel Prize waiting for whoever figures out whatever might be behind this.
Even string theory doesn't solve this. Calabi-Yau manifolds provide a model which could explain it in theory, but no actual, concrete solution has been found.
It seems there has to be a reason WHY there are exactly N fields, and WHY they interact in the ways they do.
Edit: As I noted in another comment, the best explanation may come down to "there are only 100 viable types of universe, and ours is type 42". I'd be happy with that.
So, there is no way to start from mathematics and find something that must exist in some way, such as "there can only be 100 types of universe". Any such discovery is contingent upon some arbitrary choice of axioms. You can choose axioms that appeal to some ultimately esthetic sense of elegance or simplicity, and that can explain our universe more or less uniquely, but this doesn't mean that they are right to any extent more than the SM is.
Similarly, "Maybe the N fields are just vibrational modes or attractor dynamics of something simpler" could also be true - Calibi-Yau manifolds in string theory are essentially one such attempt to unify the similar and repetitive aspects of QFT that currently have no theoretically-justified connection in the theory.
Sure, at some level you presumably hit a wall - e.g. "why are there Calabi Yau manifolds?" But I don't think that's what the GP was referring to.
> Any such discovery is contingent upon some arbitrary choice of axioms.
This is true, but we see some wonderful examples of this in the real universe, producing laws that must be true in all universes that satisfy the axioms (assuming we believe that mathematical proofs aren't somehow tied to our universe.)
For example, Noether's theorem tells us mathematically when and why conservation laws, like conservation of energy and momentum, exist (i.e., for any continuous symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces.)
Similarly, the inverse square law applies to anything that propagates, with no losses, outwards from a point in all directions in locally flat three-dimensional space. Again, we expect this to be true in any universe with these properties.
There are quite a number of other examples of this.
It's inductive and abductive reasoning. The one field, and it has lot of mathematical characteristics which makes it unique on its own, and also it is the only one that has a chance to fit, is the e8 field popularized by Garrett Lisi.
If a universe were to be designed based using the e8 Lie algebra as an elemental field, it would look a lot like our universe.
Currently the standard model is a patchwork of field added as experiments for observing particles were possible to realize. The big picture's view is a unified theory which fits perfectly all existing data.
Currently, we don't have any theory that works that's any simpler than the SM. So that's the theory that Occam's razor currently tells us must be true, as it's the simplest alternative that actually works.
I'd also observe that between dark matter and dark energy, there's good reason to believe that we may not have a full accounting of all fields.
I am just observing that if you have a non-scientist asking the question "how many fundamental particles are there", with the expectation that "995.5" is not really the right answer, "the number of fields" is a reasonable response that probably gets closer to what they are looking for. Even if someday someone does get them to all be some manifestations of a single field it would arguably still be the case that people are more interested in the answer of the current number of fields then being told "1", because "1" is in many ways not a helpful answer to "how many types of things are there". Even if there is a profound sense in which it was true, there would still be a profound sense in which it was false, too.
Even that has a (still unsatisfactory) answer.
Poincaré symmetry imposes constraints on the kinds of fields we can have. Gauge symmetry shows us how they may couple.
There are still some arbitrary selections of the possible permutations that nature has “picked”.
It would be much more satisfying (not that nature exists to be satisfying) if we could explain our universe starting from some universal constraints on things that must be true of any non-random mechanistic universe, plus some set of (< N) non-forced "it must be A or B" additional constraints, then be able to derive everything known about our universe - fields and symmetries etc - (& ideally predict something unknown) as resulting from some particular selection of those additional constraints.
This seems about as close as we could get to explaining our universe... Basically saying that god flipped a coin marked A and B, and it come down A so here we are. Maybe god kept on flipping sets of coins and created a whole bunch of other universes too, whose physics we could also derive.... and maybe one day visit and confirm.
If you look at histogram plots of protons, neutrons, and stability, it's not a perfectly idealized form. It's a rocky plot. This emerges from the quantized nature of reality.
So a periodic table of particles (fields) that looks kind of weird and ad-hoc to us is the expected result.
What we don't yet fully understand is really two things as far as I know. First, we know less about why these particular values are special. For the periodic table we actually understand this pretty well. Second, we do not know if there are other islands of stability or particles-fields we cannot see (e.g. WIMPS). For the periodic table we are pretty sure there are no large islands of stability at higher weights. Not 100% sure, but if they do exist there's probably only a few exotic mega-atoms that could be stable, not many.
When we understand that everything that we see is a manifestation of a probability wave, then we will understand everything is a wave and end these foolish experiments.
And by difference, I mean, establish boundaries between objects.
the geometric structure of spacetime at planck scale is problematic, considering how you might visualise a planck polyhedron so that no space is defined in less than whole planck units i.e. all dimensions of length are whole numbers.
you have to do some topological trickery to make a discreet planck volume that works.
the thing about planck units is they are extrapolations that end at single planck length that has some problems just with basic geometry, as well as a supposed instability of a planck space spontaneously collapsing.
a planck unit volume must take a form that has dimensions of single planck units and pack together so that no smaller spacings are created. it cant be a sphere, at best it can be some sort of riemannian tetrahedron or triangle.
it would be conveinient if that level was a 2D plane, but it still has issues.
That said, I get it is difficult, especially because we are using everyday language to talk about very-much-not-everyday stuff. We all needental hooks to anchor new knowledge and most of our intuition comes from the classical (not-quantum) world around us.
As a physicist, I feel the art is in learning when to use what description, what Sean Carrol calls "poetic naturalism".
That being said, is difficult because we are using language to describe very-much-not-everyday stuff. We all need mental hooks to anchor new knowledge and most of our intuition is based on the classical (not-quantum) world aroud us.
Someone else already mentioned that yes, they're manifestations of quantum fields. This is well established - the dominant theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, is a theory of quantum fields.
In that context, a particle is simply the smallest excitation of a quantum field that can be detected. Fields can be "excited" (fluctuate) in many different ways, and the OP article is interpreting each one of those as a different type of particle. It's misleading.
Yes, theorists have been working on a similar idea for decades.
> the “wave photon” and the “particle photon” seemed like possibly different things?
No. Wave vs particle is just a different description of the same thing.