There are no particles, there are only fields

Just about any modern book on QM interpretation will tell you this, though not in so many words. (They won't necessarily endorse this point of view, but they will tell you about it.) Here is my take on it: http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf (Or the movie version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc ) (These are now a wee bit dated, but still defensible.) For something written by an actual physicist I recommend anything by Tim Maudlin (he's a Bohmian, but his pedagogy is without peer) or David Z. Alberts, "Quantum Mechanics and Experience." UPDATE: There's also https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616

> Personally I think the concept of "particle" needs to go away completely. For those who haven't already seen it, "There are no particles, there are only fields" is a good paper about this: https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616

it's important to realise that particles are an artefact of living in a monkey sized body. at the basic level, the equations are useful if they match observations, not if they make sense intuitively. https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616

All the paradoxes disappear if we use Quantum Field Theory instead of Quantum Mechanics. I would really like someone with deep knowledge on Quantum Theory to explain if something is wrong with a theory that otherwise makes a lot of sense to me. A good read on the topic is the paper "There are no particles, there are only fields" — https://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4616.pdf

> 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 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.

Yes, but the issue is that they don't have identity. The idea of assigning unique identifiers to particles is doomed because, basically, "there are no particles, there are only fields" (https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616). Particles are how quantized fields present themselves when probed by localized interactions. In general, they're also observer-dependent. The idea of assigning an "ID" to an object reflects a macro-level notion of re-identifiable objects persisting through time. But at the quantum level, that kind of classical individuality - object identity - doesn't exist.

> I thought in q field theory there is on a fundamentally level no particle. They are artificial excite state in a field. That is correct. "Particle" is another one of those "white lies." https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616

> We decide to have a theory about particles. I would say that's exactly where Bohm runs off the rails. The fact of the matter is that quantum systems are not particles. They are waves [1]. They can sometimes bunch up into very small spaces and behave to a very good approximation as if they were particles, but they aren't. If you insist that your theory talk about particles, then Bohm is a not-entirely-unreasonable place to end up. But that's kind of like saying that if you insist that your theory tell you how many angels can dance on the head of a pin that 42 is a not-entirely-unreasonable answer. Thanks for the references, those look interesting. P.S. The reference 4 link is broken. I'm guessing you meant https://arxiv.org/abs/0903.2211 --- [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616

> Wasn't it a famous physicist who said "If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics then you don't understand Quantum Mechanics"? No. That's an apocryphal quote. Richard Feynman said in 1965, " I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." It turns out it wasn't true even when Feynman said it, and it's certainly not true today. Feynman's problem is that he was committed to the idea that particles are real. They aren't [1]. There are a lot of arguments over the proper interpretation of QM but it turns out that when you get to the bottom of things they are all saying the same things using different terminology. [1] https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.4789885 (also https://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4616.pdf)