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A comment on Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone wo... by JabavuAdams on Sunday April 26, 2020 @09:08PM (#22991937)
Man, you and the other what-are-fields post just started me thinking about whether diffusion and fields are just things bumping into things. I know that at the QFT level things like the classical E-field can be expressed as interchange of mediator particles. But then QFT says it's all fields. Hmm...
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Re:Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone wo... by andrepd on Sunday April 26, 2020 @09:38PM (#22992089)
QFT says it's all fields because it is. Particles simply cannot explain the conjunction of quantum mechanics with special relativity.
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Re:Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone wo... by iamevil on Monday April 27, 2020 @09:31AM (#22995639)
I am not so sure about that. When you imagine a "particle", what do you see? Do you see a collection of balls?
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Re:Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone wo... by andrepd on Monday April 27, 2020 @08:46PM (#23002052)
How do you mean?

To clarify: a "point particle" is an object with no internal structure, that is, it can be fully described by its coordinates wrt time (ignoring relativity for now). This is a concept, a model which explains many phenomena, a model on top of which you can build many theories. It does not, however, explain the conjunction of QM with special relativity.

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