Physics spent much of last century trying to prove Newton’s idea that particles cause all the forces in nature. In order to explain forces like magnetism and gravity that act at a distance, with no particles in sight, they argued that fields exert forces by creating unobservable virtual particles. The resulting fields upon fields made physics what it is today.
QR4.5.1 Many Fields, Many Choices
QR4.5.2 The Frog in the Pan
QR4.5.3 There Are No Virtual Particles
QR4.5.4 The Standard Model Feeds on Data
QR4.5.5 A Particle Toolbox
QR4.5.6 The Last Standard Model
QR4.5.7 The Particle Model
QR4.5.8 A Quantum Processing Model
QR4.5.9 Testing The Theory