About fields and energy

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   janesixposted 9 years ago

   I am reading about physics, and I have a question about something I read:
   
   "There's one field for each type of particle. So one field for all photons in the universe, one field for all electrons, and so on. And these fields exist everywhere.
   
   To "extract" a particle from a field, you need to give the field energy. If you give it enough energy, the field will go to a higher energy state. These states are what we interpret as particles."
   
   Can a "field" exist without energy?

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      janesixposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I hope someone knows. I asked this on another forum and got a bunch of conflicting answers.
      
      Is a field something that is a thing that can exist without particles or energy?

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         Kathryn L Hillposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         the question is... is the field made of matter?

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            janesixposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Matter has volume and mass. I'm not sure if a field has volume and mass.
            
            Not even sure if a field is a physical thing. That's what I'm tryin g to figure out.

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               Kathryn L Hillposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Is the field made of energy?

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                  janesixposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  I don't know. It seems to be the field that gives structure though.

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                     Kathryn L Hillposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     "The fact that the electromagnetic field can possess momentum and energy makes it very real... a particle makes a field, and a field acts on another particle, and the field has such familiar properties as energy content and momentum, just as particles can have."
                     
                     In practice, the strength of most fields has been found to diminish with distance to the point of being undetectable. For instance the strength of many relevant classical fields, like the gravitational field in Newton's theory of gravity or the electrostatic field in classical electromagnetism, is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source (i.e. they follow the Gauss's law). One consequence is that the Earth's gravitational field quickly becomes undetectable on cosmic scales.
                     Wikipedia
                     If this does not help, why not?

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                        janesixposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                        I don't trust Wikipedia. I've read false information there before. I can't afford books, so I'm stuck with learning from the internet. Everything I read, it seems, says something different. I'm just trying to figure out the basics, so I can figure out where to go from here.
                        
                        Some sources say energy is a physical thing, some say it is only the ability to do work. Etc.

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                           Kathryn L Hillposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                           My brother, who has a Masters in Electrical Engineering, worked at IBM, says that Dark Matter is God. LOL!

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   janesixposted 9 years ago

   Maybe Slarty will come by....

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   rvchristoposted 9 years ago

   great

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   janesixposted 8 years ago

   There are no particles, there are only fields
   
   http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1204/1204.4616.pdf
   
   "As this paper shows, experiment and
   theory imply unbounded fields, not bounded particles, are fundamental. This is
   especially clear for relativistic systems, implying it's also true of non-relativistic
   systems. Particles are epiphenomena arising from fields"

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