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TheOtherHobbesyesterday at 3:15 PM2 repliesview on HN

In QFT every particle type has its own field.


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nine_kyesterday at 4:01 PM

...and a field is just a value that behaves in a particular way. An example outside QFT: phonons [1] behave like particles, but there is no "palpable" sound field, there's only local distribution of implulses of the molecules of air (or whatever medium) where the sound propagates.

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.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon

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antonvsyesterday at 3:27 PM

Every particle type has its own field, but the OP article is counting a single particle type multiple times based on properties like spin and polarization. At one point the article reaches the number 118. That corresponds directly to 37 quantum fields once you take the "double counting" into account.

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