| I'm not an expert, but I'll try to give a friendly explanation. Consider a photon. We're all pretty familiar with how these work. Photons are light, and move at c. Photons also crucially don't have any mass, which is why they can move at the speed of light-- nothing with mass can move at c. Photons are energy carriers for the electromagnetic field. They transfer electromagnetic energy from one particle to another. There's several quantum fields permeating the universe, and each has its own energy carrier particle[0]. These are known as bosons, or sometimes force mediators. Atoms can influence each other through the electromagnetic field. An electron in one atom can drop to a lower energy state (or orbital), and releases a photon with all the energy that the electron "lost". That photon can bump into another atom, which causes one of its electrons to jump up by the same amount of energy. Protons are made of quarks, which are held together with the strong nuclear force. The energy carrier for the strong nuclear force is called a gluon. Gluons bounce back and forth between the quarks, transferring energy for the strong nuclear force. This energy is used to pull the quarks together[1]. Again, because the gluons don't have mass, they can (and must) move at light speed. The quarks themselves do have mass, and they vibrate and wiggle around, but only at sub-light speeds. Particle physics is really weird at first glance, but it makes a certain kind of sense once you learn a bit about it. It also makes less sense the more you learn. You've been warned. [0] Except gravity. Maybe. We've theorized, but haven't observed the graviton particle mediating the gravitational force
[1] gluons keep quarks a certain distance apart, sort of like a spring |