[oezi]

I always thought the fields are just the mathematical representation of the respective force carrier particles travelling through space. Such particles (the photon is certainly the most relevant for us) are having such a big size due to their statistical nature that the fill space even though their own size when probed is tiny.

[halyconWays]

Particles don't actually exist, however. They're excitations in various fields. A proton, for example, is actually a sea of three quarks of different "colors" that continually exchange energy (and only have potential positions) via gluons, and those quarks and gluons themselves aren't particles, but excitations in fields

[oezi]

So we have a duality of fields and particles. Likely it doesn't make sense to give one representation precedence over the other.

[halyconWays]

QFT doesn't have a duality of particles and waves, it explains both as excitations in underlying fields. So even the particle in a double slit experiment is just the collapsed wave function, but we experience it as a particle. So precedence in this case is that QFT is the underlying explanation.

[calf]

Yeah did everything forget about the double slit experiment? Why are fields any more real than particles? Is the updated science now resolved on wave particle duality then?

[halyconWays]

It's more like, particles are how we experience collapsed wave functions, and both are manifestations of excitations in the underlying quantum field.

[calf]

Last I checked the theory of wave function collapse is still unresolved, with competing explanations. We don't know the answer and should not talk like we pretend we do. Unless you are personally one of those scientists or researchers endorsing one such theory, and even then you have to be clean and transparent and admit the matter is not settled by consensus yet.

[halyconWays]

What I'm describing is physics 102 and non-controversial. No one is pretending anything.

What you're referring to are competing interpretations for what it means when the superposition of eigenstates collapses into a single state, which we call wave function collapse. The most popular interpretation is the Copenhagen interpretation (observation causes collapse), and the second most probably the many worlds hypothesis (we only observe collapse due to being in one path among all real paths).

Quantum uncertainty doesn't mean you have to approach every topic going "ohh we just don't know! No one can be certain about anything! Leave this to the experts!" These are surface-level descriptions of basic quantum phenomena.