Ok so, around four-ish months ago, I was told by a Cosmologist that what we perceive as matter doesn't actually exist and that the alleged particles that we think it's comprised of are actually "Excitations of fields intrinsic to the universe." At first, I didn't think much of what he said to me. I'd heard far crazier things in science before and considering that the four fundamental forces of the universe already manifest as "fields", it wasn't that hard for me to imagine matter doing the same.
At least, that's how I USED to feel... I've given it some more thought and now I'm seriously struggling to wrap my head around just how exactly this works. Like, particles are just field excitations right? What the heck is exciting them? Where are these fields even located anyway? Are they these physical/metaphysical regions of space that we can travel to? Did these fields always exist, or were they put together by someone/something? Are there fields for antiparticles as well as regular particles? Is there one Electron field for every single Electron in the entire universe, or is every single Electron in the universe a part of a single field? How does particle decay tie into all of this? Does Dark Matter get its own field as well? What about Atoms and Molecules? Where do they fit in all of this? I know I'm asking a lot of questions here, but this single piece of information completely changed how I view both the microscopic world AND the macroscopic world.
