I’m a layperson when it comes to physics, and I’ve always been a bit confused about what virtual particles actually are, especially since the terminology is often downright misleading – “virtual particles in and out of existence”, other particles “exchanging virtual particles” etc. This blog post by theoretical physicist Matt Strassler was really helpful in explaining the concept (as far as it can be explained without going elbow deep into math, I guess)
This is a good explanation. Fields are really the fundamental object in QED (quantum electrodynamics) and QCD (quantum chromodynamics), the best theories we have for the electromagnetic and strong forces respectively. In fact, that entire branch of physics is usually called QFT (quantum field theory) to reflect that.
