Particles, Fields and The Future of Physics - A Lecture by Sean Carroll

Sean Carroll is a master of making quantum mechanics approachable to non-physicists. Here are a few of his talks: - Fermilab 2013: ▶ this video - The Royal Institution 2014: link - The Royal Institution 2020: link

There are many different ways of looking at quantum mechanics, so here is one way of answering your confusion. Probably the standard way of looking at quantum mechanics right now is quantum field theory. In quantum field theory, you give up the notion of "particles" and instead view them as vibrations in fields. Once you do that, it makes more sense that these "particles" can turn into other particles, be absorbed or emitted by other particles, or split. Here's a video of Sean Carroll talking about it, roughly 28:00-33:00. ▶ this video

I believe "everything is fields" is indeed a common interpretation. Particles are an unnecessary component we invent because of our familiarity with "stuff" This lecture is long but goes into the everything is fields idea ▶ this video

> Every point of Universe contains infinite number of small, even infinite small, particles. What "particles"? ▶ this video (really worth it! Watch at 1.5 times speed) and link (reading the discussion is useless though without understanding at least what is presented in the above lecture)

Sean M. Carrol always mentions this fact when he talks about QFT, which can be very entertaining like this one from 2013 "Particles, Fields and The Future of Physics" ▶ this video (Audio starts at 19 sec, Lecture starts at 2:00)