Electrostatic repulsion at a distance

[Philipsmett]

What does it mean ?
"the virtual photon's plane wave is seemingly created everywhere in space at once, and destroyed all at once. Therefore, the interaction can happen no matter how far the interacting particles are from each other."
As far as I know, the electrostatic force between two electrons in QFT occurs only at a short distance.

 

[PeterDonis]

What does it mean ?

Where are you getting this quote from? Please give a specific reference.

 

[Philipsmett]

Where are you getting this quote from? Please give a specific reference.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/virtual_particles.html

 

[PeterDonis]

As far as I know, the electrostatic force between two electrons in QFT occurs only at a short distance.

No, electrostatic force can occur at any distance. It just gets weaker as the distance increases, as the inverse square of the distance.

 

[Philipsmett]

No, electrostatic force can occur at any distance. It just gets weaker as the distance increases, as the inverse square of the distance.

Is it possible that an electron in an atom interacts with an electron in a second atom and simultaneously interacts with an electron in another galaxy?

 

[PeterDonis]

Is it possible that an electron in an atom interacts with an electron in a second atom and simultaneously interacts with an electron in another galaxy?

In principle, every electron could be interacting with every other charged particle in the universe. But since the interaction weakens with distance, and since there are lots of charged particles many of whose interactions cancel out, the effects of charged particles in the vast majority of the universe on anyone particular charged particle are negligible by many, many orders of magnitude.

 

[ZapperZ]

Is it possible that an electron in an atom interacts with an electron in a second atom and simultaneously interacts with an electron in another galaxy?

Do you see the effect of the gravity from Alpha Centauri in your everyday existence?

Zz.