ELI5- If light is both a wave and a particle, why isn’t there visible buildup of those particles from the sun and whatnot?
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It is hard to say what light really is because nobody knows. All we got are models describing what light can do/be.
Its best to think about light moving through a vacuum as an electromagnetic wave. A disturbance in the em field.
A photon is an event. Its a way to describe light as it interacts with something.
Non of these are what light is, but ways to describe, model it. Whether a model is actually reality is hard to say.
For example, it used to be an open question whether atoms did actually exist or was the atom model just a model, a useful description. Is the atom model the description of what materials are or a way to look at what materials are? Physics is primarily about the former. Is the electric field a vector field? No, its a mathematical tool that can be used to model the electric field. Models are representations not necessarily nature itself.
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