In what way do Gluons & Mesons & Virtual Photons PULL Quarks & Nucleons & Opposite Charges (respectively) together, when Virtual Photons SHOVE Like Charges apart?

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I went searching but couldnt find an answer to this question.

Virtual photons repelling two like charges have been likened to catching a very hard-thrown baseball, the kind of catch that knocks you back a little bit.

I’m guessing this is a bad analogy, because it doesnt really cover when force-carrying particles \*tug\*, rather than \*shove\*is there a known mechanism for how an exchanged particle draws two other particles together? Or do we just say “it does” and move on? I heard something once about virtual photons appearing on the opposite side of the charge, pushing it inward.

IDK, can someone explain this for me?

thanks in advance if so

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Anonymous 0 Comments

So first thing you need to realize is virtual particles are not real. They are just used to help solve the math equations. A result of this allows your virtual particles to have all kinds of weird properties.

For example: electrons interact with the electromagnetic field whose force particle is a photon. The EM field is repulsive on like charges, so if two electrons travel toward each other, you can say they exchanged virtual photons with energy and momentum and pushed each other away. Now what about an election and positron? They are opposite charges so they attract. Well you can describe it like above, but only if positron was traveling backwards in time and emits virtual photon with negative momentum that pushed them together. Is the positron really traveling backwards in time? No. It just helps with the math to describe it like that to get the correct answer we see in reality.

And same goes with all the other flavors of virtual particles, they are just used to help simplify and describe the math behind interacting particles, but they are still not “real particles”.