Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Virtual particles, depending on who you ask, are either a yet-unsolved quirk of the mathematics that we use to calculate physics, or a type of real particle that’s constantly popping into existence before quickly disappearing. In a recent paper, physicists claim that they’ve done an experiment that proves that virtual particles are, indeed, real things. Let’s take a look.

Paper: nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09920-0

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