exchemist
Valued Senior Member
On further reflection, I think I would also take issue with the idea that electrons interact via an exchange of photons.I think there might be a fundamental misunderstanding of photon mass, and the notion that mass is "derived from" energy or vice-versa.
Photons have zero rest mass, which in no way says photons have zero mass; if photons were truly massless they would have zero kinetic energy and there are plenty of experiments that show they have nonzero kinetic energy and nonzero momentum. Further, photons interact with gravity (the bending of light), which implies they do have mass. (But not Newtonian mass!)
Then there's the fact that electrons (with nonzero mass) interact by exchanging photons, which alters the electron's momentum. I think Alphanumeric once explained here why the notion that photons are massless isn't a proper one, and that explanation included plenty of equations. It kind of revolves around photons having zero rest mass but not ever being at rest (because of those nasty laws of physics, in particular special relativity).
Paraphrasing a certain well-known rock group:
"If ye don't have mass, how can ye have any momentum? Ye can't have any momentum if ye don't have any mass!"
Yaldon theory looks suspiciously like a nothing-burger.
In QFT the interaction is carried by virtual photons, so named because the are not photons, but disturbances in the EM field that can be modelled mathematically in a similar way to photons. More here: https://profmattstrassler.com/artic...ysics-basics/virtual-particles-what-are-they/