Can someone please explain to me how magnets work?

Magnets have nothing to do with photons.

Field theory imagines magnets influencing the magnetic field around them due to inneratomic orbital electrons that are free to move in spherical paths, which in turn influences neigboring magnets to attract/repel.

Think of a blanket, if you pull one end, the other end will move towards you. It's not action at a distance because it is still one blanket.

What is the electric/magnetic field made of? Why is it the way it is? Can we manipulate or compress it, like a fluid? Noone knows.

>What is the electric/magnetic field made of? Why is it the way it is? Can we manipulate or compress it, like a fluid? Noone knows

This webpage says different:
van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=414
>The magnetic field is really just a classical approximation to the photon-exchange picture. In a moving reference frame, a magnetic field appears instead as a combination of a magnetic field and an electric field, so electric and magnetic fields are made of the same "stuff" (photons).

>Some electromagnetic interactions involve "real" photons with definite frequencies, energies, and momenta. Electrostatic and magnetic fields involve the exchange of "virtual" photons instead. Very close to an electron is a dense cloud of virtual photons which are constantly being emitted and re-absorbed by the electron. Some of these photons split into electron-positron pairs (or pairs of even heavier stuff), which recombine into photons which are re-absorbed by the original electron. These virtual particle loops screen the charge of the electron so that far away from an electron it appears as if it has less charge than close by.

So i guess this explains it? Theres like a cloud of photons around everything and they are changing in accordance to quantum mechanics all the time? How do they transmit force against a solid object if photons have no mass?

Brainlet here, I thought magnetic fields had to do with electrons

I don't know what this picture implies but this is certainly not the way I was taught how electromagnetism works, so I'm not sure if this is accurate.

Maxwell, Heaviside etc., they all had a field concept in mind.
Electric charge is the same as a (radial, static) electric field.
Electric current is the same as a magnetic, static field.

Once currents start oscillating in direction, they create oscillation in the magnetic field, and oscillation in the magnetic field is the equivalence of oscillation in the electric field, which we call an EM wave. This is what Maxwell's equations describe after all.

Whatever this photon is I don't know and I to be honest, I know no people who were ever able to describe to me what a photon actually is better than: "A photon is whatever happens in the process between molecular emission and absorbtion of radiation".

>magnetic field
Doesnt every field have a carrier particle though? Like for gravity it's the higgs boson. I understand particles are abstract constructs but if you dump enough energy into a field shouldnt particles be emitted? I guess in the case of magnetic fields should these virtual photons release quarks when a particle accelerator is aimed at a magnetic field?

You are talking all this quark nonsense without even understanding the basics behind electricity, which is bad because you lack proportion.

Nothing, at least that I know of, is emitted when talking about DC. You can have kA of DC going through a wire and nothing will radiate, at least not until the wire heats up (thermal radiation).

I'd suggest you understand the "classic" phenomena first before going into subparticle or high energy physics.

You're the one talking about a field without a carrier particle...

Do you realize SOMETHING has to be affecting the magnetics from a distance? The electrons flowing through wires are contained in the wire so how are they able to affect something a few inches away?

Im going to link a wikipedia and all my quotes are from the same page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_carrier

>There is one kind of field for every type of elementary particle. For instance, there is an electron field whose quanta are electrons, and an electromagnetic field whose quanta are photons.[1] The force carrier particles that mediate the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions are called gauge bosons.

>For instance, there is an electron field whose quanta are electrons, and an electromagnetic field whose quanta are photons.

>an electromagnetic field whose quanta are photons.

>The force carrier particles that mediate the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions are called gauge bosons.

Something has to carry a force or "field." Gravity used to be explained as bending space time yet there might be a particle called "gravitons" and mass is attributed to the higgs boson? Certainly if the gravitational field and mass can have a carrier particle then the electromagnetic field should have a carrier particle.

>Gravity is not a part of the Standard Model, but it is thought that there may be particles called gravitons which are the excitations of gravitational waves.

>Higgs bosons, excitations of one component of the Higgs field, which gives mass to fundamental particles.

How are you suggesting the aligned electrons in a wire conducting DC current interact with a piece of ferrous metal a few inches from the wire? The wire can be surrounded by an insulator so surely the electrons themselves arent interacting with the piece of metal? Do you think they are warping "space time?"

>The electromagnetic force can be described by the exchange of virtual photons.

The higgsboson accounts for passive mass, the experience of gravitation, but it does not cause gravitytation.

>what is gravitron
I know its hypothetical but it would fit the idea that every field has a carrier particle.

This is why a degree in wikipedia is not something you'd write on a CV.

>Do you realize SOMETHING has to be affecting the magnetics from a distance?
>Something has to carry a force or "field."

Yes, and this question has led many scientists up until Einstein to believe in an ether, a kind of medium for light in analogy to air for sound waves, which carries the action. However, no such medium has been found, and the experiments of Michelson-Morley suggest no such medium even exists. This is why we have to think of a field as a fundamental property of nature, even if it seems unintuitive, until we have found a better explaination.

>The electrons flowing through wires are contained in the wire so how are they able to affect something a few inches away?

The actual speed of electrons in a common wire, say copper, is a few inches per second. The electric field which drives the motion on the other hand will reach up to 2/3 of the speed of light.

>The electrons flowing through wires are contained in the wire so how are they able to affect something a few inches away?
>How are you suggesting the aligned electrons in a wire conducting DC current interact with a piece of ferrous metal a few inches from the wire? The wire can be surrounded by an insulator so surely the electrons themselves arent interacting with the piece of metal? Do you think they are warping "space time?"

Charge in motion is called current, and by Ampere's law, current is the same as a curl of the magnetic field, which means the magnetic field around a current-carrying wire will different from 0 and it's magnitude will decrease with increasing distance by 1/d.

>This is why a degree in wikipedia is not something you'd write on a CV.

Here you are attacking my intelligence yet you COMPLETELY IGNORE the modern explanation for magnetic fields. Are you denying the existence of virtual photons? Are you saying that they dont exist and do not carry the force of a magnetic field?

>This is why we have to think of a field as a fundamental property of nature, even if it seems unintuitive, until we have found a better explaination.

Are you saying that magic exists? You are explaining the properties of a magnetic field yet refuse to consider the actual underlying mechanism!

Modern "Field Theory" describes particles as force carriers!! In the case of electromagnetism this is something called a virtual photon!

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

>Electromagnetic fields can do things other than vibration. For instance, the electric field produces an attractive or repulsive force between charged objects, which varies as the inverse square of distance. The force can change the momenta of the objects.

>Can this be understood in terms of photons as well? It turns out that, in a sense, it can. We can say that the particles exchange "virtual photons" which carry the transferred momentum. Here is a picture (a "Feynman diagram") of the exchange of one virtual photon.

Please read the source I linked. You are completely ignoring the actual explanation for this phenomena because your ego thinks that I am not smart enough to grasp basic physics yet I am here linking to you explanations from smarter people than myself and you are simply brushing them off because you think you are smarter than me, which may be true, but you're obviously not smarter than the people who wrote the articles I have linked and you refuse to consider the underlying mechanism beneath magnetic forces and refuse to read the modern theories behind it.

Magnets are probably another field

A magnetic is basically a circuit where electrons tend to flow en masse in certain loops or directions, because of how the metal formed atomically, and thus generated macroscopically detectable magnetic fields

>Can someone please explain to me how magnets work?
Not really, no. Not unless you go to school and learn a lot of other things first. Others will try to give you simplified pseudo-explanations, but without knowing all the maths and physics underlying it you won't really understand it.
youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8

I've seen this alredy for a thousandth time, but now that I'm studying physics myself, while I agree that he made a good point about explanation in terms of different knowledge frameworks, he really could have explained it better in terms of magnetisation etc.

Something tells me I should probably take Richard Feynman's word for it over an anonymous post on an internet forum for japanese cartoons.

Here you go!
kibuilder.com/XL0

Well, I mean it can't be reduced to less than just saying that electromagnetic forces are a thing, but he could have just explained some basics about ferromagnets, magnetisation and how it affects the resulting force fields etc.

You know virtual particles are an abstraction, right?

photons aren't massless, they are "rest mass"-less
they still have a momentum, just with it being dependent on frequency not speed

I have no idea ill be honest

Isnt that a cop out? I understand there is no theory of everything yet, but there has to be an underlying mechanism right? Its not magic.

So what is it that allows magnets to affect things non locally? Do they warp space time??

So if virtual photons are not a real thing then how can they be measured?

K finally something made sense to me. This video, however corny, explained how electrons, moving close to the speed of light, contract because of special relativity and cause a repelling force because a "magnetic field is an electric field viewed from a different reference." So really magnets do bend space time?

youtube.com/watch?v=1TKSfAkWWN0

And so are virtual photons just a way of quantifying that force? And why the hell are photons considered the force carrier if the electrons are the particle that is bending space time?

It's a basic force dumdum, If someone answers a question you can always ask another one, there is no "absolute" explanation

>The actual speed of electrons in a common wire, say copper, is a few inches per second. The electric field which drives the motion on the other hand will reach up to 2/3 of the speed of light.

So this motion from a different reference point contracts space time?

When normal matter moves does it do the same thing and pull things closer to it? Like if you had a hose of water and the water flowing at some kind of relativistic speed would that hose pull things closer to it?

>It's a basic force dumdum
Then why are photons the force carrier?

Gravity has a force carrier supposedly called gravitons, and so do the weak and strong forces called bosons and mass has the higgs boson. So magnetic fields must have a particle that carries the force no?

Otherwise it's just like saying lol magic.

On a seperate note, are gravitons then actually what we think of as "space time?"

Also does time have a particle associated with it? I know that might sound dumb but can time be considered a field? Or is space time simply dimensions or measurements?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluon
>A gluon /ˈɡluːɒn/ is an elementary particle that acts as the exchange particle (or gauge boson) for the strong force between quarks. It is analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles.[6] In layman's terms, they "glue" quarks together, forming protons and neutrons.

youtube.com/watch?v=Ztc6QPNUqls

So a field is really just some kind of abstraction as are the force carriers but they are how we quantify it?

>Isnt that a cop out? I understand there is no theory of everything yet, but there has to be an underlying mechanism right? Its not magic.
He didn't say it was magic. He said you need to be an actual physics student or physicist and understand a lot of context information first which can't be communicated to a layman in an honest way without basically giving them a completely different oversimplified explanation than the real explanation.
By analogy, I could give you a stupid popsci explanation for how artificial neural network programs work (e.g. "they update themselves based on errors they get back when training on a known dataset"), but if you don't understand calculus than you won't really have any insight into the actual trick that makes them able to learn.
Or to use another programming example, I could "explain" to you that APIs are programming interfaces that let you gain access to pull in information or make updates to some system that exists outside of your own business / organization, but the real explanation of what APIs are and how they work would require that you first understand how SQL databases work and what object oriented programming is and what classes are and what's the difference between a class vs. an instance of that class and what web servers are and what the differences between server machines and client machines are and what the differences between SOAP and REST APIs are and what hypertext transfer protocol is actually about and what XML is and what markup in general is about etc.

Eventually you are just saying "that's how it is" for example, why does the force carrier cause what it does?

I disagree. The video I linked almost explained it to where I think I understand. Just throwing your hands up in the air and blaming the person you are trying to explain it to because you don't know how to explain it in an eloquent manner is just an ego thing.

And the programming examples you cited were fine. Describing machine learning as a program that updates itself or APIs as a "set of functions and procedures that allow the creation of applications which access the features or data of an operating system, application, or other service." I think does the job just fine although I'm not the best or most learned programmer.

We don't know why. Only how.
It's possible there's a third derivative interaction that mediates some kind of exchange between and within forces, but there's no real models of it then. If we find out how, then cool. Then we ask about a 4th and so on and so forth.

At the end of the day, it could be turtles all the way down, but we have to get to a point where it matters to us. For the time being, we are calling force carrying particles good enough for government work. Maybe you could be the next Thornberry and learn to talk to discrete turtles.

its vibrating stings mann