system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If matter can't be created or destroyed, how do pairs of quarks just "pop" into existence?

I was watching a video on subatomic particles and the narrator mentioned if two quarks get too far apart from one another, an entirely new quark will appear to form two pairs.  How is that?
gpt
There is energy in the field between the two quarks.  As you pull the quarks apart, you are doing work on the system, and so increasing its energy.  Eventually that energy is large enough to create a quark-antiquark pair.