system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
In a Feynman diagram, as two particles get to close together a force carrier gets sent from one particle to another, they interact and bounce apart. How do the particles know when to send off the force carrier? Is it some sort of quantum effect?

Let's take 2 electrons for instance. They come close to each other and a photon is then sent from one electron to another. Electrons can't possibly be constantly spewing out photons because they will eventually vaporize. So then how does the electron know when it's in close proximity of another electron to send out a photon?
gpt
Feynman diagrams are merely a mathematical tool, nothing more. In order to get a good description, you need to sum up all possible Feynman diagrams for a process, containing all sorts of complicated loops.

In reality, there is no such thing as a virtual particle. Really, an electron just carries an electromagnetic field (since it has electric charge), and that em. field also has to obey the laws of quantum field theory.