From what I understand of QFT, the Universe is made of fields of different types, and a “fundamental particle” is just an excitation (wave) in the corresponding field.
For example, a photon is a wave in the universal electromagnetic field,
A charm quark is a wave in the universal charm quark field, etc.
I’m not a trained physicist, so I might be wildly wrong.
Imagine a ball that’s rotating,
Except it’s not a ball, and
It’s not rotating.
(popular particle physics meme)
From what I understand of QFT, the Universe is made of fields of different types, and a “fundamental particle” is just an excitation (wave) in the corresponding field.
For example, a photon is a wave in the universal electromagnetic field, A charm quark is a wave in the universal charm quark field, etc.
I’m not a trained physicist, so I might be wildly wrong.