Study the concept of particle and wave duality. As you look into the night sky, the photons from some star traveled through light years of space unchanged then interacted with an electron in a molecule of your retina, transferred its energy and then otherwise disappeared. In contrast photons (which are massless) do not go through such a transition: photons just travel through space unchanged until they interact with other particles and then disappear. One might compare this transition with that of a mechanical system that changes from displaying unstable to stable behavior or from displaying simple to chaotic behavior, or even a rocket ship slowing and going below escape velocity and entering orbit around some star or other celestial object. The electron is then bound to the atom and its angular momentum with respect to the atomic nucleus is restricted to quantized values of the orbitals it can occupy. Even though the free electron displays some quantum properties (such as spin), as the unbound electron approaches the atom and slows down (perhaps by emitting photons), it undergoes a transition from classical to quantum behavior as its energy goes below the ionization energy. Massy particles go through a classical-to-quantum transition. Quantum mechanics is a large subject area but every part of its mathematics involves the Planck constant. The limit to the lifetime of these virtual particles is the energy (mass) of the particle times that lifetime. For example, in the subject area of particle physics, the notion of virtual particles are messy particles that spontaneously appear out of the vacuum for a tiny fraction of a section and play a role in a particle interaction.
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