Do standard model particles actually exist or merely usefully describe behaviors of a medium?
Clash Royale CLAN TAG #URR8PPP up vote 27 down vote favorite 6 I've read about how sound propagation can be modeled as phonon particles moving and interacting. I understand that this is a useful mathematical construct to describe the behavior of longitudinal pressure waves in a medium like air. Are standard model particles actually matter in the same sense mundane stuff we can directly observe (like the air molecules whose motion transmits sound), mere models that describe a (possibly unknown) medium's behavior (like phonons), or do we believe that at its fundamental level that all matter may be like the phonons in that it's all just describing how some field or medium propagates energy? As it gets beyond electrons, protons, and neutrons, it's not clear to me that the other particles exist rather than being models of how other things behave. I accept the math makes accurate predictions but it's not clear to me that it's not just like phonons that wa