The more correct idea is that particles aren't fundamental. There are fields, and a disturbance in one field will cause a disturbance in the fields that the fi

The more correct idea is that particles aren't fundamental. There are fields, and a disturbance in one field will cause a disturbance in the fields that the first couples with. Most chains of disturbances die out really fast (“virtual particles”), but some combinations will resonate for a significant amount of time before they die out (“unstable particles”) and others don't die out at all (“stable particles”). And if the lifetime of a disturbance is fairly short compared to the frequency of the disturbance itself, it becomes hard to even make a solid distinction between those types, but again, that's a flaw caused by imposing a categorization scheme (“particles”) based on something that isn't fundamental.