Quantum field theories give rise to particles in two different ways. The first way is that the field has a little ripple, a little wave in it, and as I said before, quantum mechanics molds that ripple into a bundle of energy. The second way doesn't involve quantum mechanics at all. It's that, this might be hard to explain, but the field can sort of fold over on itself in a particular way, wrap around itself, and give rise to a lump of energy that doesn't disperse. That's the important thing. It doesn't disappear. It sits there in a stable way, even without invoking quantum mechanics. And that goes by the name of a soliton. There are some almost examples. There are some cheating examples that are easy to explain and some others that are genuine that are maybe less familiar. So, an example that isn't quite a soliton but is almost is a smoke ring. If you're into cigars, I don't know if that's allowed anymore, but if you're into cigars and you blow smoke rings, these are amazing objects. They persist for an extraordinarily long time and float around, slowly expanding. And if you're very good, I'm told, you can blow one smoke ring and then get another to go through it and backwards and forwards.
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