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A quantum is not literally a particle, like some itty-bitty billiard ball. It is instead a little localized chunk of ripple in a field that puts on a particle costume. Comprehending quanta is more about wave interactions than about particle properties. Quantum mechanics is a story of coherent field behavior, not a fable of fantastically fleeting fragments.
“Particles are epiphenomena arising from fields. Unbounded fields, not bounded particles, are fundamental.” ~ American physicist Art Hobson
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All this is what any physicist will relate as indisputable: all matter is made of atoms formed from more elementary quanta. The actuality of quanta is that they are fundamentally coherent, localized fields of energy.
However convincing, the physicality of quanta is nothing more than an illusory appearance. Which leads us to the crucial takeaway point: that what we take for physical existence, by way of objects, is a mirage.
“Although quantum field theory tells us what we can measure, it speaks in riddles when it comes to the nature of whatever entities give rise to our observations. The theory accounts for our observations in terms of quarks, muons, photons, and sundry quantum fields, but it does not tell us what a photon or a quantum field really is.” ~ German physicist Meinard Kuhlmann
