Talk:Vacuum Manipulation/@comment-4867780-20120730080656/@comment-4013655-20120805082436

If my memory serves, electric charges (such as electrons and protons) interact by exchanging photons. These photons carry the momentum from one charge (a rather fancy term meaning the product of mass times velocity (basically speed with direction specified)) to another similar to how billard balls hiting each other.

Atoms, being composed of electrons and protons, despite being neutral overall, can still interact electromagnetically because of the electron cloud that surrounds them. When molecules form, these electron coulds from the atoms overlap in some manner governed by quantum mechanics which caused most of the cloud to reside between the two atoms. Then the mutual attractions between the positive nuclei of the atoms to the electron cloud in between hold the molecule together.

Without photons, protons will not be surrounded by electrons to form atoms, and atoms cannot come together to form molecules, and eventually everything we know of (with the exception of dark matter and other unknown entities) would not exist