Virtual particle are indeed real. They have observable effect that physicists have devised ways of measuring it. Quantum theory predicts that every particle spends some time as a combination of other particle in all possible ways. Quantum Mechanics allows and indeed requires temporary violations of conservation of energy. So, one particle can become a pair of heavier "virtual" particle which quickly rejoin into original particle almost as if they had never existed.
While the virtual particle are briefly part of our world, they can interact with other, less exotic particles and researchers can study these interactions to test prediction about virtual particle. In a hydrogen atom, Photon (elementary particle of electromagnetic radiation) binds together a negatively charged electron and a positively charged proton. Every photon will spend some time as virtual electron plus its antiparticle, the virtual position as described above. The hydrogen atom can be in more than one state, in one of those states, the atom







