What are virtual particles?
First they pop into existence in pairs of particle and antiparticle at any place for a time. The longer they exist the more they [gain mass to] become real particles. Until they annihilate each other out of existence or separate at the event horizon of a black hole (making those fuzzy.) Since the black hole prevents the two particles from popping out of existence one of them is added to our universe while shrinking the hole a bit. Why shrink since you are adding mass to the black hole? Even if particle annihilation occurs it produce a mass equivalent energy.
Popping into existence violates the conservation of matter and energy principle but we're told that's ok for some reason (uncertainty.)
So if our universe is balanced (flat) over time it should gain enough gravity to crunch.
We're supposed to just accept that virtual particles start out massless and gain mass while they exist, until they don't. I'm going to read up a bit and may have more to add... so I can sleep.
When regular particles annihilate they produce energy which has the same total mass as the particles so this balances out and the gravity state of the universe doesn't change. Where does the energy of virtual particles go?
Update: Stargate Atlantis has zero point energy modules that act like super dense batteries that lose their charge over a long period of time. If we ever come up with those they wouldn't be batteries at all, but instead would be tapping into an infinite energy supply although the module itself could degrade which might seem like the same thing.
Mass is equivalent to a finite amount of energy but vacuum contains infinite energy. The latter seems counterintuitive.
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