How does a permanent magnet relate to photons?

Photons are like ripples in the electromagnetic field (I would say waves, but of course they are also particles ;). read more

is talking about. The waves that you might have on top of the ocean are the "real" photons that have real energy and momentum and that always travel at the speed of light. read more

The magnetic field is really just a classical approximation to the photon-exchange picture. In a moving reference frame, a magnetic field appears instead as a combination of a magnetic field and an electric field, so electric and magnetic fields are made of the same "stuff" (photons). read more

Photons are wave excitations of the electromagnetic field, which quantum mechanics makes behave sort of like particles. Any field can be thought of as a sum of a lot of vibrations, thus you can think of even a static magnetic field as made up of virtual photons. read more