Special relativity (SR) made it possible to explain a number of physical phenomena, which shows that its postulates: the principle of constancy of the speed of light and the principle of relativity (the latter suggests the invariance of physical laws with respect to Lorentz’ transformations reflecting the dependence of mass and size of moving bodies on their speed) are based on the properties of a physical process. It is shown in this paper that such a process is the creation in the physical vacuum of a virtual particles pair by the quantum entity that is a singularity in electric and/or magnetic fields and such properties are properties of this virtual particles pair, in particular, the dependence of its mass and size on the speed of the entity creating the pair. Based on the properties of virtual particles we may assume that theory of virtual particles may be an alternative to SR, it may describe the physical phenomena without using the four-dimensional kinematic formalism, remaining in the framework of the model of three-dimensional space and independent time. A substantiation of this assumption is that the equations describing the physical phenomena derived in SR can be derived as well by taking into account the creation of virtual particles pairs by quantum entities while using the Galilean addition of velocities.

special relativity, virtual particle, Doppler effect for light, spin-orbit interaction, relationship between mass and energy, quantum mechanics