The 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics

azatht writes "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2004 "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction" jointly to David J. Gross, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, H. David Politzer California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, USThe 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Frank Wilczek Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA."

Comments

Well . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

This discovery cemented the theory of quantum chromodynamics, which describes the interactions of quarks and other subatomic particles inside the atomic nucleus.

It also filled a critical remaining gap in what physicists refer to as the Standard Model, the theory that governs physics at the microscopic scale. It accounts for the behavior of three out of nature's four fundamental forces - electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force, which governs radioactive decay. Which brings us a few step forwards towards the answer of 42.