A plot showing
measurements of the "strong coupling constant" at different
energies. The fact that this strong nuclear force analogue of the
electron's charge decreases as the energy of the experiment increases
is called "asymptotic freedom". It was predicted by Gross, Politzer,
and Wilczek in the early 1970's. They won the 2004
Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. The blue band represents the
predictions obtained from contemporary implementations of Gross,
Politzer, and Wilczek's idea.
