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Watch America 250: The Breakthroughs That Built American Science — Part 2
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Asymptotic freedom is introduced as a discovery connected to the strong interaction and quantum chromodynamics. The discussion gives historical context but does not develop the mechanism behind the effect.

Transcript

170 words · auto-generated from the episode video

46:44>> Yes. >> 1973 discovery of asmtoic freedom. >> Yes. Um this has to do with the strong nuclear force. The strong nuclear force is as its name suggests extremely strong. It is what keeps the nucleus together because you know protons that are all positively charged right next to one another in the nucleus they want to rip apart the nucleus because positive charges want to move away from other positive charges. And yet the nucleus is very stable. Why is that? Well the strong nuclear force is keeping them together. But then the question is why isn't the strong nuclear force like everywhere? How come it only acts at this very small distance inside the nucleus? It has to do with asmtoic freedom. Theoretical

47:25physicists David Grass Frank Wilchek both of them were at Princeton University and David Pulitzer at Harvard. they independently um figured out this concept of asmtoic freedom and it won them the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics and initiated the formalization of quantum chromodnamics.

From the episode
  1. EP 47

    America 250: The Breakthroughs That Built American Science — Part 2

    Part two of our America 250 special traces American science from Sputnik to the AI age, covering Apollo, ARPANET, CRISPR, LIGO, mRNA vaccines, JWST, transformers, and the future of science funding.

    America 250: The Breakthroughs That Built American Science — Part 2

History of ScienceAmerica 250