What’s so hard about measuring the strong force?

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"... It is the strength of those strong force bonds between quarks that make up most of the mass of the proton.

“The mass of the quarks are responsible for only about a percent of the nucleon mass,” ..., where the gluon—the force-carrying particle for the strong force—was first discovered in 1979.

“The rest is the energy contained in the motion of the gluons. The mass of matter is given by the energy of the strong interaction.” ...
but when you try to take two quarks apart, the coupling actually gets stronger ...

At the LHC [Large Hadron Collider], scientists study the collisions of protons. In their recent record-breaking work, the ATLAS experiment measured alpha strong using proton-proton collisions and the production of particles called Z bosons.

When quarks in colliding protons annihilate, they typically produce Z bosons, among other particles. The Z bosons do not interact via the strong force, but the strong force gives them a kick as they escape particle collisions. The ATLAS experiment measured the transverse momentum of the Z bosons to extract alpha strong. ...

We are a long way from fully understanding the strong force. We know the strength of the electromagnetic force to about one part in a billion, but we know the strength of the strong force to only about one in a hundred. ..."

What’s so hard about measuring the strong force? | symmetry magazine The ATLAS collaboration recently measured the strength of the strong force to a record level of precision, but there’s still a long way to go toward understanding this fundamental force.