After 40 years of studying the strong nuclear force, a revelation

This was the year that analysis of data finally backed up a prediction, made in the mid 1970s, of a surprising emergent behaviour in the strong nuclear force

In the mid 1970s, four Soviet physicists, Batlisky, Fadin, Kuraev and Lipatov, made some predictions involving the strong nuclear force which would lead to their initials entering the lore. "BFKL" became a shorthand for a difficult-to-understand but important physical effect which could have big implications for high energy physics.

The strongest of the known fundamental forces of nature is something of an enigma. It holds together the nucleus of every atom - easily overcoming the electromagnetic repulsion between the positively-charged protons in there. The simplest atomic nucleus, that of hydrogen, is a single proton, but even that is held in one piece by the strong force, so tightly that it never falls apart - or at least, it lives billions of times longer than the current age of the observable universe. Truly, strong and stable.