David Politzer, David Gross, Franck Wilczek, Tony Zee, and Gerardus t’Hooft discover the Principle of Asymptotic Freedom. This is the physical phenomenon whereby a charged particle in a vacuum, such as an electron, attracts oppositely charged particles from among those continually created in the cosmic vacuum; this cloud of oppositely charged particles tends to deflect other incoming particles. The conclusion is that the quantum vacuum causes the strong interaction to weaken as the energy of the environment increases. In practice, at high energies, particles behave as if they were free from any interaction. This will earn Gros, Politzer, and Wilczek the Nobel Prize.
