The dynamics of the strong nuclear force are not well understood when high numbers of nucleons are involved. By which I mean, we have some empirical models that kinda-sorta work for various regimes, given some tinkering with the constants, but we have no from-first-principles understanding. You by no means need to go as far as biology before you get into stuff we cannot calculate from the equations; but in this case we don’t even know the equations all that well, because the strong-force constant (ie, the equivalent of G in gravity and alpha in electromagnetism) varies drastically with the energy involved, and we don’t know exactly how it varies. (“So why”, you ask plaintively, “is it called a constant?” By analogy with G and alpha, which genuinely are constants so far as anyone knows.) So while nuclear dynamics are not my particular subfield of physics, I would be unsurprised to learn that the answer to your question is “N. N.’s PhD thesis, submitted 2025”.
One more observation: Nuclear dynamics is the field in which physicists refer unironically to Magic Numbers; that is, some numbers of protons and neutrons are particularly stable compared to their neighbours, and it’s not quite clear why. Presumably there’s some sort of symmetry involved.
The dynamics of the strong nuclear force are not well understood when high numbers of nucleons are involved. By which I mean, we have some empirical models that kinda-sorta work for various regimes, given some tinkering with the constants, but we have no from-first-principles understanding. You by no means need to go as far as biology before you get into stuff we cannot calculate from the equations; but in this case we don’t even know the equations all that well, because the strong-force constant (ie, the equivalent of G in gravity and alpha in electromagnetism) varies drastically with the energy involved, and we don’t know exactly how it varies. (“So why”, you ask plaintively, “is it called a constant?” By analogy with G and alpha, which genuinely are constants so far as anyone knows.) So while nuclear dynamics are not my particular subfield of physics, I would be unsurprised to learn that the answer to your question is “N. N.’s PhD thesis, submitted 2025”.
One more observation: Nuclear dynamics is the field in which physicists refer unironically to Magic Numbers; that is, some numbers of protons and neutrons are particularly stable compared to their neighbours, and it’s not quite clear why. Presumably there’s some sort of symmetry involved.