Quantum chromodynamics possess an additional SU(3) gauge degree of freedom, later called color charge. Han and Nambu noted that quarks might interact via an octet of vector gauge bosons: the gluons. Since free quark searches consistently failed to turn up any evidence for the new particles, and because an elementary particle back then was "defined" as a particle which could be separated and isolated, Gell-Mann often said that quarks were merely convenient mathematical constructs, not real particles. The meaning of this statement was usually clear in context: He meant quarks are confined, but he also was implying that the strong interactions could
3 Quarks Daily had reached thirty-five thousand. Since then, "3 Quarks Daily" has culled content from hundreds of sources, from blogs such as Salon, Science Daily, and The Huffington Post, from major publications such as "The New York Times", "Nature", and "The Guardian", to smaller outlets such as "Guernica Magazine", "The Awl", and "The American Scholar". The name "3 Quarks Daily" comes from the elementary nuclear particles of physics which in turn were named after the word "quark" which James Joyce had used in Finnegans Wake. The confluence of references to both science and literature in a single word suited the intent of