A continuing program of research in theoretical physics focuses on properties of the smallest isolable particles, whether elementary or composed of even smaller objects bound together. The strategy is to consider effects produced by such particles which at least in principle should be detectable without probing inside them. Among the particles considered are solitons, which in first approximation are simply bundles of classical-field energy, and hadrons (particles which interact with one another via the strong nuclear force), which are known to contain so-called color charges, never seen in isolation. The importance of the work lies not only in the fundamental character of the results, but also in the way it ties microscopic knowledge to near human-scale experience.
