The quotation marks had the force of tradition—and the tradition of force—behind them.

When Nebraska’s Herman Batelaan and colleagues recently submitted a research paper that makes the case for the existence of a non-Newtonian, quantum force, the journal asked that they place “force” firmly within quotes. The team understood and agreed to the request.

After all, the word has long belonged to classical Newtonian physics: equal-and-opposite reactions, electromagnetism, gravity and other laws that explain the apple-dropping, head-bonking phenomena of everyday experience.

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