It's been more than a decade since I 've been out of High Energy Physics. The mediator of the strong force, the gluon, is a different beast compared to photons

It's been more than a decade since I 've been out of High Energy Physics. The mediator of the strong force, the gluon, is a different beast compared to photons. It can directly interact with itself and create more of it. Add in the math that describe it and you get an emerging behavior vastly different from the one you get for photons.