Attractive Strong Force
What holds quarks together? The strong nuclear force (or strong interaction) keeps quarks and gluons always confined inside the subatomic particles they compose, such as protons and neutrons.
This attractive force is the strongest of the four fundamental forces of nature.
Unlike the gravitational or electromagnetic force, the strong force becomes even stronger as quarks get further apart from each other.
Fascinating — distance makes this bond even stronger!
And it just keeps getting stronger until it becomes energetically more favorable to produce a new quark-antiquark pair than to continue to elongate the color flux tube to allow two quarks to separate.
Amazing, right?
Where does the strong force come from?
Gluons are the carriers of the strong force, acting as exchange particles (think of them as messengers or mediators) for the strong interaction between quarks.
