Page "Strong interaction" Paragraph 13
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Every quark in the universe does not attract every other quark in the above distance independent manner, since colour-confinement implies that the strong force acts without distance-diminishment only between pairs of single quarks, and that in collections of bound quarks ( i. e., hadrons ), the net colour-charge of the quarks cancels out, as seen from far away.
The strong force is therefore nearly absent between such hadrons ( i. e., between baryons or mesons ).
In this case, only a residual force ( described below ) called the residual strong force acts between the " colourless " hadrons, and this residual force diminishes rapidly with distance, and is thus very short-range ( effectively a few femtometers ).
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