How far can the strong force act?

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subatomic particle The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator. At the LHC, located underground in Switzerland, physicists study subatomic particles.

The strong force is a fundamental interaction that is extremely short-ranged, operating effectively only over a distance of about $10^{- 15}$ metre, which is roughly the diameter of a proton or a neutron.1234

While the strong force is the most powerful of the fundamental interactions, its influence does not extend into the macroscopic universe because of this limited range. Within its effective range, the force binds quarks together to form composite particles like baryons and mesons through the exchange of gluons. Because gluons carry a "colour" charge and interact with one another, the force becomes increasingly difficult to overcome as distance increases, leading to the phenomenon of confinement, where quarks are permanently bound within these composite particles.34512