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It is believed that gravity, the weakest of the four forces propagates at the speed of light, cf. e.g. this Phys.SE post. One would expect (perhaps erroneously) that the other, stronger, forces acted at an even quicker speed. Of course, it is not like that. At least, it's not for electromagnetism. What do we know about the speed of the other two?

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    The speed of a force is based on how fast excitations in a field can travel. If those excitations are massless as in the case of photons in electromagnetism and gravitons in gravity then they travel at the speed of light. In the case of the weak force, W and Z bosons are very massive so the speed and distance they travel is very limited. The strong force is complicated. Gluons are massless so I think they travel at the speed of light. They form "flux tubes" though which limits the force distance. I'm not sure it has been tested. – Brandon Enright Apr 04 '13 at 15:42
  • Possible duplicates: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/57137/2451 and links therein. – Qmechanic Apr 04 '13 at 15:54
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    @Qmechanic: I agree, should we close? – Manishearth Apr 04 '13 at 16:02

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