http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_interaction
As we delve deeper we find this:"Before the 1970s, physicists were uncertain about the binding mechanism of the atomic nucleus. It was known that the nucleus was composed of protons and neutrons and that protons possessed positive electric charge while neutrons were electrically neutral. However, these facts seemed to contradict one another. By physical understanding at that time, positive charges would repel one another and the nucleus should therefore fly apart. However, this was never observed. New physics was needed to explain this phenomenon.
A stronger attractive force was postulated to explain how the atomic nucleus was bound together despite the protons' mutual electromagnetic repulsion. This hypothesized force was called the strong force, which was believed to be a fundamental force that acted on the nucleons (the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus). Experiments suggested that this force bound protons and neutrons together with equal strength.
It was later discovered that protons and neutrons were not fundamental particles, but were made up of constituent particles called quarks. The strong attraction between nucleons was the side-effect of a more fundamental force that bound the quarks together in the protons and neutrons. The theory of quantum chromodynamics explains that quarks carry what is called a color charge, although it has no relation to visible color. Quarks with unlike color charge attract one another as a result of the strong interaction, which is mediated by particles called gluons."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluon
So " one could say that the color force is the source of the strong interaction," and to be considered a fundamental force " In particle physics,"Gluons ( /ˈɡluːɒnz/; from English glue) are elementary particles that act as the exchange particles (or gauge bosons) for the strong force between quarks, analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles.
Since quarks make up the baryons and the mesons, and the strong interaction takes place between baryons and mesons, one could say that the color force is the source of the strong interaction, or that the strong interaction is like a residual color force that extends beyond the baryons, for example when protons and neutrons are bound together in a nucleus."
fundamental interactions (sometimes called interactive forces or fundamental forces) are the ways that elementary particles interact with one another. An interaction is fundamental when it cannot be described in terms of other interactions." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction
It was first wrongly asserted that the protons and neutrons were fundamental particles and governed by the strong force, then when Color Charge was found, the strong force became a sub-field of this force. In effect the strong force can know be described in terms of the Color Charge, so it no longer can claim fundamental force status. Yet they to this day call it a fundamental force, when in reality it is the color charge of the fundamental particles that governs the atom.
Now you are free to continue to believe the strong force is a fundamental force although it is now known it is caused by another force.
As for Color charge we read:
Question, quarks have 3 aspects of charge diguised as color. It is then claimed EM has only one. So which is it, is space positive or negative? It can be no other. Or maybe there is a third state after all, a balance of forces called as is the term, neutral. So charge can exist in any of the three configurations and we begin to see why the term color was added to misdirect.Since gluons carry colour charge, two gluons can also interact. A typical interaction vertex (called the three gluon vertex) for gluons involves g+g→g. This is shown here, along with its colour line representation. The colour-line diagrams can be restated in terms of conservation laws of colour; however, as noted before, this is not a gauge invariant language. Note that in a typical non-Abelian gauge theory the gauge boson carries the charge of the theory, and hence has interactions of this kind; for example, the W boson in the electroweak theory. In the electroweak theory, the W also carries electric charge, and hence interacts with a photon.
In particle physics, colour charge is a property of quarks and gluons that is related to the particles' strong interactions in the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Colour charge has analogies with the notion of electric charge of particles, but because of the mathematical complications of QCD, there are many technical differences. The "colour" of quarks and gluons is completely unrelated to visual perception of colour.[1] Rather, it is a name for a property that has almost no manifestation at distances above the size of an atomic nucleus. The term colour was chosen because the abstract property to which it refers has three aspects, which are analogized to the three primary colours of red, green, and blue.[2] By comparison, the electromagnetic charge has a single aspect, which takes the values positive or negative.
So if indeed charge can be only two configurations of one force (positive or negative) is the space around us overall negative or overall positive since it can be only one of those two? This I ask because according to standard theory it is neutral, but standard theory says it can be only two aspects of the same force, overall negative or overall positive. Yet these same distractors will claim space and plasma is overall neutral.