In contrast, the comparably elegant theory of electromagnetism developed by Maxwell a few decades earlier did not stimulate cosmological speculations because the effects of the electromagnetic force are local in character. This is because large regions of space must be electrically neutral - if they were not, charged-particle currents could stream through the vacuum of space to cancel out charge imbalances; the resulting neutral regions could not pull on one another electrically. The other two forces of nature, the weak and strong force, have an even smaller reach than electromagnetism.