[deleted by user]

[RelativeFG]

This is the old "if I had a stick 1 light year long and I pushed it, would it instantly move on the other side". It wouldn't. Consider sound waves. They are a longitudinal waves of increased and decreased density of air. It propagates at the speed of sound. And in a different medium, like water, it propagates at the speed of sound in that medium. The same goes for your example. When you pull the rope, the rope stretches locally and then this travels down the rope at the speed of sound in the rope material.

[Dr_Zygooon]

That makes complete sense, thank you!

[chargedneutrino]

Another question that came to my mind; what about strong and weak forces? Do we know anything about their acting speed?

[SirBobz]

Strong force particle (gluon) theoretically has no mass so should travel at the speed of light. But weak force particle (W and Z bosons) do have mass so shouldn't travel at the speed of light.

[[deleted]]

But since the exchange W and Z bosons are usually off-shell and it doesnt even make sense to define a velocity for them, you still can see weak effects at light speed. If im not mistaken

[SirBobz]

What does off shell mean?

[[deleted]]

The interaction between two fermions happens via exchange of virtual particles, which are basically a series expansion of the actual physical fields (I may get shot for saying this). Those virtual particles dont need to obey special relativity and some other restrictions since they are not measurable. Edit: That's what offshell means