What is a proton?
A proton is a tiny particle, smaller than an atom. Protons are too small to see, even with an electron microscope, but we know they must be there because that’s the only way we can explain how atoms behave. To give you an idea how small a proton is, if an atom was the size of a football stadium, then a proton would still be smaller than a marble. Pretty much all of the protons in the universe probably got made very soon after the Big Bang. At first there was no stuff, just a lot of loose energy shooting around everywhere in the form of photons (light) and larger particles like photons called bosons. These early bosons had tons of energy and a lot of them broke apart into protons and anti-protons. Most of these protons and anti-protons eventually lost energy and hooked back up into bosons again, but some of the anti-protons seem to have gotten lost somewhere, and all the mass in the Universe comes from these left-over protons. All protons, everywhere in the universe, are exactly the sam
A proton is a subatomic particle found in the nucleus of all conventional atoms. The only place you can find matter without protons is in a neutron star or the core of powerful particle accelerators. The proton has a positive charge, which balances out the negative charge in atoms, electrons. If an atom has an imbalance of protons or neutrons, it is no longer neutral and becomes a charged particle, also known as an ion. The proton was discovered by Ernest Rutherford in 1918. He fired alpha particles, which are essentially helium nuclei without electrons, into a nitrogen gas. His detectors found the characteristic signature of hydrogen nuclei being produced. After thinking about it for a while, he realized that these hydrogen nuclei could have only come from the nitrogen gas. This led to the theory that the nucleus of a hydrogen atom was an elementary particle, the proton, and that protons could be found in the nuclei of all atoms. The properties of atoms are defined by the number of el
