Protons and neutrons

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Protons and Neutrons

The 'proton' has a positive electrical charge +1 and a mass of 938 MeV, that is Mega-Electro Vaults or 1.6726231x10^-27kg, or about 1800 times the mass of the electron. The proton is one of the fundamental particles that make up the center of atoms called the nucleus, apart from the hydrogen atom, which consists of a single proton. The proton seems to be an infinitely stable particle, as no one has ever seen one decay.

The proton is classed as a 'Baryon', which are always made up of three quarks. The proton has what are called 'two up quarks' and 'one down quark'. The 'neutron' has one up quark and two down quarks - thus it is also a Baryon. It has a mass of 940 MeV, which is slightly more than a proton. The fact that neutrons have absolutely no electrical charge actually delayed its discovery and makes them impossible to observe directly - thus makes them very important in nuclear change. Although atoms themselves are uncharged, they are a massive 10,000 times larger than a neutron - so this should give the reader some grasp between the size of an atom compared with a subatomic particle. Even though both the proton and neutron are Baryons, it is also classified as being in the family of 'Hadrons.'

All protons and neutrons, including other subatomic particles, are themselves made up of elementary particles, called 'quarks'. There can only ever be, according to theory, a maximum of three quarks to any proton or neutron - this is because quarks themselves are made up of 'colors.' Individual quarks have specific colors, called 'strange,' 'charmed', 'up', 'down', 'top' and 'bottom' - but when three quarks come together, they are colorless. These are paradoxically the colorless objects that make up all of nature. Quarks are quite large subatomic particles - it even has more mass than the nucleus it makes up, and the missing mass is turned into gluon energy, to hold it all together. However, there was an experiment conducted a few years ago in Russia 1997, by Maxim Polyakov and Victor Petrov at Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, that seemed to indicate the existence of a particle that was made up of five quarks. The hypothetical particle came to be called the 'pentaquark,' for obvious reasons.

The nucleus, as you can imagine, is a clumpy cluster of protons and neutrons - but not all nuclei will have this structure. There is something called the 'neutron halo', and has a totally different structure, independent of the clumpy protons at the centers of atoms - these atoms have internal structures called, 'exotic nuclei.' They will have exactly the right quantum number of protons - but will have slightly more neutrons, that change the isotopes. The more and more neutrons that exist inside an atom, will result in them being unable to stick to the protons and other neutrons. Instead, these extra neutrons will float around the nucleus as a halo.

Strange Stuff

There was a calculation done last year, a mathematician who estimated the statistics of all the phenomena we have seen in this universe. Taking in all the textbook knowledge, he presumed we have seen 40% of universal nature; which is a good thing, because there are still a lot of unanswered-for particles, like the 'Higgs Boson', and particles that make up 'Dark Matter'. Dark Energy also might account for many unseen phenomena. The issue was raised after observations on stars in deep space. We know that there might be many types of different stars, made up of different materials, such as a 'neutron star.'

These collapsed stars are made up mostly of neutrons and thus extremely heavy in weight. The more space a neutron has between another neutron as you can guess measures their density. The neutron, is so much more heavier than the atom shell, in fact, the nucleus makes up 99% of the mass of the entire atom, means that the size of a star would weigh thousands upon thousands of times heavier than earth - a spoonful of neutron pulp would weigh as much as a mountain! The unaccounted phenomena mentioned before has led physicists to contemplate new and exciting ideas, like entire 'quark stars.'

source: wikipedia