A Proton's Last Moments

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Cosmology
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

A proton in a short animation from Symmetry describes its final moments in the Large Hadron Collider.

You know the story. An atom consists of three particles: neutrons, protons and electrons.  Free neutrons are not stable; protons are (so far no one has ever provided evidence for their decay). And even if were to be observed no fundamental principles in physics would not be affected.  Neutrons decay into a proton plus some other stuff. Protons can be smashed, ripped apart, converted in energy as you will see. This is more complicated than I've described here so focus on the film.