Scientists Finally ‘See’ a Proton Move Through Water, and It Only Took 200 Years

For over two centuries, scientists have known that water transports a positive charge through protons. But they had never actually seen it happen—until now.

In a Science paper published September 11, Yale researchers reported that they devised a method to track, measure, and effectively “see” a proton’s journey through water. For the experiment, the team used a 30-foot-long mass spectrometer—an instrument that separates different elements by…