The nucleus of an atom is composed of neutral and positively charged particles. Wouldn’t the protons repel each other enough that they would fly apart? What is holding it together?
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Gluons are holding it together, which are the force particles that mediate the strong nuclear force.
As the name suggests, the strong nuclear force is… strong. However, it’s also very short-ranged. Its strength falls off very quickly as particles get further apart. And this imposes a limit on how big a nucleus can be, which is part of the cause of radioactivity. Beyond a certain size, the strong nuclear force isn’t strong enough to keep the nucleus together, and the forces that want to rip the nucleus apart (of which electromagnetism is one) become strong enough, and the nucleus does in fact fall apart. When that happens, we call it radioactive decay.
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