Why can a proton not exist freely in an ordinary solution?

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sodium sulfate — acid–base reaction Sodium sulfate, also called Glauber's salt, is, like other salts, the product of an acid-base reaction.

A proton, which is the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, cannot exist freely in an ordinary solution because it is a bare nucleus that readily combines with other particles, such as electrons, atoms, and molecules.1

In any solution, a proton is always attached to another species, most commonly a solvent molecule. For example, in water, the proton binds to a water molecule to form the hydronium ion ( $H_{3} O^{+}$ ), which is represented as $H^{+} \cdot H_{2} O$ . Because of this high reactivity, an isolated proton can only exist in a nearly particle-free space, such as a high vacuum, or in the gaseous state. Consequently, while the Brønsted–Lowry definition of acids and bases conceptually involves the loss or gain of a proton, this process is never observed in isolation within a solution.21