[t8sr]

I don't like mechanistic explanations of particle physics - they're an attempt to relate what's going on to our macroscopic experience, but they usually fall apart when you look too closely.

I find it much easier to understand the stability of hydrogen by thinking about ground states. If the electron in H could merge with the proton, they'd make a neutron. But a free neutron is not stable and decays in a few minutes back into a proton, electron and an antineutrino.

With very large, proton-rich nuclei, eventually you get to the opposite situation where the ground state is one less proton, one less electron and one more neutron and the atom decays into that state by, you guessed it, an electron "falling into" the nucleus.