what did rutherford discover about the atom

Ernest Rutherford discovered that the atom is mostly empty space with a tiny, dense, positively charged nucleus at its center. His gold foil experiment showed that while most alpha particles passed straight through the foil, a small fraction were deflected at large angles, indicating the presence of a concentrated positive charge in a very small volume within the atom. This nucleus contains nearly all the atom's mass and is surrounded by electrons orbiting at a distance, similar to planets around the sun. Rutherford estimated the nucleus to be about 1/100,000 the size of the atom, fundamentally changing the model of atomic structure from the earlier "plum pudding" model to the nuclear model of the atom