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Baryons are composite particles which are made of three quarks. Since all quarks have a spin of 1/2, a baryon will always have a spin of either 1/2 or 3/2 (the spins can cancel out). The 3/2 spin baryons are extremely unstable, and only live for 10-23 seconds. After that, they will jump down to a lower energy state by releasing photons containing energy. These 3/2 spin baryons are known as higher energy resonances. the lowest energy state of a baryon is a simple 1/2 spin.

All particles with 1/2 spin (or 3/2 spin) are called fermions, which obey Fermi-Dirac statistics. This basically means that no two fermions can be in the same point in space at the same time. This is not true for the other type of subatomic particle, called a boson. More than one boson--like a photon--can exist in the same point in space at the same time.

Baryons are part of a larger collection of subatomic compounds called Hadrons. Hadrons are simply particles made of quarks. The other type of Hadron is called a meson.
