Experimental Evidence
Proton decay is one of the few unobserved effects of the various proposed GUTs, the other major one being magnetic monopoles. Both became the focus of major experimental physics efforts starting in the early 1980s. Proton decay was, for a time, an extremely exciting area of experimental physics research. To date, all attempts to observe these events have failed. Recent experiments at the Super-Kamiokande water Cherenkov radiation detector in Japan gave lower limits for proton half-life, at 90% confidence level, of 6.6×1033 years via antimuon decay and 8.2×1033 years via positron decay. Newer, preliminary results estimate a half-life of no less than 1.01×1034 years via positron decay.
Read more about this topic: Proton Decay
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