Failure Begets Magical Thinking

“If the proton is truly stable and will never decay, it means that a whole lot of proposed extensions to the Standard Model — Grand Unification Theories, supersymmetry, supergravity and string theory among them — cannot describe our Universe.

Regardless of whether the proton is truly stable forever and ever or “only” stable for a septillion times the current age of the Universe, the only way we’ll figure it out is by performing the critical experiments and watching how the Universe behaves.”

Rather than the recommended magical thinking (‘if we persist long enough with our heroic but openly biased efforts, maybe a miracle will happen’), we could boldly and scientifically admit that proton “decay” has effectively ruled out all of these beyond-the-standard-model pipe dreams, and try to come up with some new ideas that bear more connection with observational evidence.