I’m no physicist but researching this topic leads me to believe the person who posted the top comment is either a physicist worried about things that don’t impact others, or someone who has discovered the elixir of life and will live a thousand generations.
According to perplexity, there are only 2 noteworthy consequences this could have, both of them relatively meaningless for most people’s existence today.
First is what the end of the universe looks like (not a problem we need to worry about for all practical purposes) - If protons decay, all baryonic matter would eventually be converted into gamma ray photons and leptons. If they don’t decay, the matter will eventually be converted into… photons and leptons… same stuff, but it’ll take longer. Big whoop.
Second is the implications on particle physics (again, not a real problem that substantially affects anyone’s life besides actual physicists) - since the stability of protons implies the conservation of the baryon number, which is a principle of the Standard Model, if protons don’t decay then… the standard model we already have is correct, and newer theoretical models attempting to unify all the forces will have a harder time doing so. That’s literally all it means, and impacts literally nobody except physicists AFAICT.
So to the top commenter: either tell us your dirty secrets or get out of here with your alarmist crap.
hydroptic@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
Right??? You can’t just say something like that and then ride off into the sunset
solarbabies@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I’m no physicist but researching this topic leads me to believe the person who posted the top comment is either a physicist worried about things that don’t impact others, or someone who has discovered the elixir of life and will live a thousand generations.
According to perplexity, there are only 2 noteworthy consequences this could have, both of them relatively meaningless for most people’s existence today.
First is what the end of the universe looks like (not a problem we need to worry about for all practical purposes) - If protons decay, all baryonic matter would eventually be converted into gamma ray photons and leptons. If they don’t decay, the matter will eventually be converted into… photons and leptons… same stuff, but it’ll take longer. Big whoop.
Second is the implications on particle physics (again, not a real problem that substantially affects anyone’s life besides actual physicists) - since the stability of protons implies the conservation of the baryon number, which is a principle of the Standard Model, if protons don’t decay then… the standard model we already have is correct, and newer theoretical models attempting to unify all the forces will have a harder time doing so. That’s literally all it means, and impacts literally nobody except physicists AFAICT.
So to the top commenter: either tell us your dirty secrets or get out of here with your alarmist crap.
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 3 months ago
I’m spooked though