No Proton Decay Means Grand Unification Must Wait

Re:No Proton Decay Means Grand Unification Must Wait by jeebers on Saturday December 17, 2016 @01:59PM (#13201884)

The article can be summarized by this line:

"Japan is considering building a $1 billion detector called Hyper-Kamiokande, which would be between eight and 17 times bigger than Super-K and would be sensitive to proton lifetimes of 10^35 years after two decades."

All this to possibly detect a single proton decay in 20 years. Now that's some serious commitment!

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Re:No Proton Decay Means Grand Unification Must Wait by sanxiyn on Saturday December 17, 2016 @11:08PM (#13204286)

If it were solely to detect proton decay, yes, I agree it would be very impressive. The reality is a bit more prosaic though, as the article suggests in passing:

"In the meantime, a Nobel Prize has been won for a different discovery in the cathedral-esque water tank pertaining to particles called neutrinos."

Hyper-K is a dual-purpose detector, a neutrino detector as well as a proton decay detector. Substantial part of Hyper-K funding should be interpreted as investment to a neutrino detector.

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