Dave Barry's piece reminded me of when I sent my best undergraduate
student off to grad school at Harvard. He wrote me back in his first
year there that the proton was unstable and would decay in (I think)
10^39 years or so. He appended some significant personal reservation,
however, so I think we raised him right while he was here at SFU.
He got his PhD in four years flat working with Steven Weinberg, and
he is now a professor at the University of Toronto.
They're still looking for proton decay, I understand, in Japan. They
have found massive mu neutrinos there, so perhaps that's the right
place to look for proton decay.