What Do The Proton Half-Life and Sasquatch Have In Common?

... and yes this is a science article.

Proton Decay Time

The proton is presumed to be a stable subatomic particle yet is has been postulated by some that even it may decay eventually.

The decay of unstable particles is typically a random event and is best characterized by something called the half-life:

If you take a sample of some radioactive substance it will take some time 't' for one half of the amount to decay away.
Of that remaining one-half amount it will take the same time 't' for one half of the remaining amount to decay away leaving you with one-quarter of the original amount.
Of that remaining one-quarter amount it will take the same time 't' for one half of that remaining amount to decay away leaving you with one-eighth of the original amount.
Of that remaining one-eighth amount it will take the same time 't' for one half of that remaining amount to decay away leaving you with one-sixteenth of the original amount.
and so on and so forth until it is all eventually gone.

This time 't' is called the half-life: the time for one-half of any radioactive substance to decay away.

For example, the half-life of tritium is 12.3 years. The half-life of a radon-222 is 3.8 days. The half-life of carbon-14 is about 5700 years.

To measure the half-life of something like a proton you need to isolate a large sample of a pure substance like the water in the Super Kamiokande neutrino detector in Japan. This is essentially a large tank of ultrapure water (50,000 metric tonnes) surrounded by 13,000 highly sensitive photo-multiplier tubes.

The experiment is designed to detect the light signature of a neutrino interacting with the water but a proton decay, if one occurs, will also show up and with its own unique signature light emission. Basically, you get two experiments in one. Nice.

The Probability Calculation
So the researchers calculated the number of hydrogen protons in the water tank and then they determined the time that they have been looking for a proton decay but have not observed one. From those two numbers they can calculate the minimum time for a proton half-life and in 2015 came up with an answer of at least 1.67×10³⁴ years (ref).

Mind you that they are not saying that the proton half life is 1.67×10³⁴ years. They are just saying that if the proton had a half-life it has to be longer than that value (remember 'never' is longer than that time).

Note that the current instantiation of the Universe is about 14 billion years old (~14×10⁹ years) which means that the proton half life will be at least 1,192,857,142,857,140,000,000,000 times longer than the age of the Universe.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief (end sarcasm).

Sasquatch

So scientists have determined how long the proton half-life must be by not observing the decay of a bunch of protons for some time.

On to Sasquatch.

There are a lot of dash cams out there. There are also a lot of trail cams out in the woods and security cams are bolted onto the exteriors of many many buildings.

If you have ever watched a Russian dash cam Youtube video then you know that these dash cams and other cams out there have recorded may unusual events like meteors streaking across the sky, to tanks suddenly driving across a deserted road, to factory explosions.

As well, there are a lot of cars and trucks out there driving on the roads and these vehicles (unfortunately) hit and kill many animals each year.

The one thing that these dash cams, trail cams and security cams have never recorded is a Sasquatch.

The one thing that all of those vehicles out there have never struck and killed is a Sasquatch.

Maybe Sasquatch are rare and cautious but you would think that after all this time at least one would have been hit and killed or at least wandered through the field of view of a Russian dash cam.

Applying the same logic from the proton half-life calculation one could probably make an estimate of the number of Sasquatch out there and the data strongly indicates that must be a number that is very similar to zero.

Closing Words

This post was an exercise in the scientific usefulness of not observing an event whether it be the decay of a proton or the random wanderings of a wild Sasquatch.

In both cases it seems that the answer is the neither event will ever occur.