Physics and Astronomy Calendar

The quest for unification of the fundamental forces has played a central role in theoretical and experimental physics. The success of electroweak unification during the 1970's led to Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) that predicted observable, spontaneous decay of protons and bound neutrons. During the 1980's, a number of experiments attempted to observe these decays, separating them from cosmic ray neutrino background events. By the mid-1990's, it
became clear that the "background" was more interesting than the "signal." Proton decay was not observed, but neutrinos changed spontaneously from one flavor to another. This talk will describe serendipity in experimental physics and the role of the University of Minnesota in this adventure.