https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/02/260215225537.h...
Perhaps some Adamesque (as in douglas adams) creature whose sole purpose is to collect all unique UUIDs and give them names.
Two quarks inside the proton interact via a massive messenger particle. This exchange flips their identity, turning the proton into a positron and a neutral pion. The pion then immediately converts into gamma rays.
Proton decayed!
The standard model is almost certainly an effective field theory and a low-energy approximation of a more comprehensive framework. In any ultraviolet completion, such as a GUT, quarks and leptons inhabit the same multiplets. At these scales, the distinction between matter types blurs, and the heavy gauge bosons provide the exact mediation mechanism described to bypass the baryon barrier.
Furthermore, the existence of the universe is an empirical mandate for baryon-violation. If baryon number were a strict, immutable law, the Sakharov conditions could not be met, and the primordial matter-antimatter symmetry would have resulted in a total annihilation. Our existence is proof that baryon number is not conserved. Even within the current framework, non-perturbative effects like sphalerons demonstrate that the Standard Model vacuum itself does not strictly forbid the destruction of baryons.