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We suggest that baryon-number conservation may not be absolute and that an integrally charged quark may disintegrate into two leptons and an antilepton with a coupling strength GBmₚ²10^-9. On the other hand, if quarks are much heavier than low-lying hadrons, the decay of a three-quark system like the proton is highly forbidden (proton lifetime {} 10²⁸ y). Motivation for these ideas appears to arise within a unified theory of hadrons and leptons and their gauge interactions. We emphasize the consequences of such a possibility for real quark searches.
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Pati et al. (1973) studied this question.
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