Amherst Researchers Create Magnetic Monopoles 156
An anonymous reader writes "Nearly 85 years after pioneering theoretical physicist Paul Dirac predicted the possibility of their existence, an international collaboration led by Amherst College Physics Professor David S. Hall '91 and Aalto University (Finland) Academy Research Fellow Mikko Möttönen has created, identified and photographed synthetic magnetic monopoles in Hall's laboratory on the Amherst campus. The groundbreaking accomplishment paves the way for the detection of the particles in nature, which would be a revolutionary development comparable to the discovery of the electron." That's quite a step beyond detecting monopoles; the
Nature abstract is online, but the full paper is paywalled.
Verry cool IF TRUE (Score:2)
But how many slashdot stories about fusion reactors, methanol fuel cells, or flying cars has actually been more than investor fleecing vaporware?
Re:Verry cool IF TRUE (Score:5, Funny)
Hall's team adopted an innovative approach to investigating Dirac's theory, creating and identifying synthetic magnetic monopoles in an artificial magnetic field generated by a Bose-Einstein condensate, an extremely cold atomic gas tens of billionths of a degree warmer than absolute zero.
"Verry cool" is an understatement.
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no. it's not an understatement, it's a typo.
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EFOY fuel cells have been in the field for a while now. In fact, if you are willing to pony up the $8000 or so, you can get one for your RV. You have to use their methanol cartridges which are 150 bones per 10 liters, but they give out constant, relatively quiet power to keep RV batteries charged even at night, without needing to fire up a generator or start the vehicle's engine.
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Poor foolish AC doesn't understand the difference between science and engineering. Fusion reactors, methanol fuel cells, or flying cars are all engineering, not science. Constructing a monopole isn't something that is goimg to have shelves of monopoles in the stores, it confirmed an 85 year old theory.
I wonder what the poor ignorant fool is doing posting here?
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Bullshit. Electric motors are limited by the performance of the conductors and the good old magnetic path where the monopoles are of no help. Electric motors with superconducting windings have been built, and they are pretty damn efficient. Heck, stock brushless electric motors are already pretty damn efficient.
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Electric motors aren't getting more efficient until someone finds a better room-temperature conductor than copper. Ideally a superconductor. There's no fundamental law that says such a thing couldn't exist, but so far it has eluded all efforts to find one.
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Nano tube winding are possible.
The group that find a way to mass produce long nano tube will be rich and will change the worlds.
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It really doesn't matter. Copper is a pretty good conductor already. Having 100% efficient electric motors doesn't really solve any major engineering challenges. If anything, you may now need to pay extra for heaters.
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Perhaps true, but a better conductor would have another practical advantage in motor design. You could use higher currents without producing so much heat things start to melt. More powerful motors result.
I have visions of a electric wheelchair with a 'turbo boost' button.
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You can't go too far without saturating the magnetic path. Then you decide "oh, to heck with magnetic path, we've got the amp turns, we can have it all in the air". Not soon thereafter you hit the strength limits of whatever nonmagnetic composite structure you use to keep the coils from shredding themselves to pieces, never mind the extreme cyclic loads generated by the rotating magnetic fields on anything ferromagnetic that happens to be nearby.
Practical superconducting motors require changes to pretty muc
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Might be able then to *find* anti-gravity particles though! 8D
These are NOT Dirac Monopoles (Score:5, Informative)
But how many slashdot stories about fusion reactors, methanol fuel cells, or flying cars has actually been more than investor fleecing vaporware?
These are not actually Dirac monopoles. These are magnetic quasiparticles that behave in a way that simulates Dirac monopoles.
The Ars Technicha article has the best explanation:
http://arstechnica.com/science... [arstechnica.com]
Emphasis mine:
"Since we can't seem to find one, though, some researchers decided to emulate monopole behavior using an analogous quantum system. They used a Bose-Einstein condensate: a collection of very cold atoms that behaves like a single quantum system."
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Monopole Magnets (Score:5, Funny)
"The secrets of magnetism"
Requires Superstring Theory, Silksteel Alloys
Leads to Nanominiaturization, Unified Field Theory
Enables: Terraform Mag Tube
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"...but concrete and profitable applications as well."
which is the stupidest thing you can say about science, and the stupidest way to measure scientist success.
Great way to kill research, tho.
I suspect anyone who says that is just looking for an excuse to kill scientific investigation.
No one knew electricity was going to lead to iPhones.
You use science to find out how things work and publish it. Engineers use those finding to build things.
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No one knew electricity was going to lead to iPhones.
Probably just as well. If they had, we might never have had all the good things that electricity has brought us.
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It's a quote from the leader of the turbo-capitalist faction [wikiquote.org] in the game being referenced in the post it was a reply to.
Personally, I would have gone with this quote, since it's the actual one that matches the research of Monopole Magnets:
I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome. With sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain. Remember, enlightenment is a function of willpower, not of physical strength.
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[ ] Explore
[XXXX] Discover
[ ] Build
[ ] Conquer
Screw it, we'll pick up the rest on the way. All the good weapons and reactors are Discover techs anyway.
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Scientist: I can mathematically predict a vacuum > 29 in/Hg
Engineer: I can prove it with your lips on my manometer.
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I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome.
With sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any
distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure
without pain. Remember, enlightenment is a function of willpower,
not of physical strength.
â"Chairman Sheng-ji Yang,
âoeEssays on Mind and Matterâ
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There is no enlightenment, there is only acceptance of a narrative..an often incorrect narrative.
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Somehow I think you are refering to a 19th century European definition of enlightenment.
Re:Monopole Magnets (Score:5, Funny)
Practical application. (Score:2)
(magentic north be damned)
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(magentic north be damned)
Agreed. I far prefer roseate north.
What is it? (Score:2)
As the name suggests, however, a magnetic monopole is a magnetic particle possessing only a single, isolated pole—a north pole without a south pole, or vice versa.
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If you can't figure out what a magnetic monopole is from it's name, you shouldn't be reading /.
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It was discovered by Dr. Monopole, duh.
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Heh, was waiting for this :-)
Are we sure. . . (Score:5, Funny)
someone wasn't playing a trick on them and was turning the electric can opener on and off in the other room?
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Hold the phone - the researchers are cats?
Re:Are we sure. . . (Score:4, Funny)
Hold the phone
I can't. I has no thumbs.
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It was either that or kill Sheldon.
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Monopole Magnets (Score:2)
I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome.
With sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain. Remember, enlightenment is a function of willpower, not of physical strength.
—Chairman Sheng-ji Yang,
“Essays on Mind and Matter”
Time to start building those Mag Tubes!
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This is the first thing I thought of upon seeing this article.
This is cool, but (Score:5, Insightful)
they haven't really found a magnetic monopole. They've created a long skinny solenoid with ends that are far enough apart that they look like independent monopoles.
Great physics, terrible summary.
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they haven't really found a magnetic monopole. They've created a long skinny solenoid with ends that are far enough apart that they look like independent monopoles.
My reading of the paper was that that's the physical interpretation of what monopoles are in the first place.
Re:This is cool, but (Score:4, Informative)
no, these are not monopoles at all, hence the word "synthetic" in front.
there is no evidence whatsoever that monopoles exist, not for the last 70+ years of searching.
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As I understand it, there are 2 potential manifestations for what people call magnetic monopoles...
1. Existence of a unit of magnetic charge analogous to an electrical charge attached to some sort of particle.
2. So-called Dirac monopoles (a "monopole" that is connected by a 1-D dirac-string to another "monopole" of opposite magnetic "charge")
Nobody has seen #1, and from what I can gather, most folks don't expect to find them. #2 turns out to be one theoretical way to get monopoles to be consistent w/ Maxwel
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Nope, there's no corresponding opposite pole in the system they've created. It's a genuine magnetic monopole quasiparticle, albeit one that only exists as the product of tweaking the magnetic field of a Bose-Einstein condensate.
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false, there is no magnetic field from a source point, a compass wouldn't point at what they've created.
these are not magnetic monopoles at all, in no sense of the word.
magnetic monopoles do not exist, there are no evidence they exist after decades of looking.
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There is no reason they can't exist, nor have many of the ways to look for them been completed.
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wrong, the search has been ongoing for over 40 years, nothing found
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Good thing you weren't in charge when Christopher Columbus was looking for funding from Spain.
Monopole Money (Score:3, Funny)
MAG-TUBES! (Score:2)
Sweet! On to Nanominiaturization and Unified Field Theory.
Next: aguuti nodules (Score:2, Funny)
Pseudoparticles (Score:5, Interesting)
These are pseudoparticles. They're like magnetic monopoles in almost all ways, but they arise from the collective motion of other particles rather than actually existing in and of themselves (think about having an electron hole, versus having an actual positron). The breakthrough is that they've made the first pseudoparticle in a quantum mechanical regime that allows it to behave consistently with the real particle.
Err, quasiparticles (Score:2)
I should say, "quasiparticles".
Re:Pseudoparticles (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the "electron hole" analogy. Electron holes aren't as spectacular as positrons; they don't annihilate electrons and generate gamma-ray photons. They can, however, "annihilate" an electron in a semiconductor to produce a visible photon -- and that's how we get LEDs.
This "monopole" won't let us build super-motors or disintegrate protons at will. But I wonder if, recreated in a more robust medium, it could have its own interesting uses?
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Although you may like the "electron hole" analogy, it does not correctly illustrate this phenomena.
A "electron hole" is a deficit of negative charge in some region relative to another that can be sometimes treated quantum mechanically as if it was a positive charge. This phenomena has nothing to do with this as there are no regions of opposite magnetic charge to borrow from.
This effect described relies on manipulating the magnetic fields in such a way that it organizes a condensed matter state in a way simi
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You may like the duck analogy, but it does not correctly illustrate this phenomenon. :)
Joking aside, I realize that I don't know enough about the model domain to evaluate my analogy. The similarities I see are that electron holes, like these "monopoles", are actually emergent from the behavior of other entities; they exist only in certain specialized materials, not in free space; and, finally, they share some characteristics with the physical anti-electron (positron), but differ in many important ways. Elec
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If you feel you need an analogy, this monopole construction technique is more akin to constructing a meta-material (e.g., something with a negative index of refraction). It is a simulation of something that doesn't normally exist in nature, but by carefully controlling the small scale structure, you can get it to have certain properties you want in a limited range of operation.
I was specifically rejecting your analogy of monopoles like holes, because that is analogous to using the absence an electron in an
Re:Pseudoparticles (Score:4, Interesting)
They're like magnetic monopoles in almost all ways...
Correct. The ways they don't behave like magnetic monopoles are scale-dependent. At sufficiently large distances they are indistinguishable from point-like monopoles (monopole equivalents of electrons.) At short distances they aren't anything like monopoles.
The theory they are based on, curiously, predicts that they are free in the medium they exist in, which was something of a surprise. That is, in an infinite BEC, they would be free to move anywhere, making them much more like "true" monopoles than expected.
Whether or not you call these "real" monopoles is a matter of taste. The reality is that at sufficiently large distances no experiment you could perform would be able to distinguish them from a monopole particle, making them extremely practical mechanisms for investigating the physics of monopoles.
One interesting thing is that Dirac showed the existence of a single monopole anywhere in the universe could explain why the electron charge was quantized, because for a given monopole strength there is only one value of electron charge that can interact with it consistently (any other value requires the electron wavefunction to have multiple values at same point in space-time, which would imply a breakdown of quantum mechanics.) I don't know if these pseudo-monopoles are sufficient to impose that condition.
Are these true really true monopoles? (Score:3)
Meaning, that if they have a south monopole somewhere in their "extremely cold gas", someplace else within the same gas has a north monopole. Then just consider the line linking both to be the magnet.
Call us back when they can separate them by splitting the "extremely cold gas" into 2 containers, in such a way that one container has the south pole, and the other the north pole, and both can be moved arbitrarily far from each other.
Glad they're back in stock... (Score:4, Funny)
"but the full paper is paywalled" (Score:5, Insightful)
The spinor order parameter corresponding to the Dirac monopole14,17 is generated by an adiabatic spin rotation in response to a time-varying magnetic field, B(r, t). Similar spin rotations have been used to create multiply quantized vortices18 and skyrmion spin textures19. The order parameter Y(r, t)5y(r, t)f(r, t) is the product of a scalar order parameter, y, and a spinor, f~ðfz1,f0,f{1T¼^ jfi, where fm5Æmjfæ represents the mth spinor component along z. The condensate is initially spin-polarized along the z axis, that is, f5(1, 0, 0)T. Following the method introduced in ref. 14, a magnetic field Bðr,t~bqðxx^zy^y{2z^zzBzðt^z is applied, where bq.0 is the strength of a quadrupole field gradient and Bz(t) is a uniform bias field. The magnetic field zero is initially located on the z axis at z~Bzð0=(2bq)?Z, where Z is the axial Thomas–Fermi radius of the condensate. The spin rotation occurs as Bz is reduced, drawing the magnetic field zero into the region occupied by the superfluid.
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QED, not maxwells equations and yes part of my degree was the CMP. Anyway, the the subject of these articles are not monopoles at all, no magnetic field at all in fact, an imaginary compass wouldn't point toward them.
There is not one shred of evidence that magnetic monopoles exist. These researchers have not made a magnetic monopole.
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Please mod parent up. Gauss law div B = 0 is perfectly healthy despite this inane babbling of monopoles in the write-up of this research.
Yes, its field looks from the outside like a monopole, but it's a quasi particle not an actual naked monopole, the latter would be the equivalent of a magnetic charge particle.
Despite having been hunting this Snark for decades there is no indication that there is such a thing in nature.
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Somewhere, sitting in the USPTO, signing off on useless "Do X on the Internet" patents, there is an individual for whom all of this stuff is trivially simple. We would do science a great service to facilitate this person's access to such material.
Even if only to provide a distraction and keep a number of useless patents off the books.
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This!
The AC OP's point is a terrible one because it could apply to nearly everything more complicated than a primetime tv show. It isn't about the 99.999% who can't use the information, it is the 0.001% who can use it that matter and it is no one's job to decide who qualifies.
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99.999% of "the people"
The problem is more basic than that, really. Average citizens won't know what to make of this until it's something that affects their day-to-day lives (unless you're Insane Clown Posse, in which case you reprise an earlier work over the news). I'm no physicist, but I am a science-fiction fan and reader, so I have some idea how important this development is if it's true, but the rank-and-file person-on-the-street? Not so much, until they can, for instance, buy an electric car that goes 10000 miles on a singl
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"The people" who complain are often academics outside the research community and not affiliated with an institution that can afford the horrendous subscription cost.
You may have notice the journals charge about $20 a pop for individual subscriptions of articles.
Why do you think they'll do that if there wasn't some demand for it?
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Bðr,t~bqðxx^zy^y{2z^zzBzðt^z
Somebody go check on Doctor Cooper...I think he's having a seizure on his keyboard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
not really monopoles! (Score:3)
You should be thanking Alan Guth and the Gods of Inflation they didn't find actual monopoles. Those things are terrifying beasts! They eat protons like it's going out of style!
http://www.npl.washington.edu/... [washington.edu]
Slightly off topic but... (Score:2)
Fucking magnets (Score:2)
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Now we can fight of the Kzinti! (Score:2)
not a real monopole (Score:2)
With a standard magnet, if you try to cut the poles apart, you end up with two smaller magnets, each with a pair of poles.
The Dirac monopole is like, instead of cutting the poles of a magnet apart, you deform the magnet and pull the poles apart until there is just a tiny infinitesimally small string connecting the two poles. You haven't actually created monopoles, but simulated them.
Still an impressive feat, but we haven't broken physics, despite what you might infer from the headlines.
Not read the paywalled paper yet but (Score:2)
terms like "synthetic" vs "real" make me cringe. Did they make synthetic tops at Fermilab and higgs at LHC? I'll reserve my excitement for some credible review of this claim and paper.
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terms like "synthetic" vs "real" make me cringe. Did they make synthetic tops at Fermilab and higgs at LHC? I'll reserve my excitement for some credible review of this claim and paper.
It's passed the first stage of peer review; it's published, and is thus probably not complete shit. Next stage is for other people to reproduce the work for themselves, and most of the paper appears to be the sorts of details that you'd need to be able to go off and do that. If you're not a condensed-matter physicist with a suitable lab (nor am I) then you can probably live without reading the full paper. If the result holds up, the interesting parts will be repeated elsewhere. (Which is good. The paper its
Paywalled - Doesn't Exist (Score:2)
Not on the Internet.
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Not the theory put forth by Paul Dirac 85 years ago.... but, otherwise, yes - this is essentially a different source of magnetism from that created by moving electrons.
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no, it' does not contradict it at all. What it seems to have done is underscore the fact that you don't know what a scientific theory is, or is not.
It's new information that in no way changes what we know, only ADDS to it.
It's not like it broke Ohm's law.
Just like Einstein didn't make anything Newton discovered incorrect.
Re:Contradicts current theory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like Einstein didn't make anything Newton discovered incorrect.
Of course he did. Newton's laws of motion are wrong, but they're still close enough for use in certain scales and applications. The small angle approximation is wrong, but it still lets you do some trig in your head. Truncating a series expansion after just a few orders is wrong, but that's often all you need.
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Newton's laws are *not* wrong within the precision available in his lifetime.
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Of course he did. Newton's laws of motion are wrong...
Sure, but there's being wrong and there's being wrong [tufts.edu].
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Sorry, I'm in the 99% that spent more time jotting out a one line comment than RTFA- what I got from my skim is that they have created magnetic monopoles, but not in isolation - meaning that there is a S for every N, but they have been separated from each other far enough in space that they behave as a monopole?
If you have read the article to a deeper level of understanding and can quickly summarize or convey that knowledge, please do.
If you're looking for Abuse, that's down the hall.
Re:Contradicts current theory? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's some misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is, right there. A theory must have predictive power - it must be useful for something, that is. Electromagnetic theory, so far, is extremely successful precisely because it works where we need it to work. The monopole demonstration doesn't change it one iota - neither your computer nor your electric plant have stopped working overnight.
It doesn't matter in practice that it doesn't work everywhere, and there's no need to rewrite anything and there's no contradiction. We know that the classical theory of electromagnetism, well, applies to classical scale phenomena, under certain conditions. No scientist in their sane mind would insist that this effect contradicts the classical theory. It's simply outside of the classical theory's scope, just as relativistic effects are outside of the realm of classical mechanics.
The real problem is with extremely widespread, naive understanding of what a scientific theory is and that there are limits to applicability of any scientific theory of nature. The phrase "law of nature" is perhaps the biggest romanticism-imbued snafu there ever was in popularization of science.
Re:Contradicts current theory? (Score:4, Interesting)
Theory (due to Paul Dirac's work combining quantum mechanics and relativity in the first half of the 20th Century) had been predicting monopoles for a long time. Yeah, the simplified version that you were quoting from didn't predict monopoles, but the full version did. If the submitters of the paper have found one of these rare beasts in the lab, that's a very interesting confirmation.
The real question is whether the result can be reproduced by different experimenters in a different lab. (Since it's lab-scale work, that ought to be possible.) If so, watch out for some really interesting new areas of physics to be opened up.
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They actually coaxed a BEC into "simulating" a magnetic monopole. http://www.nature.com/news/qua... [nature.com]
Re:Contradicts current theory? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, they created a magnetic monopole but they didn't create a magnetic monopole. :) They created a magnetic field without it's corresponding opposite field (or actually the opposing field was separated by enough physical distance that they behaved independently), but they didn't create or detect the particle which in theory generates that field.
Re:Contradicts current theory? (Score:5, Funny)
Also, would this allow for the development of an over unity, energy from nothing generation machine.
The answer to that question is always, always no. Except when it's still no, in which case it is no. No.
In conclusion, no.
Re:Contradicts current theory? (Score:5, Funny)
So you're saying there's a chance...?
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No. Maxwell's equations are essentially symmetric with respect to electricity and magnetism. Not surprising, since they are really the same thing. The form that you usually learn in school reduces the equations by having magnetic charge = 0 and magnetic current = 0 everywhere, since as far as we know, that's the world we live in. But magnetic monopoles are in no way disruptive to our understanding of how electricity and magnetism work.
Re:Contradicts current theory? (Score:5, Informative)
No it doesn't contradict previous theory. The existence of a magnetic monopole would require adding some extra terms in Maxwell's equations: one for magnetic "charge" (the monopole) and one for magnetic "current" (moving monopole) analogous to electric charge and current. (Adjusting Maxwell's equations this way is a popular exercise in advanced undergrad / grad level E&M courses). If your system happened to have a magnetic monopole in it, then you would need to use the equations with the extra terms. You would see some extra effects due to the monopoles, but they would be accounted for. The extra terms would give a nice symmetry to Maxwell's equations, helping to demonstrate that the electric and magnetic field are manifestations of the same phenomena (which isn't clear until you get to special relativity).
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Except that as far as I understand it, those classical equations are unaffected. It's a quantum-scale effect.
Re:Ha the science publishers will be all over this (Score:5, Informative)
no, that equation still holds with no known exceptions.
summary is wrong, no monopoles were produced, just a formation that in some ways resembles one but is not a magnetic source or sink.
really, the sensationalist nonsense of half of slashdot's headings needs to stop
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I would disagree that the experiment did so little; however, your posting, on the other hand....