

Magnetic Monopoles Detected? - jperras
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090903163725.htm

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fhars
It is a quasi particle that results from the collective state of electrons in
solid matter. It is not really a monopole, since it is necessarily connected
by a flux tube (no Back to the Future jokes, please) to an opposite pole. If
you integrate the flux over a closed sphere, you still get a total flux of
zero. Only if you leave a small hole where the flux tube leaves the sphere
around your "pole" you get something that looks like a monopole, with things
like the inverse distance behaviour you see for electric and gravitational
fields.

This is similar to the field you see near the ends of strong long and thin
conventional magnets (where the matter of the magnet plays the role of the
flux tube).

So this is a very interesting discovery in the field of solid state physics,
but any connections to elementary particle physics you might think of when you
hear about the discovery of a magnetic monopole are wrong.

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Confusion
However, the question is whether a 'real' magnetic monopole must necessarily
be a fundamental particle. Perhaps this is one of the only ways in which the
properties of a magnetic monopole manifest themselves.

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lutorm
You can't make a field with divergence out of divergenceless components, so
no, it has to be something that's not in normal matter.

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swombat
One interesting use, I thought, of magnetic monopoles (whether they are
fundamental particles or not), would be in the construction of a perpetual
motion machine. If it is possible to manufacture these monopoles in a
controlled manner, it could be possible to create a turbine that accelerates
forever (thus generating free energy)... or am I missing something?

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gjm11
Either you are or I am. My guess is that you're assuming that you can
manufacture unlimited quantities of these things _without expending any energy
to do so_.

(If the existence of magnetic monopoles enables you to build a perpetual
motion machine, why doesn't the (uncontroversial) existence of electric
monopoles?)

~~~
antipaganda
Or indeed gravitic monopoles.

