Magnetic monopoles? Since when did magnetic monopoles become possible? I know people would like them to exist so that Maxwell's equations could be nice and symmetric, but as far as I knew, no theory had been put forward suggesting them.

Anyone else know of any current mainstream theories predicting magnetic monopoles?

Yeah, I think some people have been watching too much Lexx.

That's cool, I've never heard of Lexx. From Wikipedia "The Lexx is a living spacecraft that resembles a dragonfly. It is capable of destroying planets with ease, and eats organic matter as fuel." Sounds interesting. Right now I'm cruising through The Wire, which is a great show. I'm on the season finale of Season 2.

Lexx is a lot of fun, but it is very much tung and cheek. Their are lots of parodies.

I'll check out The Wire and see what that is about. Might be interesting, thanks.

Extensive historical research shows no records of this ever happening.

Of course, had it happened, there would be no history of the event.

I do remember the comments of scientists, who watched the first Hydrogen Bomb detonation.

They thought they had caused the end of the World.

Magnetic monopoles:

From: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/18338

<"Oct 2, 2003

Have physicists seen magnetic monopoles?

Paul Dirac first put forward the idea of the magnetic monopole - a particle that carries an isolated north or south magnetic pole - in 1931, but all experimental searches for these elusive particles have proved fruitless. However, a group of physicists from Japan, China and Switzerland are now claiming that they have found indirect evidence for monopoles. The team observed an anomalous Hall effect in a ferromagnetic crystal that they say can only be explained by the existence of magnetic monopoles (Z Fang et al. 2003 Science 302 92).

The lack of symmetry between electric and magnetic fields is one of the oldest puzzles in physics. Why is it possible to isolate positive and negative electric charges, but not north and south magnetic poles? Dirac linked the existence of magnetic monopoles with the quantization of electric charge - another puzzle that is still not fully understood - but they have never been detected in an experiment.

Magnetic monopoles are also predicted by some theories that seek to unify the electroweak and strong interactions. However, the monopole masses that are predicted by these so-called grand unified theories are much too large - about 10¹⁶ giga-electronvolts – to be detected in experiments.

Instead of searching for magnetic monopoles in real space, Yoshinori Tokura of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba and co-workers turned to momentum space - the mathematical space in which condensed matter physicists construct Fermi surfaces, Brillouin zones and so on. The team was motivated by recent theoretical work which suggested that the behaviour of magnetic monopoles in momentum space is closely related to the anomalous Hall effect.

Transverse resistivity ρ_xy for the single crystal, thin film and calcium doped thin film (image credit: Z Fang et al. 2003 Science 302 92).
Figure 1

Tokura and co-workers placed a high-quality crystal made of strontium, ruthenium and oxygen in a magnetic field that pointed in the z direction, and then measured the transverse resistivity – the resistivity in the y direction - as a current flowed in the x direction. They found that the resistivity did not change linearly with temperature, as expected, but varied non-monotonously and even changed sign (figure 1).

The researchers also measured the transverse optical conductivity of a thin film of the crystal using a technique known as high-resolution Kerr microscopy and found a sharp peak at low energies. According to Tokura and co-workers, this peak can only be explained by the presence of monopoles in the band structure of the crystal.

The Japan-China-Switzerland team believe that both of these anomalous effects are "fingerprints" for the existence of magnetic monopoles. The team now plans to study materials that show even larger anomalous effects. "The laws of electromagnetism are the starting point for every area of physics," says team member Kei Takahashi of the University of Geneva. "From this view point, we have proved that we can investigate most physics subjects - including particle physics and cosmology – in experiments on solid crystals."

About the author

Belle Dumé is Science Writer at PhysicsWeb">

Kind Regards....

You Wrote:"Extensive historical research shows no records of this ever happening. Of course, had it happened, there would be no history of the event."

One thing I'm not clear about. Why would a magnetic monopole be dangerous? I know the article said it would, but I'm not seeing how.

Hello

Refer my earlier Post:

Quote:

"<Magnetic monopoles are also predicted by some theories that seek to unify the electroweak and strong interactions. However, the monopole masses that are predicted by these so-called grand unified theories are much too large - about 10¹⁶ giga-electronvolts – to be detected in experiments.">

Look at the predicted mass/energy involved, and keep well clear.

Kind Regards....

A couple of things here.

I think what you meant to say was 10¹⁶ GeV/c² , you need to divide by c² to have units of mass. You may have in your original post, I can only see the one I'm responding to, if you did, disregard this suggestion.

That isn't a predicted mass for a magnetic monopole, its the upper limit, as in "the universe would collapse so we know it isn't this big" or "getting near the the Planck scale". It corresponds to 1.78 x 10^-11 kg, which would be a ridiculous weight for a fundamental particle. By contrast, an electron has mass of 9.1 x 10^-31 kg.

The large Hadron Collider couldn't get anywhere near the 10¹⁶ GeV necessary to create the particle. I mean, a few thousand GeV maybe (and maybe discover the Higgs Boson), but 10¹⁶ is outlandishly impossible.

So I'm still not seeing why a magnetic monopole, if it even existed, would be dangerous. Does it have odd propeties that cause it to devour mass like a mini black hole might (even though this wont happen either, it should just evaporate)?

Throw the switch!