Evidence of Magnetic Monopoles Found?

Posted by michael on Friday October 3, 2003 @07:06PM from the speculation dept.

TheMatt writes "As reported on PhysicsWeb and published in Science (subscription required), researchers at AIST and co-workers believe they have found evidence of magnetic monopoles. They observed an anomalous Hall effect in a ferromagnetic crystal that they say can only be explained via magnetic monopoles. To refresh your memory, magnetic monopoles are the magnetic analogue of electrons and other charged particles--a "north" or "south" pole only. Dirac in 1931 showed that the existence of a magnetic monopole naturally leads to the quantization of electric and magnetic charge. Thus, showing the existence of just one magnetic monopole would be quite profound for physics, but their mass (> 10^16 GeV) has made searches for them difficult."

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ObSMAC by Repton · 2003-10-04 09:30 · Score: 0, Offtopic

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"

--
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.