Researchers Discover "Magnetic Current"

fsouto writes "Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity. From the article, 'The phenomenon, dubbed "magnetricity," could be used in magnetic storage or in computing. Magnetic monopoles were first predicted to exist over a century ago, as a perfect analogue to electric charges. Although there are protons and electrons with net positive and negative electric charges, there were no particles in existence which carry magnetic charges. Rather, every magnet has a "north" and "south" pole.'"

Comments

"Discovered" magnetic current?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is a discovery then why did I learn about this in my electromagnetics class I took a semester ago? And why did I have to work on problems with magnetic circuits if this phenomenom wasn't discovered yet?

Re:Maxwell Equations

[Chris Burke]

No, they aren't. Maxwell's equations don't preclude magnetic monopoles or the movement of net magnetic 'charge' (aka 'current'). In fact it's always been a mystery why monopoles didn't appear to exist. There was no theoretical reason why they shouldn't, we have just never found a particle carrying a net magnetic charge. We still haven't exactly, just a crystal structure in which you can find discreet units of net magnetic charge, but that's effectively the same thing. And now we've seen that these units can move through a structure, so magnetic current exists.

In a way this must be a relief. Electricity and magnetism are symmetric in so many ways, it was odd that in this one way they weren't since they're ultimately aspects of the same force (electromagnetism).

Re:Article Abstract

[Interoperable]

Oh quasi-particles; on one hand you you think "well they're just mathematical constructs rather than physical things" but then you realize that regular particles fall into the same category. I heard of an interesting experiment where a Stern-Gerlach experiment was conducted on a dark-state polariton and resulted in the same effect as for nuclei. You can really only talk about how something behaves when a particular measurement is performed when treating it within whichever theory you're using, calling something a particle or a quasi-particle doesn't really matter.