Magnetic monopoles found

[Darkblade]

They are not mythical anymore:


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090903163725.htm


wonder what sort of neat things can be done with em?

[Darkblade]

also possibly strange matter: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327234.800-moon-dust-not-as-strange-as-hoped.html

though they say that follow up research with moon dust showed up negative it was really a small small sample to be making such a determination. though honestly i remember reading strange matter theoretically converts anything it touches to strange matter.

[Darkblade]

more monopoles!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17740-hot-on-the-trails-of-the-mysterious-monopole.html

[Samm]

Ok... now what? :eh:

[Darkblade]

well i have read all sorts of things about what might be done with them in the dim past. and scifi has posited all sorts of uses. i haven't a clue what can really be done with them though

[JohnCraven]

They are not mythical anymore:


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090903163725.htm


wonder what sort of neat things can be done with em?

The article states that the monopoles were discovered at temperatures of 0.6 to 2 Kelvin. Now that is beyond extremely cold since 0 K is absolute zero.

Such temperatures can only be artificially produced using lasers in heat exchange traps as I recall from other science articles.

Whatever technology can come from this discovery would likely require extremely cold temperatures to function and consequently might have little practical use.

But the research is important for other reasons.

Every so many hundreds of millenia, our earth's magnetic poles reverse themselves. North becomes South and South becomes North which in its own way confirms the existence of magnetic monopoles I think but on a temperature scale that is not so cold as the ones in these experiments.

How does the earth reverse its magnetic poles? How does north become south and vice versa? Now I'm not talking about the geographic north and south poles which don't change but the magnetic poles of the earth which do change position. What implications for our world are there if we are in the midst of such a magnetic change of poles?

Can the experiments which discovered magnetic monopoles show whether magnetic monopoles can also change direction and how?

Hummmmmmm! Interesting article.

JohnCraven
New Orleans:flag:

[merickson]

The article states that the monopoles were discovered at temperatures of 0.6 to 2 Kelvin. Now that is beyond extremely cold since 0 K is absolute zero....
At those tempratures, there are lots of superconducting conductors.

Hmm..Isn't a generator a magnet plus some conducting wire?

[JohnCraven]

At those tempratures, there are lots of superconducting conductors.

Hmm..Isn't a generator a magnet plus some conducting wire?

Some years back superconductors were made of - I think it was ceramics - which could superconduct at temperatures close to room temperature and thus eliminate the need for supercold temperatures to work but I think the ceramics had to be embedded with some kind of special metals in order to work.

Yes I think a generator is a magnet plus some conducting wire - we made a crude kind of such a thing when I was in grammar school if I recall correctly - wiring a nail that was slung between other nails and then alternating the current so as to cause the wired nail to spin on its axis and in doing so generate a small electrical current - it was something like that.

JohnCraven
New Orleans:flag: