magnetricity?

[moth]

are we entering an age of magnetronics?

http://www.london-nano.com/content/researchhighlights/magnetricity/

 

"The research, published today in Nature (1), proves the existence of atom-sized magnetic charges called ‘magnetic monopoles’ that behave and interact just like more familiar electric charges. It also demonstrates a perfect symmetry between electricity and magnetism – a phenomenon dubbed ‘magnetricity' by the authors from the LCN and STFC’s ISIS Neutron and Muon Source ."

 

"The experiment allowed the team to detect magnetic charges in the spin ice (Dy2Ti2O7), to measure their currents, and to determine the elementary unit of the magnetic charge in the material. The monopoles they observed arise as disturbances of the magnetic state of the spin ice, and can exist only inside the material."

 

does anybody know how or if spin ice is related to spin glass?

 

i'm not sure if this should go in speculations, but any speculations about where this might lead ?

 

thanks

 

i see cap'nrefsmmat already covered this in another thread - sorry

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=43725&highlight=magnetic+monopoles

Edited October 18, 2009 by moth
link to previous thread on this topic

[ydoaPs]

"The research, published today in Nature (1), proves the existence of atom-sized magnetic charges called ‘magnetic monopoles’ that behave and interact just like more familiar electric charges.

Then we have to rewrite everything.

[moth]

Then we have to rewrite everything.

 

and i was just beginning to get a little bit of a clue about the lorentz transforms.

i wonder if monopoles could simplify maxwell's mess?

[swansont]

Note that these monopoles are a collective effect — they do not exist on their own, like electric charges. AFAICT they are a residual effect in a material under certain conditions, sort of like semiconductor "holes," i.e. they are not real, but are an artifact of the behavior of the material, and it's easier to model it that way, rather than a much more complex model of the "real" particles. In the case of magnetricity, it's a misalignment of the spins of electrons in the material; there are no physical monopoles, but the asymmetry in the spin orientation behaves like a monopole would.

 

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/01/29/making-magnetic-monopoles-and-other-exotica-in-the-lab/

 

The summary here explains why these aren't really monopoles

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/09/magnetic_monopoles_oh_dear.php

What they did was create magnetic "strings", or very long, thin magnets on a lattice, where North and South poles are separated by great distances. If you only look at one side of this string, you only see one pole. But

the other pole is still there

, and so this isn't a monopole. If you tried to snap the string, you still wouldn't isolate one magnetic charge

[moth]

thank you for the links swansont.

the reader who responded to one of the articles with an offer to sell monopoles on a buy one get one free basis was the best laugh i've had in weeks.

i guess one of the pitfalls of trying to follow advancements in science through the media is you may learn more about journalism than science.

[Mr Skeptic]

Too bad! And here I was hoping to turn them into a perpetual motion machine!

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

the reader who responded to one of the articles with an offer to sell monopoles on a buy one get one free basis was the best laugh i've had in weeks.

 

lol

[Bob_for_short]

So they are just long magnetic dipoles, as usual. Any long coil can be seen as a monopole at one of its ends.

[Ratnaz]

"and i was just beginning to get a little bit of a clue about the lorentz transforms.

i wonder if monopoles could simplify maxwell's mess?"

 

Maxwell's equations look a lot nicer if you write them in tensor notation: something like

 

div F = J

curl F = 0

 

if you remove all the tensor indices. Magnetic monopoles would make them more complicated - replace the second equation by curl F = M for some "monopole tensor" M

Edited November 4, 2009 by Ratnaz