Nature is very symmetric as you
may or may not have known. This is why many scientists believe very
strongly that there are such things as magnetic monopoles. As to
date, however, "a single magnetic pole has never been isolated"
(Serway). One of the reasons they are so had to find or make is
shown below. As the pictures show if you take a magnet, say a bar
magnet, and cut it in half, instead of getting a south pole and
a north pole, we are left with two new magnets.
As you can see by the drawing above
we could theoretically continue on with this process infinitely,
yet never achieving a monopole. A good definition of a magnetic
monopole can be found on http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/~rfitzp/teaching/302l/lectures/node62.html.
There it says "[magnetic monopoles are] basically the magnetic
equivalent of an electric charge. A positive magnetic monopole
is an isolated magnetic north pole." This is a good picture
to keep in mind because you can have an isolated electric charge
that is either positive or negative. This is not the case with
magnets. The picture below should provide some insight on how
magnetic fields would look around monopoles. (Image
Courtesy of http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/~rfitzp/teaching/302l/lectures/node62.html).
![](pictures/monopolefieldlines.JPG)
As we can see the monopole magnets
would act like an isolated charge. The fields radiate radially
outward from the north pole (positive charge) and go radially
in to the south pole (negative charge). Although magnetic monopoles
are believed to exist, they have never been observed experimentally.
This results in Maxwell's
equation.(Click the link to the left for an extensive look
at the Maxwell equations). It is predicted, according to grand
unified theories(GUT), that "The charge on magnetic monopoles
predicted by GUT's is either 1 or 2gD(Jeon and Longo 1995). "
and "The upper limit on the monopole mass is 1026 eV, or
0.2 g."
(http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/MagneticMonopole.html).
Much time and many resources are
given to people trying to find magnetic monopoles as Serway-Beichner
says "attempt's to detect [magnetic monopoles] currently
make up an active experimental field of investigation". It
is important to find these monopoles because it would change the
theory around some of the methods solving magnet related problems.
For example the Maxwell equations would be shown to be flawed
and possibly obsolete.
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