Physicists create synthetic magnetic monopole predicted more than 80 years ago

Nearly 85 years after pioneering theoretical physicist Paul Dirac predicted the possibility of their existence, an international collaboration led by Amherst College Physics Professor David S. Hall '91 and Aalto University (Finland) Academy Research Fellow Mikko Möttönen has created, identified and photographed synthetic magnetic monopoles in Hall's laboratory on the Amherst campus. The groundbreaking accomplishment paves the way for the detection of the particles in nature, which would be a revolutionary development comparable to the discovery of the electron.
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Hall's team adopted an innovative approach to investigating Dirac's theory, creating and identifying synthetic magnetic monopoles in an artificial magnetic field generated by a Bose-Einstein condensate, an extremely cold atomic gas tens of billionths of a degree warmer than absolute zero.

If they were only found in a Bose-Einstein condensate, I wonder if they will ever be found in nature, but I'm amazed they were found (er... made) at all. :^)

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"The creation of a synthetic magnetic monopole should provide us with unprecedented insight into aspects of the natural magnetic monopole—if indeed it exists...

I moved the emphasis to the correct word. :^)

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From a post of Roberto Battiston, a physicist of the University of Trento, writing on the Le Scienze online journal, I understood that they have created a state of Rubidium atoms very close to absolute zero, a Bose Einstein Condensate, which behaves like it had a magnetic monopole inside it. Battiston says that this amounts to deducing the presence of President Obama by the behavior of guards and policemen in Via Veneto, a good analogy.
Tullio

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