Posted by the editor on February 01st, 2010

A team has found that monopoles can gather to form a magnetic current similar to electricity. This single magnetic charge can actually behave and interact like electrical charges. So what does this mean to the public?

The term that is being used for this new discovery is “magnetricity,” and it very well could be used in magnetic storage or in computing. While magnetic monopoles were believed to have existed over a century ago, the belief has returned.

It has been known that there are protons and electrons with net positive and negative electric charges. However, there were no particles within these that carried magnetic charges; until now.

Two separate research groups reportedly found monopoles, which are particles that carry an overall magnetic charge only in spin ice crystals. These crystals consist of pyramids of charged atoms that are arranged in a way that when they are cooled to an extremely low temperature, the materials actually have small packets of magnetic charge.

Not only have these quasi-particles now been identified, but one of the research teams even found them moving together to form a magnetic current much like those formed by moving electrons.

The team was led by Stephen Bramwell from the London Centre for Nanotechnology. He implanted particles called muons into spin ice to show how the magnetic monopoles move around. When spin ice is placed in a magnetic field, he showed that the monopoles pile up on one side.

For now, this does not mean anything crazy like magnetic light bulbs are going to arise. However, this new discovery can be the start of magnetic memory being used in storage devices or in spintronics to help boost future computing power.