December 12, 2019 • 41 mins
Learn about magnetic monopoles with Daniel and Jorge
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Daniel, I have a question for you. Who is it
about aliens? Maybe it might be about alien um What
do you think would happen? What would happen if you
made an amazing discovery in your work? Maybe you found aliens,
Maybe you found a new particle that changes our understanding
of it. It sounds great so far, But then what
if nobody believed you? Oh? Man, what if I found
(00:30):
a deep secret of the universe but nobody else was
convinced as a terrible, terrible choice to make. Would you
still want to do it? Or do you think would
just drive you crazy? Like seeing seeing Bigfoot in the
forest by yourself? You know, would you want to see
Do you want to see Bigfoot and know that he
exists or she exists? Or would you rather not be
(00:50):
that crazy person? I think I'm too haunted by the
secrets of the universe. I need to know that answer,
even if it means all of my friends and relative
think I'm crazy. Yeah. Hi am r Haanmae, cartoonists and
(01:17):
the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
particle physicist, and I may have discovered something that you
won't believe. Clickbait click bait. Well, if you click here,
welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a production of I Heart Radio, in which we talk
about all the amazing and crazy things about the universe.
(01:38):
Things we've discovered, things we have not yet discovered, things
physicists have found, and things physicists are still looking for. Yeah,
things that even you might find out there. Maybe there
are people listening to this who will make an incredible
discovery for science and for physics, and if they hear
about the potential for that discovery on our podcast, then
all we ask when you're accepting your Nobel Prize is
(01:59):
that you give us a shout out. That's right, just
mention our Twitter handle and we'll call it even spell
it out though, spell it out. The people have trouble
spelling your name sometimes yeah, um yeah so sometimes. Um.
It's a tricky thing in science, I think, because you
could be the person who discover something amazing, but then
(02:20):
if nobody can replicate it, or maybe it just happen once,
then nobody might believe you. Sometimes you're trying to create
an effect like cold fusion that should be replicable. You know,
somebody else should be able to make the same conditions
in their lab and create the same situation. But sometimes
you're looking for something. Sometimes you just want to go
out and find one example to prove it exists. And
(02:42):
what if there's only one? You know, what if you're
looking in the night sky and the aliens come and
they go high and then they disappear forever, doesn't mean
it didn't happen. Well, I won't confirm whether that's happened
to me or not, Daniel, But I would maybe use
the example that you know, sometimes I'm out in camping
or in the beach or something in the night at
(03:03):
night and we're looking at the night sky with other
people or with my kids, and you know, you'll see
a shooting star and you'd be like, look, a shooting star.
By the time everyone looks, obviously it's gone and um,
and you sort of look like a crazy person. Why
does your family not believe your stories? Or Hey, are
you making up stuff all the time? Oh my got
a unicorn? Nobody was looking. Maybe because my profession is
(03:26):
to make up stories, that might be a Maybe that's
the real problem with this example. Yeah, I hear voices
in my head, Daniel. I mean, I think you're real.
But maybe you're just in my head. But you know,
but you're right. And sometimes in science what you're looking
for is just one example, because the question you're asking
is does this exist? Just like we want to know
(03:48):
is there life on other planets? Even just one example
would be the answer to that question. We don't need
to know if there's life everywhere in the universe. We
just want to know is there life anywhere else? And
seeing it one time, we totally answer that question. And
so sometimes all you need is one piece of evidence,
a proof of existence of this kind of thing. Yeah,
I guess some things in science I just need to
(04:10):
prove that proof of existence, like a unicorn or bigfoot. Yeah,
we're sounding like a pseudoscience podcast. Welcome to Daniel and
jrge talk weird conspiracy theories. Unicorn particles are real, man,
and they collide with bigfoot particles to produce something in
the atmosphere which the CIA is hiding it there. That's
(04:30):
right on the ground. That's right. I'm gonna be called
by the Republicans for the impeachment testimony based on my
conspiracy theories. No, but it's true, and this happens not
just in cryptozoology, right, people looking for weird animals. But
it also happens in particle physics. Yeah, And in fact,
it's happened in an area that I think I thought
(04:52):
was pretty much settled in physics. But it seems that
there are still open questions and open unicorns to be found.
That's right, Come joined particle physics. There are still unicorns
for you to discover. That's our selling point. Come for
the unicorns, stay for the big feet. What are you
saying about my feet? Nobody out there knows how big
my feet are. That's why you always present, because they
(05:13):
grow every day by like an inch. A tear apart
any shoes I'm wearing. No, we have questions in particle
physics where if you just saw one example of something,
it would be not literally earth shattering, but maybe literally
mind blowing for particle physicists. So today we'll be talking
about an effect in magnetism, right in electromagnetics that would
(05:35):
sort of up and our understanding of it. But that
hasn't been found, Or maybe it has been found, but
maybe nobody believes the person who found it. That's right.
The whole particle physics community is waiting to see if
anybody will find this one example of it from forty
years ago that nobody really believes except for the guy
who found it. Right, so to be on the program,
(05:56):
we'll be talking about what is a magnetic monopole and
where are they? If they do exist, why are they
so hard to find? They're hiding next to Waldo and
Bigfootply do you think all those hard to find things
just are hanging out somewhere in the middle of the
(06:17):
forest and we just found them all together one day
hanging out. Well, I gotta say, I think magnetism in
general is just a big mystery. It feels like the
force to me, you know, it's like an invisible force.
But it's surprising to think that there are still things
that might upend our understanding of it. Yeah, it feels
a little bit like eighteenth century science. Right In eighteenth
(06:38):
century magnetism was like a big mystery. What is this
weird thing? You can push and pull things, and then
people feel like, you know, we sort of figured it out.
We have a good theory of electromagnetism. You know, we
understand electricity by now, we must understand everything about magnetism. Right. Wrong,
You are attracted to these kinds of questions. I am
(06:59):
i and pulled by these kinds of questions, things that
you know, anybody could discover. But the thing that's fascinating
to me is that this is a huge question in physics.
It's like been open for more than a century. It's
something people are actively working on that we do have
a potentially discovery. But I was wondering, is this something
people like in general, are aware of. Is this just
(07:19):
something in the minds of physicists, or is everybody else
out there also desperate to hear about the latest search
for the magnetic monopole. So, as usual, I was curious
if people understood, you know, what a magnetic monopole is,
and so I walked around the campus UC Irvine and
I asked folks if they knew what a magnetic monople was.
And so here's what people had to say. No, magnets
(07:42):
required two pulse positive and negative. So I'm assuming this
is maybe a combination of them or just one just
negative or positive. Does it exist in magnetic monopole? Do
you think it's possible? It seems like it would be
a contradiction, but I'm sure it could be theoretically possible.
I guess it sounds familiar, but I'm not too sure. Okay,
(08:03):
I actually no, I didn't think that you could have
a magnetic monocle. Why not, Well, I'm only familiar with
thinking of magnetic dipoles, right, So can a monopole exist? Well,
I mean, since you're asking me the question, I think
it kind of presumes that it can exist. So I'm
(08:26):
assuming the answer to this is yes. Last, based on
my history of talking to Now, if you were a
random guy approaching me at a coffee shop or a
sadu leaving the Indian forest tell me that he had
just witnessed a magnetic monocle in his meditations, I might
(08:49):
be more dubious, all right, not a lot of familiarity
out there. And again, if you had interviewed me on
the street, I've heard of probably been said it sounds
like a magnet. Who has mono? I'm not sure what? Um. Yeah,
it's sort of a technical name, but I think people
will be surprised to discover that's something they really can understand.
(09:10):
It's something that makes perfect sense because we have monopoles
and other things. We have monopoles and electricity, and so
it would make perfect sense to have matt monopoles and magnetism.
But you're right, almost nobody had really any understanding of
what this thing is. But a magnetic monopole would be
a big deal. You're saying. In physics electric monopoles, we
see them all the time, they're just electrons. But a
(09:33):
magnetic monopole something which is a north or a south
without being both that we've never seen, and that would
really change our understanding of physics. All right, well, let's
dig into it, Daniel. What is a magnetic monopole or
I guess what is a monopole in general? So a
monopole comes in any kind of part of physics where
you have things that are charged, and so I think
(09:53):
it's easiest to start with electricity because it's people can
think about electricity and charges, and you know, So you
have the atom, for example. The atom is neutral because
it has the electron and it has the proton and
so it's balanced, right, But there is a plus and
a minus inside there, so the atom itself is neutral.
We call a dipole because has both a plus and
a minus. But you can separate them. You can cut
(10:15):
it in half. You can get rid of the electron.
You can just be left with the plus, or you
can just have the electron, So that would be a monopole.
For electricity, just the plus or just the minus is it?
Then it's it's a property of things, and it's it's
like the charge that you have, Like if you're an electron,
you know a negative charge. So that's your monopole. That's
(10:35):
your single pole. You're a single pole. And then you
bring the plus and minus together, that's a dipole. They
balance each other out like in a hydrogen atom. I
guess if you're an electron and a proton, you have
a plus and a minus, and so you have like
one end of view is plus and one end of
views minus. Precisely, it's a dipole. Precisely, it's a divole
overall your balanced, but one sign is positive, one side
(10:56):
is negative. Right, but that which side is which is
moving around because the electron is moving around. Yeah, precisely,
and so that makes perfect sense. In electricity magnetism, you
can have a dipole like a hydrogen atom, and you
can have monopoles because what happens when you separate those
bits of the dipole you get two monopoles. Right, that's
what makes perfect sense. You combine two monopoles, you get
(11:16):
a dipole. You break apart a dipole, you get two monopoles.
You can separate a proton and an electron. Do a
big deal. Okay, So that's an electricity, like if you're
you've have charge, you're an electron, or like a battery. Um.
But what does it mean then for magnetism, because that's
where the tricky stuff comes in. Yeah, magnetism turns out
to be weirdly different. Right. We're all familiar with a magnet,
(11:37):
and magnet has a north and a south, and so
for magnetism, that's sort of like the plus and minus
from electricity. So in magnetism we call them north and
south mostly because they align with you know, the Earth
north and south. But we could have called them anything else.
We could have called them Bob and alice, or dogs
and cats, or you know, chocolate peanut butter or whatever.
But they're not the same as plus and minus. You're saying, like,
(11:59):
why did why did we call them north and southe?
Why didn't we just call them plusant minus? They're not
the same as plusant minus. Magnetism is separate from electricity.
I mean they have deep connections, of course, but it
is a different force from this point of view, and
they have a different charge. And so this is like
the magnetic charge. So North is one kind of magnetic charge,
in South is the opposite kind of magnetic charge. And
(12:21):
the Earth is a dipole. The Earth has a north
pole and a south pole. Right overall it's neutral, but
there's one part of it which is more northea, and
one part of it which is more southy. The same
is true for any magnet that you hold has a
north and a south and it's not related to where
the charge like, it's not related to where the charges
are or how much of it is there, right Like,
(12:42):
like the north pole on Earth is not due to
the fact that the north part of the Earth has
more electric negative charge for example. Now it has to
do with how the electrons inside the Earth are moving.
You see, all the magnetic fields that we have are dipoles.
They have a north and the south, and that's because
all of the come from moving charges. Actually, so here's
(13:02):
the connection between electricity and magnetism. We have no way
to create a pure north or a pure South. That's
what the magnetic monopole would be like you don't need
a magnet to create a charge or like an electron,
but you need a charge to create a magnet. Because
we don't have a pure magnetic pole, you can't create
just a north. Like what happens if you take a
north and a south magnet and you split it in half,
(13:25):
while you get a north and south in between, right,
the little magnets then become dipoles. Oh, I see that's weird. Okay,
so um, the north and south of a magnet is
due to the movement of the charges inside. Like if
I just take one electron that is a negative charge,
it's a monopole. But if I spin that electron in
(13:47):
a circle, like in a coil of wire, then I
create a magnetic dipole field dipole which has a north
and a south like above the loop is north and
below the loop is south. But I can't just I
can't just create a north. That's right, And say you
did to those electrons together, right, and and they're spinning together,
(14:08):
so they make a double north and double south. Now
you want to say, okay, I just want the north.
I'm going to separate the two electrons well, each electron
is its own dipoles has a north and a south. Right,
you can't separate the north from the south. Like what happens.
You take a really long magnet which is north on
one end and south and thegether and cut it in half. Well,
at the point where you cut it, that part becomes
(14:28):
a south for the one magnet and north for the other. Right,
you get two dipoles. It splits off, but then if
you put them back together, then you make one big magnet. Again,
that's right, And this is very different from what happens
when you separate electric charges. You can separate again the
proton and the electron and just have a plus charge
by itself or a minus charge by itself. But you
(14:49):
can't do that with magnets. You can't separate the north
and south into a pure north or a pure south
because we've well we've never seen one, right, all we
have our dipoles. We have no monopoles. We never seen
a magnetic monople. I think we talked about this before.
But the magnetic field of a magnet, like your average
kitchen magnet, that field that magnet is due to like
(15:11):
the spinning of the charges into the motion of the
charges inside of the magnet, right, that's right, all the
charges that are either moving or spinning. Quantum spin sometimes
generates little magnets for each electron, little dipole magnets for
each electron, which then all add up to give a
magnetic field for the fridge magnet. All right, And so
the idea is that you can't just make a north magnet.
(15:33):
You always when you were you create a magnet has
two sides. If you create a magnet from a moving
or spinning charge, it has a north and south, and
you can't ever separate them. And the question is, does
there exist some material out there we've never discovered, some objects,
some particle, some something which is a pure north or
a pure south we've never seen. When we've only seen
magnetic dipoles. Does a magnetic monople exist, Yeah, as far
(15:57):
as we know, can you can't create a north in
it south? But maybe there's a unicorn out there whose
horn is a wonopole. I would say the other way.
I would say physics has nothing against magnetic monopoles. They
would actually make much more sense if they did exist.
The weird thing is we've never seen one except for
that one guy. Well, a lot happened in all right,
(16:21):
Well let's get into the details of it, because I
am totally hooked now. But first let's take a quick break.
All right. I know, so that's what a monopole, magnetic
(16:42):
monopole is. It's a magnet that has only a north
or only a south. And you're telling me that it
seems like it's kind of um possible, But we've never
seen one in nature. Like whenever you try to split
a magnet or cut one in half, it just generates
two meeting magnets that you can't just we haven't seen
(17:03):
one where it's just north or to south. That's right,
And I love encouraging experiments at home, but really, folks,
if you just go out there and take your bar
magnets and chop them in half, you're going to get
two little bar magnets. You're wasting your time and just
shrinking your magnets. We've done that. But if I could
them really fast, But if I could really fast before
the laws of physics have a chance to rearrange, do
you think the laws of physics are like the laws
(17:24):
of cartoons, where they like take a moment to realize
before wildly coyote plummets to his death. I mean that's yeah,
that's how it works in that's right. Yeah, but our
podcast is about the real universe and not the cartoon
fictional universe in your mind. So, um, yeah, you can't
do that. I think we've established them that I'll keep
(17:46):
on living in the cartooning universe. Yeah. And this is
one of those fascinating moments where we see sort of
a gap, you know, like you arrange all of human
knowledge and you notice something's missing, something else would fit there.
It's like when we first first building the periodic table
and we noticed, oh, nobody's ever seen you know, technetium,
element number whatever that is. Why not can we make it?
(18:09):
Can it exist? You know, anytime there's a gap there
in the pattern, you're wondering what would feel that whole
There's like an empty chair and you're like, who's supposed
to sit in that chair? Yeah? And we also we
like symmetry, We like balance, and you know, we said
electricity and magnetism are kind of two different forces, but
they're really deeply intertwined. You know, moving charges create magnetic fields,
(18:32):
and so there's this symmetry between electricity and magnetism, and
so if we can have positive and negative electric charges
by themselves, why can't we have pure north and pure south. Well,
I guess maybe one thing I might be need tos
I'm explaining on that I'm confused about is like, what
exactly is a magnetic pole at all? Like, I know
what it charges. It's like your plus, which means you're
(18:53):
attracted to minus charges and you repel other plus charges.
You know it charges, I don't understand what it charges.
I mean to me, that's to like a deep question,
like what makes the electron negative charged? We don't know? Well,
I guess I mean not so deeply philosophical, which is
like I know what it means, and you know that
if you have a plus, you're attracted to minus and
(19:13):
and you're you repel other pluses. But what is it?
Is it the same for north and south of a magnet, Like, um,
it just means you repel other north and but you're
attracted to other souths precisely. And you know what north
and south mean for magnets. If you try to push
to north together, they repel each other in the north
and the south will attract each other. It works that
same way. I guess it's just it's based on the
(19:34):
magic of magnetic fields being generated by moving electrons. Yeah,
that's what magnetic fields are. Magnetic fields are this force
that a positive magnetic charge, which we call a north,
feels on a negative magnetic charge, which we call a south.
And they really are different, right, positive and negative refer
only to electricity. North and south refer to magnetism. But
(19:55):
they're connected because charges can make magnetic fields. And if
there are monopoles out there, then a moving monopole could
create an electric current the way a moving charge creates
a magnetic field. So what would even a monopole magnet
look and feel like? It like it'd be a be
a little block or a little cylinder that only has
(20:19):
north in it, which means that if I put it
up against another north, ill repelled and it would have
a magnetic field which radiates out from it from a point,
just the way an electric field radiates out from an electron.
We've never seen that before. We've only ever seen this
north south couple, you know, that has a dipole field
that is a totally different shape because it has both
(20:40):
the north and the south. We've never seen an object
that is not balanced in magnetism. We've only seen things
that are overall neutral to have a north and a south.
But you're saying that, we think that maybe it could exist,
Like the laws of physics don't tell his Nope, you
can't have that. They tell us, actually you can. Yeah.
It was like a hundred years ago Maxwell wrote down
the laws of electricity magnetism unified all the different magnetic
(21:03):
effects and all the different electronic effects that we had observed,
and all the different laws, you know, Gass's law and
Ampere's law and all these different effects, unified them all
together into one concept, electromagnetism. So as these four beautiful equations,
and those equations are perfectly symmetric and electric and magnetic
fields like, they look exactly the same. If you take
(21:24):
every electric field out and replace it with a magnetic
field and do the same thing from magnetic fields, the
equations are the same. So they treat electricity and magnetistism
in exactly the same way, with one exception that it
allows for an electric charge like an electron, and it
also allows for a magnetic charge. We've just never seen one,
(21:45):
so the equations allow for it. They suggested they say,
if you had a magnetic field, here's how it would look,
and that would make magnetism perfectly symmetric with electricity weight.
So you're saying that the equations tell us that you
should be able to see something like a particle or
an object that only has a northness to it. Yeah,
(22:08):
we know exactly how it would work, and it would
make electricity magnetism more similar if it existed. But you're
saying it's like a charge, like an electric charge. But
aren't electro and magnetism the same thing? Yeah, they are related.
There are two parts of the same coin, and so
you would expect them to be similar. You expect this
electricity magnetism should be symmetric under the swapping of electric
(22:30):
and magnetic fields, right, they should treat it the same way,
But they don't. This is the one way in which
electricity and magnetism are not the same thing. Electricity has
pure charges plus and minus, but magnetism maybe it does,
but we've never seen one. So we'd love to see
one because that would make them symmetric. It would make
it like prettier in our minds. I guess I'm confused.
(22:51):
Doesn't an electron, which is a as a plus charge
a negative charge to it. Doesn't it have a magnetic
field around it? It does, but it has north and
a south. It has a magnetic dipole. But you're saying,
the equations say that you should be able to see
a particle that only has one pole. Yeah, the way
we've found particles that have only plus or any minus
(23:11):
right electrons and protons, we shouldn't be able to find
a particle which has only a north or only a
south according to the physics right, physics says, you know,
there's room for it. We have an opening here in
the equations. We'd know exactly what to do with it.
To just go out and find it, prove that it exists.
It doesn't look like it exists. Well, we've just never
seen one before. You know. If you talk to particle theorists,
(23:32):
they say, oh, yeah, probably those exist, we've just never
seen one. There's a famous quote by one of the
greatest physicists of our generation, Joe Polcrinsky. He says, magnetic
monoples are quote, one of the safest bets then one
can make about physics not yet seen, Like if you
had to guess what was out there that we hadn't
seen before. Magnetic monoples are a good guess. Is there
(23:52):
like a running tally or like a like a betting
on those betting websites? Is there an odds on that
right now? It's like seven people in attributing. Now, there
are some famous physicists that make bets with each other
about black holes and stuff like that, But I'm not
aware of any about magnetic monopoles, and I'm not famous
enough for anybody to bet me. But I would totally
(24:13):
bet that monopoles exist, right, So if I bet a
dollar against it, it's a pretty good investment because everyone
seems convinced that there they exist. Yeah, but it's hard
to prove that nothing, that something doesn't exist, right, You
have to look forward forever and never see it, So
you're never gonna get that dollar. Oh that's the problem,
all right, And I think you're telling me that if
(24:33):
it does exist, it's a big deal, right, Like it
has implications about what we know about quantum physics. Yeah,
not only would it symmetrize electricity magnetism, but it would
symitrize symitrize like that word, but also would answer another
deep question about physics, which is why is electric charge quantized,
Like why can you have you know, one or a
(24:56):
third or whatever, but you can't have like point seven
six tube one? You know, why is it not a
continuous number? Like you can't have a point seven electrons?
Yeah kind of yeah, exactly. And a lot of these
things are quantized, you know, energy is quantized and all
this stuff. But we don't know why electric charge is quantized.
But there's a really simple explanation. If monoples exist, then
(25:17):
the angular momentum of that monopole would be quantized because
anglar momentum is quantized and the angle momentum is directly
related to the charges. And so if you have one
monople existing in the universe, it requires that electric charge
is quantized. I feel like you just pulled a fast
one on me, and I'm being whether to let let
it go or not. It just sounds like you're saying, um,
(25:41):
if a monople exists, it means electric charge is quantized,
because magnetic fields are charge are quantized. But isn't that
just pushing it back to why the charges are No,
it comes from angular momentum. Angular momentum has to be quantized.
We know it's quantized. That is definitely true. Angular momentum
(26:02):
is quantized, like we see that in the orbits of
electrons um in atoms. Right, that's why they have that's
why they have orbitals, because their angular momentum is quantized.
And the angular momentum of a monopole would be related
to its charge and to the electric charge of the
thing it's interacting with, and not related to really anything else.
(26:23):
And so because the angular momentum is quantized and the
anglo momentum comes from these two charges, then the product
of the two charges has to be quantized. So that's
how you trace it back. And like it's like you're saying,
the problem is that it's hard to prove that something
doesn't exist, right, Yeah, but wait, if we know that
electric charge is quantized, doesn't that prove that there exists
(26:46):
monopoles in the universe? Well, I mean reversing the argument
that you gave me. Yeah, well that's that's not a
terrible argument. But somebody might say, well, we don't know
that it's quantized. We've just never seen it act in
any other way, so maybe it's not actually one ties. Right,
we have no reason, we have no explanation for why
electric charges quantized. But you might say, well, you know,
if there is no other explanation, then maybe it's because
(27:08):
a monopole exists somewhere. But then maybe somebody else can
come up with another explanation, but this one, if a
monopole exists, it would require electric charge to be quantized.
So it's a nice explanation. Yeah, And it gets into
kind of a philosophical realm here, because, like you were saying,
it's hard to prove a negative, like it's hard to
say unicorns don't exist. Just because you haven't found one
(27:31):
doesn't mean they don't exist exactly, and you just have
to find one to prove that they do exist exactly.
But sometimes you find one and still nobody believes you.
All right, So the physics tells that monopoles exist, but
we haven't found one, or maybe we have. Apparently somebody
thinks they find one in So let's get into that.
(27:52):
But first let's take a quick break. Alright, So magnets
with only one pole one north or south. Physics says
(28:12):
that they should exist, but nobody has ever seen one,
and if we do see one, it would be a
big deal. It would certainly be a big deal. It's
talking Nobel Prize material. I'm gonna go try cunting some
magnets right now. I guess the question is are people
looking for these monopoles or is it something that people
are just hoping to stumble on? Or how would we
even look for a magnetic monopole? Um? I would love
(28:35):
to stumble on a magnetic monopole. Wow, that would be
a great day. Have you looked around? Have you did
you check under your seat there? And I'm checking my
pockets right now. Hold on, you get a monopole and
you get a monopole. Everyone gets a monopole, exactly. No,
there's people are looking for monopoles actively. People have been
looking for them for decades. Then, Daniel, I think in
(28:55):
general you want to avoid sitting on a monocle. Sounds.
I've had to the calculations. I'm not sure what that
would be like if you sit on a monopole. Alright,
So how do we How do people look for a monopole?
And there's two Yeah, there's two ways to look for them.
One is to look for ones that exist already in nature,
try to find it, and the other is to try
(29:16):
to make them make or yeah, find them or make them.
And so the way you would find them is This
is pretty simple. You just use the rules of electricity
and magnetism. So if you have a monopole, then it
passes through a loop of wire, then it will generate
an electric current, just the same way. If you have um,
(29:39):
a charge particle that's moving, it will generate a magnetic field.
A charge monopole, right, a single monopole will generate a
magnetic field. Here's the beauty of the symmetry. So all
you need to do is build a big loop of
wire and wait for a spike. And that's it. And
I guess you're looking for a spike that doesn't have
a counter spike. Exactly exactly, you're looking for a spike
(30:02):
that doesn't have a counter spike. Because you pass a
big magnet through the north and the south, you'll get
a current one way and then a current the other way.
That's exactly how alternating current generators work. But if you
just pass the north through it, you'll just get a
spike and it won't be balanced. Oh right, Like if
I pass a little stick magnet through a little loop
of wire, you know, the north goes in first, which
(30:23):
generates current in one direction, and then as it goes through,
the south goes through then after that, which to generate
a spike in the other directions. Because you're passing through
a net zero magnetic charge, you're gonna end up with
net zero current, right, or a current that goes up
and then down. Yeah, so integrated over time, it's zero.
But if you only have one north going through, issu
(30:45):
generates a spike, which you should, which should build up
over time. You're saying, so you're looking for many monopoles
at the same time. No, even just one, even just
one would give you a spike. You just need one.
I mean two would be great. A hundred even better.
I mean that's a hundred rises. Uh can you can
you publish a paper? Would just end one? I guess
(31:05):
that's the that's the question of the day. Yeah, and
so somebody saw one. Somebody built a big loop of
wire and you know, saw a little blip here and
a little blip there, and the kind of noise you
would expect on a big loop of wire. How big
are we talking about? Like millimeter or miles? That's a
good question. I'm not sure. I think it's you know,
tens of meters in size, because the bigger it is
(31:27):
the more likely you are to catch a monopole. Right,
It's like you're going fishing. Do you use a big
net or a little net? And you would be able
to detect like a single particle of that. That's the challenge.
And try to build a big loop of wire that's
sensitive to a spike like that. And so the bigger
it is, the harder it is to tamp down the noise.
But then the more likely you are to catch something.
So there's a bit of a balance there. Okay, so
(31:48):
you can build a magnetic monopole catcher or detector, and
I guess people have built these. Is it was this
an active field for a while or is in is
something people are looking at? Yeah? I think it was
sort of hotter a few decades ago. But about forty
years ago, a guy named Blast Cabrera Navarro, he built
(32:08):
one of these things and he ran it and on
Valentine's Day two he saw a beautiful spike exactly the
kind of spike you would get from a monopole, like
a big spiking current, much bigger than any noise he's
ever seen. And no counter spike, oh just one, just one,
meaning like one particle went through or like one clump
(32:32):
of particles. What what did he think? He's it's consistent
with a single monopole, like one, like seeing one, like
seeing one electron. Yeah, it's a hard thing to spot.
And you know, you go out fishing in a huge
lake and if the first time you dip in your
net you get a big fish, you think, oh wow,
looks like this lake has lots of fish in it. Right,
(32:54):
But then everybody else comes with their fish and nobody
finds a fish, and they're like, you're lying, what's wrong
with you? Okay? And he only he only found one
spike and never again, never again. So he once saw
that weird spike which may or may not have been
a magnetic monopole, but he was not able to replicate it,
and nobody else who's done something similar has ever seen one.
(33:14):
He's left a machine on since like two and since
even in the thirty years, thirty forty years almost they
still haven't found another one. Yeah, And so either it
was some crazy glitch, right, but then a glitch that
was not reduced because he's not seen that signal again,
or it was a real monopole, and monopoles are just
(33:36):
super rare, right, for nobody else to have seen one
and for him to never seen another one, they would
have to be really really rare. And so maybe they
do exist. They're just really rare. And he happened to
see one, and he just happened to see it on
Valentine's Day, which is suspicious. Yeah, his wife was trying
to get him out of the lab, and he said,
all right, if you find one, then you're done, right, Okay,
(33:57):
here you go, or maybe the wife did it to
get him out of the lab, or his romantic interest
was but um, yeah, it's a little bit funny that
it was on a holiday. It is a little bit funny. Yeah,
but you know, and we're talking about any equals one.
So coincidences can just be pure coincidence, or they could
(34:19):
be meaningful. Maybe this was a gift from the universe
for Blast Cabrera. It must be a tricky position because
it's like, if you get something like that once and
never again, you know, it's very likely that it might
be like an error or something. But then again, you
don't want to be the person who found the thing
but then didn't make a big deal about it, right, Yeah, exactly.
(34:41):
You don't want to be the person who went out
and actually caught that crazy fish and then just sort
of threw it back because you didn't believe in yourself.
So you're making a huge bed here. You're saying I
found it, and just in case it was the real thing.
You can be the one that people say it was
the first one, or people might think you're nuts. People
might think you're nuts, and uh, and but this is
(35:02):
a tricky field, like you say, because not seeing them
doesn't mean they don't exist. They could just be super
duper rare, and you need to wait for a long time.
All you can do is make statistical statements. The longer
you don't see one, the more you can say that
they are rare. And so currently we know that if
monopoles do exist, there's fewer than one per ten to
(35:23):
the twenty nine atoms, because if they were more frequent
than that, we would have seen them. This is you're
talking to just finding them in nature, like just holding
out your glove and hoping to catch one. That's right,
Just that's just finding them already existing in nature. The
other idea is to make them in the lab, making monopoles,
making monopoles. That's right. We know the recipe is at work.
(35:45):
Which cartoon machine do you need here to me? It's
not a cartoon machine. It's a real machine. It's the
large Hagon collider. It's my favorite machine. It's produced by
ACME Products. But you know, well, particle collider, how do
you hope to make one? Just smash stuff and hope
that something comes up. That's the magic of particle colliders
is that you can use them to explore sort of
(36:07):
the space of what's possible. If monopoles can exist in nature,
then we should be able to make them in the collider. Now,
might be that they're just very rare, that they're hard
to make, that you smash protons together and it takes
a quadrillion collisions to get one monopole. Um. We don't know,
so we've been looking for them. We've been smashing protons
together for decades looking for monopoles, never having seen anything
(36:28):
that even looks close to a monopole. So that means
that the evidence that it doesn't exist is building up. Yeah,
but those searches are different. Those searches make different assumptions.
They assume, for example, that if monopoles exist, they can
be made in colliders, which requires a few assumptions about
how they interact with the particles we have in our colliders. Remember,
(36:49):
the basic limitation is in colliders we can only make
particles that interact with the stuff we're putting in. So,
for example, we try to make dark matter and colliders
hoping that protons have saw interaction with dark matter. If
they don't interact with dark matter, we can't make in
the colliders. Same way, if monopoles don't interact with protons
and quarks, then we can't make them in the collider.
(37:11):
So there are some loopholes there, all right, Well, then
that means that we need to stay tuned. Maybe you will,
somebody will build a new kind of collider, right, or
maybe at some point pantopole might pop out of this
collision experiment. Yeah, sometimes I feel like we're in the
middle of a centuries long story. You ever read about these,
(37:31):
you know, these questions in physics which you get posed
and then solved like a hundred years later or a
hundred and fifty years later, and you wonder like, what
was it like to be like seventy years in And
it feels like this question has been around forever and
still nobody has made any progress in your decades from
the discovery. That's sort of where we are here? What
like what keeps people going? Well, you never know how
(37:52):
far away you are from the discovery, and so it
could be that next year somebody finds a cluster of monopoles,
or maybe it's in a hundred years, or maybe somebody
will figure out a new way to manufacture them. Yeah. Um,
I think that they exist. I think that monopoles are
out there, but I don't know. You know, it's a
question about the universe we just don't know the answer to.
But someday humans might know. Well, if you think they exist,
(38:16):
and I'll take that bed with you, Daniel, Okay, all
right at the dollar Where are they? Where do you
think they are? If you think that they exist, are
they you know, hidden? Are they Is it a dark matter?
Or is it just just something that like some of
these particles that don't live a long time that we
just haven't reached with our particle colliders. Where where do
(38:36):
you think they are? I don't know. And we think
that if monopoles can exist in the universe, they should
have been made during the Big Bang, just like everything else,
you know, protons and electrons, and all those other kind
of particles were made just after the Big Bang, so
why not monopoles? And if monopoles were created, you know,
do they annihilate each other like when a North and
South meet, do they annihilate each other into a photon?
(39:00):
It might be possible. It might be the case that,
you know, matter and antimatter or asymmetric, which is why
we ended up with matter monopole, North and South were
all symmetric, and they all annihilated each other away. So
we just don't know. All right, I'll formulate my dark
matter anti mater monopole unicorn theory for Nicks Week's episode,
(39:20):
and I'll be taking bets. Sounds good, I'll take a
bet on that one. Maybe, as you call it, a unipole,
and then magic unipole, and then maybe you'll get more
people interested in the big Foot Pole and the Big Pole,
magic Uni Big Pole, the unifoot, new new crypto zoology entry,
(39:45):
crypto particle physics. All right, Well, I think this is
just another example of how there's just all these unanswered
questions out there in the universe, and that might at
any point in time up and our understanding of what
we think is going on. That's right. If you an
aspiring physicist young woman out there, remember that science can
be done by anyone and there are great discoveries remaining. Yep,
(40:08):
everybody check under your seats right now and remember twitter
handle is at Daniel and Jorge. Thanks for going along
with us on this ride about the crazy, bonkers, amazing
universe that we all live in. Yeah, we hope you
were attractively symmetrized. Thank you for joining us, See you
(40:28):
next time. Thanks for tuning in before. You still have
a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop
us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You
can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel
and Jorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback
(40:51):
at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening and
remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
production of I Heart Radio from our podcast from my
Heart Radio visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah. M
Daniel, I have a question for you. Who is it
about aliens? Maybe it might be about alien um What
do you think would happen? What would happen if you
made an amazing discovery in your work? Maybe you found aliens,
Maybe you found a new particle that changes our understanding
of it. It sounds great so far, But then what
if nobody believed you? Oh? Man, what if I found
(00:30):
a deep secret of the universe but nobody else was
convinced as a terrible, terrible choice to make. Would you
still want to do it? Or do you think would
just drive you crazy? Like seeing seeing Bigfoot in the
forest by yourself? You know, would you want to see
Do you want to see Bigfoot and know that he
exists or she exists? Or would you rather not be
(00:50):
that crazy person? I think I'm too haunted by the
secrets of the universe. I need to know that answer,
even if it means all of my friends and relative
think I'm crazy. Yeah. Hi am r Haanmae, cartoonists and
(01:17):
the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
particle physicist, and I may have discovered something that you
won't believe. Clickbait click bait. Well, if you click here,
welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a production of I Heart Radio, in which we talk
about all the amazing and crazy things about the universe.
(01:38):
Things we've discovered, things we have not yet discovered, things
physicists have found, and things physicists are still looking for. Yeah,
things that even you might find out there. Maybe there
are people listening to this who will make an incredible
discovery for science and for physics, and if they hear
about the potential for that discovery on our podcast, then
all we ask when you're accepting your Nobel Prize is
(01:59):
that you give us a shout out. That's right, just
mention our Twitter handle and we'll call it even spell
it out though, spell it out. The people have trouble
spelling your name sometimes yeah, um yeah so sometimes. Um.
It's a tricky thing in science, I think, because you
could be the person who discover something amazing, but then
(02:20):
if nobody can replicate it, or maybe it just happen once,
then nobody might believe you. Sometimes you're trying to create
an effect like cold fusion that should be replicable. You know,
somebody else should be able to make the same conditions
in their lab and create the same situation. But sometimes
you're looking for something. Sometimes you just want to go
out and find one example to prove it exists. And
(02:42):
what if there's only one? You know, what if you're
looking in the night sky and the aliens come and
they go high and then they disappear forever, doesn't mean
it didn't happen. Well, I won't confirm whether that's happened
to me or not, Daniel, But I would maybe use
the example that you know, sometimes I'm out in camping
or in the beach or something in the night at
(03:03):
night and we're looking at the night sky with other
people or with my kids, and you know, you'll see
a shooting star and you'd be like, look, a shooting star.
By the time everyone looks, obviously it's gone and um,
and you sort of look like a crazy person. Why
does your family not believe your stories? Or Hey, are
you making up stuff all the time? Oh my got
a unicorn? Nobody was looking. Maybe because my profession is
(03:26):
to make up stories, that might be a Maybe that's
the real problem with this example. Yeah, I hear voices
in my head, Daniel. I mean, I think you're real.
But maybe you're just in my head. But you know,
but you're right. And sometimes in science what you're looking
for is just one example, because the question you're asking
is does this exist? Just like we want to know
(03:48):
is there life on other planets? Even just one example
would be the answer to that question. We don't need
to know if there's life everywhere in the universe. We
just want to know is there life anywhere else? And
seeing it one time, we totally answer that question. And
so sometimes all you need is one piece of evidence,
a proof of existence of this kind of thing. Yeah,
I guess some things in science I just need to
(04:10):
prove that proof of existence, like a unicorn or bigfoot. Yeah,
we're sounding like a pseudoscience podcast. Welcome to Daniel and
jrge talk weird conspiracy theories. Unicorn particles are real, man,
and they collide with bigfoot particles to produce something in
the atmosphere which the CIA is hiding it there. That's
(04:30):
right on the ground. That's right. I'm gonna be called
by the Republicans for the impeachment testimony based on my
conspiracy theories. No, but it's true, and this happens not
just in cryptozoology, right, people looking for weird animals. But
it also happens in particle physics. Yeah, And in fact,
it's happened in an area that I think I thought
(04:52):
was pretty much settled in physics. But it seems that
there are still open questions and open unicorns to be found.
That's right, Come joined particle physics. There are still unicorns
for you to discover. That's our selling point. Come for
the unicorns, stay for the big feet. What are you
saying about my feet? Nobody out there knows how big
my feet are. That's why you always present, because they
(05:13):
grow every day by like an inch. A tear apart
any shoes I'm wearing. No, we have questions in particle
physics where if you just saw one example of something,
it would be not literally earth shattering, but maybe literally
mind blowing for particle physicists. So today we'll be talking
about an effect in magnetism, right in electromagnetics that would
(05:35):
sort of up and our understanding of it. But that
hasn't been found, Or maybe it has been found, but
maybe nobody believes the person who found it. That's right.
The whole particle physics community is waiting to see if
anybody will find this one example of it from forty
years ago that nobody really believes except for the guy
who found it. Right, so to be on the program,
(05:56):
we'll be talking about what is a magnetic monopole and
where are they? If they do exist, why are they
so hard to find? They're hiding next to Waldo and
Bigfootply do you think all those hard to find things
just are hanging out somewhere in the middle of the
(06:17):
forest and we just found them all together one day
hanging out. Well, I gotta say, I think magnetism in
general is just a big mystery. It feels like the
force to me, you know, it's like an invisible force.
But it's surprising to think that there are still things
that might upend our understanding of it. Yeah, it feels
a little bit like eighteenth century science. Right In eighteenth
(06:38):
century magnetism was like a big mystery. What is this
weird thing? You can push and pull things, and then
people feel like, you know, we sort of figured it out.
We have a good theory of electromagnetism. You know, we
understand electricity by now, we must understand everything about magnetism. Right. Wrong,
You are attracted to these kinds of questions. I am
(06:59):
i and pulled by these kinds of questions, things that
you know, anybody could discover. But the thing that's fascinating
to me is that this is a huge question in physics.
It's like been open for more than a century. It's
something people are actively working on that we do have
a potentially discovery. But I was wondering, is this something
people like in general, are aware of. Is this just
(07:19):
something in the minds of physicists, or is everybody else
out there also desperate to hear about the latest search
for the magnetic monopole. So, as usual, I was curious
if people understood, you know, what a magnetic monopole is,
and so I walked around the campus UC Irvine and
I asked folks if they knew what a magnetic monople was.
And so here's what people had to say. No, magnets
(07:42):
required two pulse positive and negative. So I'm assuming this
is maybe a combination of them or just one just
negative or positive. Does it exist in magnetic monopole? Do
you think it's possible? It seems like it would be
a contradiction, but I'm sure it could be theoretically possible.
I guess it sounds familiar, but I'm not too sure. Okay,
(08:03):
I actually no, I didn't think that you could have
a magnetic monocle. Why not, Well, I'm only familiar with
thinking of magnetic dipoles, right, So can a monopole exist? Well,
I mean, since you're asking me the question, I think
it kind of presumes that it can exist. So I'm
(08:26):
assuming the answer to this is yes. Last, based on
my history of talking to Now, if you were a
random guy approaching me at a coffee shop or a
sadu leaving the Indian forest tell me that he had
just witnessed a magnetic monocle in his meditations, I might
(08:49):
be more dubious, all right, not a lot of familiarity
out there. And again, if you had interviewed me on
the street, I've heard of probably been said it sounds
like a magnet. Who has mono? I'm not sure what? Um. Yeah,
it's sort of a technical name, but I think people
will be surprised to discover that's something they really can understand.
(09:10):
It's something that makes perfect sense because we have monopoles
and other things. We have monopoles and electricity, and so
it would make perfect sense to have matt monopoles and magnetism.
But you're right, almost nobody had really any understanding of
what this thing is. But a magnetic monopole would be
a big deal. You're saying. In physics electric monopoles, we
see them all the time, they're just electrons. But a
(09:33):
magnetic monopole something which is a north or a south
without being both that we've never seen, and that would
really change our understanding of physics. All right, well, let's
dig into it, Daniel. What is a magnetic monopole or
I guess what is a monopole in general? So a
monopole comes in any kind of part of physics where
you have things that are charged, and so I think
(09:53):
it's easiest to start with electricity because it's people can
think about electricity and charges, and you know, So you
have the atom, for example. The atom is neutral because
it has the electron and it has the proton and
so it's balanced, right, But there is a plus and
a minus inside there, so the atom itself is neutral.
We call a dipole because has both a plus and
a minus. But you can separate them. You can cut
(10:15):
it in half. You can get rid of the electron.
You can just be left with the plus, or you
can just have the electron, So that would be a monopole.
For electricity, just the plus or just the minus is it?
Then it's it's a property of things, and it's it's
like the charge that you have, Like if you're an electron,
you know a negative charge. So that's your monopole. That's
(10:35):
your single pole. You're a single pole. And then you
bring the plus and minus together, that's a dipole. They
balance each other out like in a hydrogen atom. I
guess if you're an electron and a proton, you have
a plus and a minus, and so you have like
one end of view is plus and one end of
views minus. Precisely, it's a dipole. Precisely, it's a divole
overall your balanced, but one sign is positive, one side
(10:56):
is negative. Right, but that which side is which is
moving around because the electron is moving around. Yeah, precisely,
and so that makes perfect sense. In electricity magnetism, you
can have a dipole like a hydrogen atom, and you
can have monopoles because what happens when you separate those
bits of the dipole you get two monopoles. Right, that's
what makes perfect sense. You combine two monopoles, you get
(11:16):
a dipole. You break apart a dipole, you get two monopoles.
You can separate a proton and an electron. Do a
big deal. Okay, So that's an electricity, like if you're
you've have charge, you're an electron, or like a battery. Um.
But what does it mean then for magnetism, because that's
where the tricky stuff comes in. Yeah, magnetism turns out
to be weirdly different. Right. We're all familiar with a magnet,
(11:37):
and magnet has a north and a south, and so
for magnetism, that's sort of like the plus and minus
from electricity. So in magnetism we call them north and
south mostly because they align with you know, the Earth
north and south. But we could have called them anything else.
We could have called them Bob and alice, or dogs
and cats, or you know, chocolate peanut butter or whatever.
But they're not the same as plus and minus. You're saying, like,
(11:59):
why did why did we call them north and southe?
Why didn't we just call them plusant minus? They're not
the same as plusant minus. Magnetism is separate from electricity.
I mean they have deep connections, of course, but it
is a different force from this point of view, and
they have a different charge. And so this is like
the magnetic charge. So North is one kind of magnetic charge,
in South is the opposite kind of magnetic charge. And
(12:21):
the Earth is a dipole. The Earth has a north
pole and a south pole. Right overall it's neutral, but
there's one part of it which is more northea, and
one part of it which is more southy. The same
is true for any magnet that you hold has a
north and a south and it's not related to where
the charge like, it's not related to where the charges
are or how much of it is there, right Like,
(12:42):
like the north pole on Earth is not due to
the fact that the north part of the Earth has
more electric negative charge for example. Now it has to
do with how the electrons inside the Earth are moving.
You see, all the magnetic fields that we have are dipoles.
They have a north and the south, and that's because
all of the come from moving charges. Actually, so here's
(13:02):
the connection between electricity and magnetism. We have no way
to create a pure north or a pure South. That's
what the magnetic monopole would be like you don't need
a magnet to create a charge or like an electron,
but you need a charge to create a magnet. Because
we don't have a pure magnetic pole, you can't create
just a north. Like what happens if you take a
north and a south magnet and you split it in half,
(13:25):
while you get a north and south in between, right,
the little magnets then become dipoles. Oh, I see that's weird. Okay,
so um, the north and south of a magnet is
due to the movement of the charges inside. Like if
I just take one electron that is a negative charge,
it's a monopole. But if I spin that electron in
(13:47):
a circle, like in a coil of wire, then I
create a magnetic dipole field dipole which has a north
and a south like above the loop is north and
below the loop is south. But I can't just I
can't just create a north. That's right, And say you
did to those electrons together, right, and and they're spinning together,
(14:08):
so they make a double north and double south. Now
you want to say, okay, I just want the north.
I'm going to separate the two electrons well, each electron
is its own dipoles has a north and a south. Right,
you can't separate the north from the south. Like what happens.
You take a really long magnet which is north on
one end and south and thegether and cut it in half. Well,
at the point where you cut it, that part becomes
(14:28):
a south for the one magnet and north for the other. Right,
you get two dipoles. It splits off, but then if
you put them back together, then you make one big magnet. Again,
that's right, And this is very different from what happens
when you separate electric charges. You can separate again the
proton and the electron and just have a plus charge
by itself or a minus charge by itself. But you
(14:49):
can't do that with magnets. You can't separate the north
and south into a pure north or a pure south
because we've well we've never seen one, right, all we
have our dipoles. We have no monopoles. We never seen
a magnetic monople. I think we talked about this before.
But the magnetic field of a magnet, like your average
kitchen magnet, that field that magnet is due to like
(15:11):
the spinning of the charges into the motion of the
charges inside of the magnet, right, that's right, all the
charges that are either moving or spinning. Quantum spin sometimes
generates little magnets for each electron, little dipole magnets for
each electron, which then all add up to give a
magnetic field for the fridge magnet. All right, And so
the idea is that you can't just make a north magnet.
(15:33):
You always when you were you create a magnet has
two sides. If you create a magnet from a moving
or spinning charge, it has a north and south, and
you can't ever separate them. And the question is, does
there exist some material out there we've never discovered, some objects,
some particle, some something which is a pure north or
a pure south we've never seen. When we've only seen
magnetic dipoles. Does a magnetic monople exist, Yeah, as far
(15:57):
as we know, can you can't create a north in
it south? But maybe there's a unicorn out there whose
horn is a wonopole. I would say the other way.
I would say physics has nothing against magnetic monopoles. They
would actually make much more sense if they did exist.
The weird thing is we've never seen one except for
that one guy. Well, a lot happened in all right,
(16:21):
Well let's get into the details of it, because I
am totally hooked now. But first let's take a quick break.
All right. I know, so that's what a monopole, magnetic
(16:42):
monopole is. It's a magnet that has only a north
or only a south. And you're telling me that it
seems like it's kind of um possible, But we've never
seen one in nature. Like whenever you try to split
a magnet or cut one in half, it just generates
two meeting magnets that you can't just we haven't seen
(17:03):
one where it's just north or to south. That's right,
And I love encouraging experiments at home, but really, folks,
if you just go out there and take your bar
magnets and chop them in half, you're going to get
two little bar magnets. You're wasting your time and just
shrinking your magnets. We've done that. But if I could
them really fast, But if I could really fast before
the laws of physics have a chance to rearrange, do
you think the laws of physics are like the laws
(17:24):
of cartoons, where they like take a moment to realize
before wildly coyote plummets to his death. I mean that's yeah,
that's how it works in that's right. Yeah, but our
podcast is about the real universe and not the cartoon
fictional universe in your mind. So, um, yeah, you can't
do that. I think we've established them that I'll keep
(17:46):
on living in the cartooning universe. Yeah. And this is
one of those fascinating moments where we see sort of
a gap, you know, like you arrange all of human
knowledge and you notice something's missing, something else would fit there.
It's like when we first first building the periodic table
and we noticed, oh, nobody's ever seen you know, technetium,
element number whatever that is. Why not can we make it?
(18:09):
Can it exist? You know, anytime there's a gap there
in the pattern, you're wondering what would feel that whole
There's like an empty chair and you're like, who's supposed
to sit in that chair? Yeah? And we also we
like symmetry, We like balance, and you know, we said
electricity and magnetism are kind of two different forces, but
they're really deeply intertwined. You know, moving charges create magnetic fields,
(18:32):
and so there's this symmetry between electricity and magnetism, and
so if we can have positive and negative electric charges
by themselves, why can't we have pure north and pure south. Well,
I guess maybe one thing I might be need tos
I'm explaining on that I'm confused about is like, what
exactly is a magnetic pole at all? Like, I know
what it charges. It's like your plus, which means you're
(18:53):
attracted to minus charges and you repel other plus charges.
You know it charges, I don't understand what it charges.
I mean to me, that's to like a deep question,
like what makes the electron negative charged? We don't know? Well,
I guess I mean not so deeply philosophical, which is
like I know what it means, and you know that
if you have a plus, you're attracted to minus and
(19:13):
and you're you repel other pluses. But what is it?
Is it the same for north and south of a magnet, Like, um,
it just means you repel other north and but you're
attracted to other souths precisely. And you know what north
and south mean for magnets. If you try to push
to north together, they repel each other in the north
and the south will attract each other. It works that
same way. I guess it's just it's based on the
(19:34):
magic of magnetic fields being generated by moving electrons. Yeah,
that's what magnetic fields are. Magnetic fields are this force
that a positive magnetic charge, which we call a north,
feels on a negative magnetic charge, which we call a south.
And they really are different, right, positive and negative refer
only to electricity. North and south refer to magnetism. But
(19:55):
they're connected because charges can make magnetic fields. And if
there are monopoles out there, then a moving monopole could
create an electric current the way a moving charge creates
a magnetic field. So what would even a monopole magnet
look and feel like? It like it'd be a be
a little block or a little cylinder that only has
(20:19):
north in it, which means that if I put it
up against another north, ill repelled and it would have
a magnetic field which radiates out from it from a point,
just the way an electric field radiates out from an electron.
We've never seen that before. We've only ever seen this
north south couple, you know, that has a dipole field
that is a totally different shape because it has both
(20:40):
the north and the south. We've never seen an object
that is not balanced in magnetism. We've only seen things
that are overall neutral to have a north and a south.
But you're saying that, we think that maybe it could exist,
Like the laws of physics don't tell his Nope, you
can't have that. They tell us, actually you can. Yeah.
It was like a hundred years ago Maxwell wrote down
the laws of electricity magnetism unified all the different magnetic
(21:03):
effects and all the different electronic effects that we had observed,
and all the different laws, you know, Gass's law and
Ampere's law and all these different effects, unified them all
together into one concept, electromagnetism. So as these four beautiful equations,
and those equations are perfectly symmetric and electric and magnetic
fields like, they look exactly the same. If you take
(21:24):
every electric field out and replace it with a magnetic
field and do the same thing from magnetic fields, the
equations are the same. So they treat electricity and magnetistism
in exactly the same way, with one exception that it
allows for an electric charge like an electron, and it
also allows for a magnetic charge. We've just never seen one,
(21:45):
so the equations allow for it. They suggested they say,
if you had a magnetic field, here's how it would look,
and that would make magnetism perfectly symmetric with electricity weight.
So you're saying that the equations tell us that you
should be able to see something like a particle or
an object that only has a northness to it. Yeah,
(22:08):
we know exactly how it would work, and it would
make electricity magnetism more similar if it existed. But you're
saying it's like a charge, like an electric charge. But
aren't electro and magnetism the same thing? Yeah, they are related.
There are two parts of the same coin, and so
you would expect them to be similar. You expect this
electricity magnetism should be symmetric under the swapping of electric
(22:30):
and magnetic fields, right, they should treat it the same way,
But they don't. This is the one way in which
electricity and magnetism are not the same thing. Electricity has
pure charges plus and minus, but magnetism maybe it does,
but we've never seen one. So we'd love to see
one because that would make them symmetric. It would make
it like prettier in our minds. I guess I'm confused.
(22:51):
Doesn't an electron, which is a as a plus charge
a negative charge to it. Doesn't it have a magnetic
field around it? It does, but it has north and
a south. It has a magnetic dipole. But you're saying,
the equations say that you should be able to see
a particle that only has one pole. Yeah, the way
we've found particles that have only plus or any minus
(23:11):
right electrons and protons, we shouldn't be able to find
a particle which has only a north or only a
south according to the physics right, physics says, you know,
there's room for it. We have an opening here in
the equations. We'd know exactly what to do with it.
To just go out and find it, prove that it exists.
It doesn't look like it exists. Well, we've just never
seen one before. You know. If you talk to particle theorists,
(23:32):
they say, oh, yeah, probably those exist, we've just never
seen one. There's a famous quote by one of the
greatest physicists of our generation, Joe Polcrinsky. He says, magnetic
monoples are quote, one of the safest bets then one
can make about physics not yet seen, Like if you
had to guess what was out there that we hadn't
seen before. Magnetic monoples are a good guess. Is there
(23:52):
like a running tally or like a like a betting
on those betting websites? Is there an odds on that
right now? It's like seven people in attributing. Now, there
are some famous physicists that make bets with each other
about black holes and stuff like that, But I'm not
aware of any about magnetic monopoles, and I'm not famous
enough for anybody to bet me. But I would totally
(24:13):
bet that monopoles exist, right, So if I bet a
dollar against it, it's a pretty good investment because everyone
seems convinced that there they exist. Yeah, but it's hard
to prove that nothing, that something doesn't exist, right, You
have to look forward forever and never see it, So
you're never gonna get that dollar. Oh that's the problem,
all right, And I think you're telling me that if
(24:33):
it does exist, it's a big deal, right, Like it
has implications about what we know about quantum physics. Yeah,
not only would it symmetrize electricity magnetism, but it would
symitrize symitrize like that word, but also would answer another
deep question about physics, which is why is electric charge quantized,
Like why can you have you know, one or a
(24:56):
third or whatever, but you can't have like point seven
six tube one? You know, why is it not a
continuous number? Like you can't have a point seven electrons?
Yeah kind of yeah, exactly. And a lot of these
things are quantized, you know, energy is quantized and all
this stuff. But we don't know why electric charge is quantized.
But there's a really simple explanation. If monoples exist, then
(25:17):
the angular momentum of that monopole would be quantized because
anglar momentum is quantized and the angle momentum is directly
related to the charges. And so if you have one
monople existing in the universe, it requires that electric charge
is quantized. I feel like you just pulled a fast
one on me, and I'm being whether to let let
it go or not. It just sounds like you're saying, um,
(25:41):
if a monople exists, it means electric charge is quantized,
because magnetic fields are charge are quantized. But isn't that
just pushing it back to why the charges are No,
it comes from angular momentum. Angular momentum has to be quantized.
We know it's quantized. That is definitely true. Angular momentum
(26:02):
is quantized, like we see that in the orbits of
electrons um in atoms. Right, that's why they have that's
why they have orbitals, because their angular momentum is quantized.
And the angular momentum of a monopole would be related
to its charge and to the electric charge of the
thing it's interacting with, and not related to really anything else.
(26:23):
And so because the angular momentum is quantized and the
anglo momentum comes from these two charges, then the product
of the two charges has to be quantized. So that's
how you trace it back. And like it's like you're saying,
the problem is that it's hard to prove that something
doesn't exist, right, Yeah, but wait, if we know that
electric charge is quantized, doesn't that prove that there exists
(26:46):
monopoles in the universe? Well, I mean reversing the argument
that you gave me. Yeah, well that's that's not a
terrible argument. But somebody might say, well, we don't know
that it's quantized. We've just never seen it act in
any other way, so maybe it's not actually one ties. Right,
we have no reason, we have no explanation for why
electric charges quantized. But you might say, well, you know,
if there is no other explanation, then maybe it's because
(27:08):
a monopole exists somewhere. But then maybe somebody else can
come up with another explanation, but this one, if a
monopole exists, it would require electric charge to be quantized.
So it's a nice explanation. Yeah, And it gets into
kind of a philosophical realm here, because, like you were saying,
it's hard to prove a negative, like it's hard to
say unicorns don't exist. Just because you haven't found one
(27:31):
doesn't mean they don't exist exactly, and you just have
to find one to prove that they do exist exactly.
But sometimes you find one and still nobody believes you.
All right, So the physics tells that monopoles exist, but
we haven't found one, or maybe we have. Apparently somebody
thinks they find one in So let's get into that.
(27:52):
But first let's take a quick break. Alright, So magnets
with only one pole one north or south. Physics says
(28:12):
that they should exist, but nobody has ever seen one,
and if we do see one, it would be a
big deal. It would certainly be a big deal. It's
talking Nobel Prize material. I'm gonna go try cunting some
magnets right now. I guess the question is are people
looking for these monopoles or is it something that people
are just hoping to stumble on? Or how would we
even look for a magnetic monopole? Um? I would love
(28:35):
to stumble on a magnetic monopole. Wow, that would be
a great day. Have you looked around? Have you did
you check under your seat there? And I'm checking my
pockets right now. Hold on, you get a monopole and
you get a monopole. Everyone gets a monopole, exactly. No,
there's people are looking for monopoles actively. People have been
looking for them for decades. Then, Daniel, I think in
(28:55):
general you want to avoid sitting on a monocle. Sounds.
I've had to the calculations. I'm not sure what that
would be like if you sit on a monopole. Alright,
So how do we How do people look for a monopole?
And there's two Yeah, there's two ways to look for them.
One is to look for ones that exist already in nature,
try to find it, and the other is to try
(29:16):
to make them make or yeah, find them or make them.
And so the way you would find them is This
is pretty simple. You just use the rules of electricity
and magnetism. So if you have a monopole, then it
passes through a loop of wire, then it will generate
an electric current, just the same way. If you have um,
(29:39):
a charge particle that's moving, it will generate a magnetic field.
A charge monopole, right, a single monopole will generate a
magnetic field. Here's the beauty of the symmetry. So all
you need to do is build a big loop of
wire and wait for a spike. And that's it. And
I guess you're looking for a spike that doesn't have
a counter spike. Exactly exactly, you're looking for a spike
(30:02):
that doesn't have a counter spike. Because you pass a
big magnet through the north and the south, you'll get
a current one way and then a current the other way.
That's exactly how alternating current generators work. But if you
just pass the north through it, you'll just get a
spike and it won't be balanced. Oh right, Like if
I pass a little stick magnet through a little loop
of wire, you know, the north goes in first, which
(30:23):
generates current in one direction, and then as it goes through,
the south goes through then after that, which to generate
a spike in the other directions. Because you're passing through
a net zero magnetic charge, you're gonna end up with
net zero current, right, or a current that goes up
and then down. Yeah, so integrated over time, it's zero.
But if you only have one north going through, issu
(30:45):
generates a spike, which you should, which should build up
over time. You're saying, so you're looking for many monopoles
at the same time. No, even just one, even just
one would give you a spike. You just need one.
I mean two would be great. A hundred even better.
I mean that's a hundred rises. Uh can you can
you publish a paper? Would just end one? I guess
(31:05):
that's the that's the question of the day. Yeah, and
so somebody saw one. Somebody built a big loop of
wire and you know, saw a little blip here and
a little blip there, and the kind of noise you
would expect on a big loop of wire. How big
are we talking about? Like millimeter or miles? That's a
good question. I'm not sure. I think it's you know,
tens of meters in size, because the bigger it is
(31:27):
the more likely you are to catch a monopole. Right,
It's like you're going fishing. Do you use a big
net or a little net? And you would be able
to detect like a single particle of that. That's the challenge.
And try to build a big loop of wire that's
sensitive to a spike like that. And so the bigger
it is, the harder it is to tamp down the noise.
But then the more likely you are to catch something.
So there's a bit of a balance there. Okay, so
(31:48):
you can build a magnetic monopole catcher or detector, and
I guess people have built these. Is it was this
an active field for a while or is in is
something people are looking at? Yeah? I think it was
sort of hotter a few decades ago. But about forty
years ago, a guy named Blast Cabrera Navarro, he built
(32:08):
one of these things and he ran it and on
Valentine's Day two he saw a beautiful spike exactly the
kind of spike you would get from a monopole, like
a big spiking current, much bigger than any noise he's
ever seen. And no counter spike, oh just one, just one,
meaning like one particle went through or like one clump
(32:32):
of particles. What what did he think? He's it's consistent
with a single monopole, like one, like seeing one, like
seeing one electron. Yeah, it's a hard thing to spot.
And you know, you go out fishing in a huge
lake and if the first time you dip in your
net you get a big fish, you think, oh wow,
looks like this lake has lots of fish in it. Right,
(32:54):
But then everybody else comes with their fish and nobody
finds a fish, and they're like, you're lying, what's wrong
with you? Okay? And he only he only found one
spike and never again, never again. So he once saw
that weird spike which may or may not have been
a magnetic monopole, but he was not able to replicate it,
and nobody else who's done something similar has ever seen one.
(33:14):
He's left a machine on since like two and since
even in the thirty years, thirty forty years almost they
still haven't found another one. Yeah, And so either it
was some crazy glitch, right, but then a glitch that
was not reduced because he's not seen that signal again,
or it was a real monopole, and monopoles are just
(33:36):
super rare, right, for nobody else to have seen one
and for him to never seen another one, they would
have to be really really rare. And so maybe they
do exist. They're just really rare. And he happened to
see one, and he just happened to see it on
Valentine's Day, which is suspicious. Yeah, his wife was trying
to get him out of the lab, and he said,
all right, if you find one, then you're done, right, Okay,
(33:57):
here you go, or maybe the wife did it to
get him out of the lab, or his romantic interest
was but um, yeah, it's a little bit funny that
it was on a holiday. It is a little bit funny. Yeah,
but you know, and we're talking about any equals one.
So coincidences can just be pure coincidence, or they could
(34:19):
be meaningful. Maybe this was a gift from the universe
for Blast Cabrera. It must be a tricky position because
it's like, if you get something like that once and
never again, you know, it's very likely that it might
be like an error or something. But then again, you
don't want to be the person who found the thing
but then didn't make a big deal about it, right, Yeah, exactly.
(34:41):
You don't want to be the person who went out
and actually caught that crazy fish and then just sort
of threw it back because you didn't believe in yourself.
So you're making a huge bed here. You're saying I
found it, and just in case it was the real thing.
You can be the one that people say it was
the first one, or people might think you're nuts. People
might think you're nuts, and uh, and but this is
(35:02):
a tricky field, like you say, because not seeing them
doesn't mean they don't exist. They could just be super
duper rare, and you need to wait for a long time.
All you can do is make statistical statements. The longer
you don't see one, the more you can say that
they are rare. And so currently we know that if
monopoles do exist, there's fewer than one per ten to
(35:23):
the twenty nine atoms, because if they were more frequent
than that, we would have seen them. This is you're
talking to just finding them in nature, like just holding
out your glove and hoping to catch one. That's right,
Just that's just finding them already existing in nature. The
other idea is to make them in the lab, making monopoles,
making monopoles. That's right. We know the recipe is at work.
(35:45):
Which cartoon machine do you need here to me? It's
not a cartoon machine. It's a real machine. It's the
large Hagon collider. It's my favorite machine. It's produced by
ACME Products. But you know, well, particle collider, how do
you hope to make one? Just smash stuff and hope
that something comes up. That's the magic of particle colliders
is that you can use them to explore sort of
(36:07):
the space of what's possible. If monopoles can exist in nature,
then we should be able to make them in the collider. Now,
might be that they're just very rare, that they're hard
to make, that you smash protons together and it takes
a quadrillion collisions to get one monopole. Um. We don't know,
so we've been looking for them. We've been smashing protons
together for decades looking for monopoles, never having seen anything
(36:28):
that even looks close to a monopole. So that means
that the evidence that it doesn't exist is building up. Yeah,
but those searches are different. Those searches make different assumptions.
They assume, for example, that if monopoles exist, they can
be made in colliders, which requires a few assumptions about
how they interact with the particles we have in our colliders. Remember,
(36:49):
the basic limitation is in colliders we can only make
particles that interact with the stuff we're putting in. So,
for example, we try to make dark matter and colliders
hoping that protons have saw interaction with dark matter. If
they don't interact with dark matter, we can't make in
the colliders. Same way, if monopoles don't interact with protons
and quarks, then we can't make them in the collider.
(37:11):
So there are some loopholes there, all right, Well, then
that means that we need to stay tuned. Maybe you will,
somebody will build a new kind of collider, right, or
maybe at some point pantopole might pop out of this
collision experiment. Yeah, sometimes I feel like we're in the
middle of a centuries long story. You ever read about these,
(37:31):
you know, these questions in physics which you get posed
and then solved like a hundred years later or a
hundred and fifty years later, and you wonder like, what
was it like to be like seventy years in And
it feels like this question has been around forever and
still nobody has made any progress in your decades from
the discovery. That's sort of where we are here? What
like what keeps people going? Well, you never know how
(37:52):
far away you are from the discovery, and so it
could be that next year somebody finds a cluster of monopoles,
or maybe it's in a hundred years, or maybe somebody
will figure out a new way to manufacture them. Yeah. Um,
I think that they exist. I think that monopoles are
out there, but I don't know. You know, it's a
question about the universe we just don't know the answer to.
But someday humans might know. Well, if you think they exist,
(38:16):
and I'll take that bed with you, Daniel, Okay, all
right at the dollar Where are they? Where do you
think they are? If you think that they exist, are
they you know, hidden? Are they Is it a dark matter?
Or is it just just something that like some of
these particles that don't live a long time that we
just haven't reached with our particle colliders. Where where do
(38:36):
you think they are? I don't know. And we think
that if monopoles can exist in the universe, they should
have been made during the Big Bang, just like everything else,
you know, protons and electrons, and all those other kind
of particles were made just after the Big Bang, so
why not monopoles? And if monopoles were created, you know,
do they annihilate each other like when a North and
South meet, do they annihilate each other into a photon?
(39:00):
It might be possible. It might be the case that,
you know, matter and antimatter or asymmetric, which is why
we ended up with matter monopole, North and South were
all symmetric, and they all annihilated each other away. So
we just don't know. All right, I'll formulate my dark
matter anti mater monopole unicorn theory for Nicks Week's episode,
(39:20):
and I'll be taking bets. Sounds good, I'll take a
bet on that one. Maybe, as you call it, a unipole,
and then magic unipole, and then maybe you'll get more
people interested in the big Foot Pole and the Big Pole,
magic Uni Big Pole, the unifoot, new new crypto zoology entry,
(39:45):
crypto particle physics. All right, Well, I think this is
just another example of how there's just all these unanswered
questions out there in the universe, and that might at
any point in time up and our understanding of what
we think is going on. That's right. If you an
aspiring physicist young woman out there, remember that science can
be done by anyone and there are great discoveries remaining. Yep,
(40:08):
everybody check under your seats right now and remember twitter
handle is at Daniel and Jorge. Thanks for going along
with us on this ride about the crazy, bonkers, amazing
universe that we all live in. Yeah, we hope you
were attractively symmetrized. Thank you for joining us, See you
(40:28):
next time. Thanks for tuning in before. You still have
a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop
us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You
can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel
and Jorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback
(40:51):
at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening and
remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
production of I Heart Radio from our podcast from my
Heart Radio visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah. M
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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