The Enduring Mystery Of Detecting The Universe's Only Magnetic Monopole
“We may never know what went on inside that detector back on Valentine's Day of 1982. Was there really a magnetic monopole that passed through it, where we were fortunate enough to find it but never saw another one? Was it an unprecedented glitch in the equipment? A most unusual cosmic ray with heretofore inexplicable properties? Or, perhaps, a prank played by a student, rival, or professional saboteur?
In experimental science, the most important thing is to be able to replicate your results, and a second monopole detection has never come to pass. As beautiful as a symmetric Universe might be, that simply doesn't appear to be the Universe we have. Nobody knows what happened to fool us into thinking we'd detected a magnetic monopole, but without repeat confirmation, we have no choice but to conclude it wasn't real. Magnetic monopoles, as far as we can tell, don't appear to exist.”
37 years ago, an experiment was being performed that was searching for a very specific phenomenon that should exist in many scenarios of Grand Unified Theories: a magnetic monopole. These new particles, not a part of classical electromagnetism or the Standard Model, should be isolated north or south magnetic poles, without a matching dipole counterpart. If they were to pass through a specially-designed detector, an unambiguous signal should show up.
On February 14, 1982, that exact signal was observed. What happened? 37 years later, here’s the (unfortunately) very limited amount we know.
