Thorfinn.au sends along big physics news: pulling monopoles have been detected at low temperatures in "Dirac strings" within a single crystal of Dysprosium Titanate. Two papers are being published today in the journal Science and two more on arXiv.org, as yet unpublished, provide further evidence. "Theoretical work had shown that monopoles doubtless exist, and they have been metrical indirectly. But the Science papers are the first direct experiments to record the monopole's effects on the spin-ice material. The papers use neutrons to detect atoms in the crystal aligned into long daisy chains. These daisy chains tie each north and south monopole together. Known as 'Dirac strings,' the chains, as well as the existence of monopoles, were predicted in the 1930s by the British theoretical physicist Paul Dirac. Heat measurements in one paper also support the monopole argument. The two, as yet unpublished, papers on arXiv add to the evidence. The first provides fresh observations, and the second uses a new style to delimit the captivating charge of each monopole to be 4.6x10-13 joules per tesla metre. All together, the clue for charming monopoles 'is now overwhelming,' says Steve Bramwell, a materials missile man at health center College London and author on one of the Science papers and one of the arXiv papers."

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