miles (07/19/82)
Actually, it is possible to construct reasonable monopolar magnets right here in a gravitational field. Granted, their preformance is not to great, but may be better in 0-g. Interesting thing is, although monopolar magnets are not exactly the same as a monopole say in an asteroid (if they exist ), they do work, when really they shouldn't. From Raymond S.
John@sri-unix (07/25/82)
Think I missed something. Is it really "possible to create monopolar magnets in a gravitational field"? What does gravity have to do with it? How can you possibly make a monopolar magnet without magnetic monpoles? On a slightly related subject, there was a Larry Niven story about prospectors in the asteroid belt searching for monopoles (I think it was the opening to "Protector"). Niven claimed that instruments using monopoles had a sensitivity that dropped off as the radius R rather than as R squared. That sure doesn't sound right to me. Does anyone know if there is anything to it? I would think that the field from a monpole would drop off with R^2 in just the same way as the electric field from a charge. --------
Physics:els (07/26/82)
All I've seen so far are articles entitled "Re: Monopoles in Space". I don't think we received the original article here (or else I muffed something when I read the news that day!). Could someone please mail it to me. Thanx. els [Eric Strobel] pur-ee!pur-phy!els