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Re: EPSILON_ZERO, OK ?



Blas Cabrerra (Stanford?) 'detected' a monopole in his
superconducting detector in 1983, but a more sensitive detector (x
1000) run for a few years showed no further 'hits' so he now
considers his first signal to have been spurious (perhaps a prank).

I was on the Stanford campus very soon after that event (which
occurred on Valentine's Day). I recall that Luis Alvarez, a
very discriminating critic and serious student of such things,
pronounced the result the most convincing evidence he had ever
seen for a monopole event. While the failure to replicate the
result leaves me (as it left Alvarez) unconvinced that
monopoles exist, it is hard for me to believe that a prank
would remain secret for so long. At a little earlier time Bill
Fairbank found convincing evidence for isolated third-integral
charges on that same campus. I think they are still embedded
in their niobium cases in a bottle somewhere thereabouts in
case anyone else wants to measure them. Perhaps confinement
works in Mason jars.

Up at Cal we always thought that there was something funny
about the Farm. Perhaps it is constituted differently from the
rest of the Universe.

Leigh