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Re: Magnetic poles, was On 1/4*Pi*epsilon in Coulomb's law



I think it would be more accurate to say that the experiments
in question saw structure inside the proton. More precisely, one
expected a certain "scaling" behavior of the the deep inelastic
cross-section for electron scattering. It was the violation of scaling
that led to the quark interpretation.
It is a long a tenous step from those early expeiments to
arrive at the notion of "three little hard things." The counting of
constituents came about as a result of the e+/e- experiments.
Nevertheless, Larry is correct. There are no experiments to date
that are interpreted as showing magnetic moopole-like structure. There
are theories that require such monompoles to have been created in the
early universe.
So what's the definition of "real."

Regards,
Jack
On Wed, 24 Jan 2001, Larry Smith wrote:

At 5:42 PM -0600 1/24/01, Jack Uretsky wrote:
Look at it this way. Magnetic poles are just as real as quarks.
We can't isolate quarks because they are confined. Similarly with
magnetic poles.

I thought the Nobel prize was awarded in the early '90s for some scattering
experiments that "saw" three little hard things inside of protons, even
though they couldn't be isolated. Are you saying we could "see" magnetic
monopoles the same way?

And don't some theories of the universe call for (require) magnetic
monopoles, hence the continuing search for them?

Larry


--
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translation to English, it is hoped that the following translation conveys
at least a sense of her exquisite command of her native tongue.
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