# Talk:Paul Dirac

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## Magnetic monopoles experimentally established

This Nature article publishes the first experimental evidence of magnetic monopoles:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7485/full/nature12954.html

Since the page is locked I cannot update the "Magnetic Monopoles" section accordingly, which now falsely states that no such experimental evidence exists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.176.189.230 (talk) 04:08, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Monopoles are established only in the minds of those who cannot understand the difference between an elementary particle and a quasiparticle. So it is a good thing that the page is locked to IPs. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:07, 31 January 2014 (UTC).
This is in the news at the moment.[1] It refers to a monopole in a Bose–Einstein condensate. It is mentioned at Magnetic_monopole#.22Monopoles.22_in_condensed-matter_systems.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 11:26, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
The Nature article says otherwise.

Quoting the abstract of the Nature article that Xxanthippe obviously failed to read:

"Here we demonstrate the controlled creation of Dirac monopoles in the synthetic magnetic field produced by a spinor Bose–Einstein condensate. Monopoles are identified, in both experiments and matching numerical simulations, at the termini of vortex lines within the condensate. By directly imaging such a vortex line, the presence of a monopole may be discerned from the experimental data alone. These real-space images provide conclusive and long-awaited experimental evidence of the existence of Dirac monopoles."

## What are they anyway?

Nature found 9 errors. You think they could tell us what they are so we can fix them? --24.63.36.180 18:14, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, guys. what did Dirac say? that science makes difficult things simple whereas poetry is much about nothing? Apparently Art and Literature were too difficult for him. If Einstein, Schodinger, Oppenheimer and others liked philosophy and literature, there was probably a point there. Great minds are usually attracted towards several and divergent domains of intellectual activity. Also when he said that he never started a sentence if he was unsure abiut its ending he was probably one of the many people who would say this, it has nothing exceptional and is probably even wrong (maybe that's why he never liked art). And God is a product of our imagination? what an unimaginative person. He should look, once again, to all great scientists including Newton.

The other thing that may happens is that Dirac was simply honest. It is very well known that students who have a talent for languages never liked maths, and vice versa. Schopenhauer, and other philosophers and great poets, hated maths. It is certainly true that great minds have many interests, but maybe those two, maths and art, rarely go together.

Perhaps what is even more important is that we cannot understand people's beliefs from their statements. Nobody knows the secrets of a human soul, and those great minds were as much prone to contradiction and doubt as anybody else. Even among believers, who has not woken up one morning and said that maube god does not exist? Or which atheist is really an atheist? Maybe truth is self-contradictory by nature, and our statements do not explain anything. But is this not the case with mathematics too? Thanks, Panos. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.103.71.209 (talk) 00:26, 12 September 2008 (UTC)