Magnetic monopoles erase data
A physical particle postulated 80 years ago, could provide a
decisive step toward the realization of novel, highly efficient data storage
devices. Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), the
Technische Universitaet Dresden and the University of Cologne found that with
magnetic monopoles in magnetic vortices, called skyrmions, information can be
written and erased.
Iron filings strewn on a sheet of paper trace the field
lines of a bar magnet below the paper, thereby showing the magnet's north and
south poles. No matter how often it is split, the bar magnet always forms a
north and a south pole. However, in the early 1930s physicist Paul A. M. Dirac
postulated a particle that should, as the magnetic counterpart of the electron,
possess only one of the two poles, and should carry just one magnetic
elementary charge.