“Physicists discover hidden aspects of electrodynamics”
From the article:
‘Maxwell's theory displays a remarkable feature: it remains unaltered under the interchange of the electric and magnetic fields, when charges and currents are not present. This symmetry is called the electric-magnetic duality.
However, while electric charges exist, magnetic charges have never been observed in nature. If magnetic charges do not exist, the symmetry also cannot exist. This mystery has motivated physicists to search for magnetic charges, or magnetic monopoles. However, no one has been successful. Agullo and his colleagues may have discovered why.
"Gravity spoils the symmetry regardless of whether magnetic monopoles exist or not. This is shocking. The bottom line is that the symmetry cannot exist in our universe at the fundamental level because gravity is everywhere," Agullo said.’
Here’s the link to the article:
https://phys.org/news/2017-04-physicists-hidden-aspects-electrodynamics.htmlHardcore physics students can download the formal paper here:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.08879?context=hep-thI found this interesting because my old physics textbooks only said ‘In magnetism isolated magnetic “poles,” which would correspond to isolated electric charges, apparently do not exist.’ No explanation, or theory, was offered as to why magnetic monopoles “apparently do not exist.”