Could monopoles exist in a N-S bound state?

johne1618

Hi,

Despite decades of searching magnetic monopoles haven't been found.

Could it be that they are existing as bound states of a North and South monopole?

One could model such states as a Bohr atom. It seems that the ground-state binding energy would be much more negative than the combined positive rest-mass of the two monopoles.

If two monopoles fell into this ground state then they would be emitting more energy than their combined rest-mass. I think this would be in violation of energy conservation. Though maybe they could exist as a ground state monopole "atom" with negative mass (probably not).

I suppose that a bound state could obey conservation of energy provided that it is in the first excited state with a binding energy that is less negative than the combined monopole rest masses so that the resulting monopole atom has a minimum positive rest mass.

John

ZapperZ

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceno.../09/04-01.html

Zz.