Magnetic Monopoles.

Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical particles possessed of either a north or south pole, but not both. They might be considered counterparts to electrostatically charged particles. While they are not prohibited by the known understanding of physics, they have never been observed in nature, which begs the question: Can they be synthesised? Cutting a magnet in half doesn't work; one simply ends up with two smaller dipolar magnets.

This problem has previously exercised the ever imaginative Daedalus (D.E.H. Jones, The Inventions of Daedalus; a Compendium of Plausible Schemes, 1982), who's proposed solution was to construct a hollow sphere out of suitably aligned dipolar magnets- ie, each magnet would have its north pole orientated outwards, and its south pole orientated towards the centre.

Despite being unfamiliar with the mathematics that describe magnetic fields, I know that this strategy won't work, a fact best visualised by attempting to draw the field-lines associated with the individual magnetic dipoles that make up the sphere. Clearly there is no way of connecting them - the north and south poles are cut off from each other, and in reality this equates to the completer cancellation of the field; the sphere exhibits no ferromagnetic properties at all.

Clearly though, individual magnets are able to exhibit fields, so can one build an effective approximation to a monopole simply by creating spaces between the sphere's individual dipolar component magnets (see figure 1)?


The field-lines are no longer blocked, ie compelled to pass through adjacent magnets. In an effort to test this supposition, I constructed a model, comprising a ping-pong ball the surface of which was divided as a truncated icosahedron. 32 x 5 mm diameter circular neodymium alloy magnets were glued equidistantly around the surface, see figure 2.





















Figure 3 shows the interaction of the magnetic sphere with a 100 g neodymium alloy magnet, the poles of which are centred on the two large faces. The sphere was found to resist attachment at the poles of the second magnet, instead tending to be drawn (weakly) to the edges, ie, to the mid-point of the field-lines. This suggests that the sphere is not effectively a monopole, but a 'pole-less' magnet. Alas I have yet to devise any useful application for such an object.

The Nature of the Beast?

The future progression (or not) of the human species is a subject in which most people would have to declare an interest, but making any predictions on the matter without resort to Tarot Cards is difficult.
It occurs to me that it would be a good deal less difficult if one were able to obtain some idea as to the nature of the species as a whole, the 'Human Collective'. Can this Collective be described in the same terms as an individual organism? No single human can realistically be considered an accurate model for the species; each has their own singular motivations and interests, which do not translate reliably to the collective. In essence though, every individual can be described as a set of motivations, interests and (biological and nurtured) responses to stimuli. The collective can thus be described as the sum of all individuals , ie the sum of all motivations, interests and responses of these individuals.
Summing a data-set is a trivial procedure, if one has the data to begin with, but accumulating the relevant data, in detail, for all individual humans, is hardly practical. Nonetheless, we can still make some general observations. Specific, individual interests are not likely to translate to an interest on the part of the collective, because they are essentially random and will tend to cancel out. For example, those with a passion for sailing will see this affinity largely cancelled out by those who fear the sea. This effect is analogous to the tendency of 'noise' to cancel out in spectroscopic measurements. At least to a first approximation then, the only characteristics likely to be evident in a description of the 'Human Collective', are those that are common to most, if not all humans.
What traits can we expect to find to be common to the majority of individuals, and hence manifested in the collective?
The urge to reproduce, conscious or not, is common to most of humanity, and therefore will manifest itself in the collective. However, reproduction by individuals does not represent reproduction of the collective- the latter merely becomes larger, as the number of individual constituents increases. So the reproductive urge in individuals translates to a tendency towards growth on the part of the collective.
At this point, we need to define growth. The collective, in the same way that it is not, by definition, distinguishable from its individual constituent humans, is also not meaningfully distinguishable from the resources harnessed by the civilisation that those humans maintain. 'Growth' then, is anything which results in an increase in: Rate of consumption of resources, biomass of human forms in existence, and mass of resources configured for human convenience.
There are other motivations on the part of humans that translate to growth on the part of the collective, such as the almost universal desire of humans to accumulate possessions and wealth, but, owing to the averaging that defines it, the collective cannot distinguish the finer points of these motivations, and instead translates them all into the single simple motivation- growth.

Another motivation that is nearly universal in humans is self preservation. This can reasonably be expected to translate to the collective as well. However, in individuals the capacity for self preservation is limited by their understanding of the nature of the threats that they may face. The collective understanding is unlikely to be terribly sophisticated, as it comprises the arithmetic mean of the thought processes of all humans, and hence only features that which is common to the majority- which alas is not much. Overall then, we can expect to see a tendency towards self preservation, but only in the face of a threat sufficiently obvious to be perceived by almost everyone.
Are there other essentially universal motivations? Compassion for those in distress is a trait common to most healthy minds (I hope), but specific instances of individual distress are never perceived by more than (at most) a few million people, and usually not more than a few dozen, so they would have no practical effect on the collective. The same reasoning applies to any other comparably 'stimulus specific' human motivation.
Compassion and empathy then, are probably not manifest in the behaviour of the collective. In fact, besides the desire for growth, the collective would not seem to have any effective motivations.
The collective is therefore characterised as an almost mindless entity, which exists only to convert more of the resources of the universe to a form more suited to its needs. This behaviour is (grossly) indistinguishable from that of ostensibly less sophisticated life-forms (fungus, grass, viruses etc), though occurring on a substantially larger scale.
Assuming this model of the human collective to be accurate, there are certain implications for the future of civilisation that become immediately apparent- specifically, any effort; judicial or legislative, to impose upon humanity a limit to growth; to restrict consumption of resources, is almost certainly doomed to failure. This has, for example, significant implications for the current fad among western governments, to combat climate change by attempting to retard consumption of resources - a strategy which, in light of these conclusions, is doomed to failure.