Magnetic Monopoles Created in the Lab

[RandallS]

The existence of magnetic monopoles was predicted over 85 years, but they have never been found. Original versions of the Big Bang theory predicted there should be a lot of them around (created in the Big Bang) but with the addition of Inflation, it turned out that naturally occurring magnetic monopoles would be extremely rare in the observable universe.

From the article at phys.org:

Nearly 85 years after  pioneering theoretical physicist Paul Dirac predicted the possibility of  their existence, an international collaboration led by Amherst College  Physics Professor David S. Hall '91 and Aalto University (Finland)  Academy Research Fellow Mikko Möttönen has created, identified and  photographed synthetic magnetic monopoles in Hall's laboratory on the  Amherst campus. The groundbreaking accomplishment paves the way for the  detection of the particles in nature, which would be a revolutionary  development comparable to the discovery of the electron.