Magnetricity

Discovery of ‘magnetricity’ marks important advance in physics
Hannah Devlin

Scientists have generated a magnetic version of electricity, which they have called magnetricity.

The discovery marks an important advance in theoretical physics. The existence of magnetic “charges” has been predicted for nearly 70 years but has never been observed in practice.

The study was led by Professor Steve Bramwell, of the London Centre for Nanotechnology. He said: “It is not often in the field of physics you get the chance to ask, ‘How do you measure something?’, and then go on to prove a theory unequivocally. This is a very important step to establish that magnetic charge can flow like electric charge.”

While electrical current is carried by electrons, magnetricity is based on atomic-sized “north” and “south” charges that flow through materials when placed in a magnetic field.
more:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/physics/article6875326.ece

Or something very similar anyway.

I'm dying to hear more about this. As a child I spent countless hours playing with magnets. I pondered just what was the physics behind the mysterious force. My father made me an aluminum ring cannon. He was showing me that even though something was aluminum it could be moved by a magnetic field. Or rather by the force field induced by a current carrying conductor. Sheesh, I've been thinking about this stuff for nearly fifty years!

Awesome.

The applications for this are an open field of possibilities.

Note that temperatures of <1K are necessary (so far), and true magnetic monopoles are NOT involved ... in fact the claim appears to be quite overblown.

Didn't anyone ever hear of magnetic bubbles? This sounds like magnetic bubbles with dimensions of a few atomic diameters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_bubble_memory

IANAE in this field, so maybe that's not quite correct technically, but it certainly sounds like the idea has been realized before, and the real success of this project is that they have reduced the size of the domains (and hence increased potential storage density).