How to catch a magnetic monopole in the act

A research team led by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has created a nanoscale "playground" on a chip that simulates the formation of exotic magnetic particles called monopoles. The study—published recently in Science Advances - could unlock the secrets to ever-smaller, more powerful memory devices, microelectronics, and next-generation hard drives that employ the power of magnetic spin to store data.