We've never seen a magnetic north pole without its opposite number, but theory demands that these strange monopoles exist. So why don't we make one instead?
JIM PINFOLD hurries me through the low-lit corridors of the theory department at the CERN laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland. Posters announcing conferences of yesteryear plaster the walls. On one door, an A4 poster adorned with a Nike swoosh announces "Physics: Just Do It". Through another door, a group of physicists stand in pensive silence around a blackboard covered in chalk hieroglyphics as they sip sparkling wine from plastic cups. It is barely midday. "Walk quickly through here," he says. "In case you get any funny ideas."
For Pinfold, theory has always been a means to an end; in this case, a shortcut to the car park from which he will drive me over the Swiss-French border to his latest experiment. The ultimate ...
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