system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why are physicists searching for magnetic monopoles?

I'm an undergraduate physics student and I've heard that the discovery of magnetic monopoles could be really important for the simplification of essential equations in theories like supersymmetry. My understanding of the electromagnetic force is that magnetic fields are generated by aligned spins of charged particles. If this is true, then anything that generates a magnetic field must be polar. So why do physicists have reason to believe that magnetic monopoles exist?
gpt
Ina 1931 paper, Dirac showed that if there is a single monopole anywhere in the universe, then electrical charge must be quantised, provided that Maxwell's equations hold true. As charge is in fact quantised and Maxwell underpins everything taht we know and use in electronics, monopoles are consistent with reality. Like dark matter, they elude discovery. Electrical charge monopoles exist everywhere. Electrons are an example, but their magnetic counterpart is absent. Arguably, they are too massive to create or too unstable to last, although their decay would be interesting. Indeed, magnetic monopoles may be required to be black holes.