Thread:Ghelæ/@comment-29927902-20161001081010/@comment-47205-20161001091433

You don't need to have anything installed on your computer; just go onto the channel #sporewiki on something like http://webchat.freenode.net.

Now, to this set of questions. I don't know what level of understanding you already have, but hopefully what I write here will be more than sufficient. If you need me to explain anything in even more detail, ask.

The real idea behind monopolium is magnetic monopoles, which are hypothetical "particles" (technically topological defects) that would have magnetic charge. The strengths of the elementary electric and magnetic charges are then related in such a way (the Dirac quantisation condition) that makes the magnetic force between two monopoles much stronger than, for example, the force between an atomic nucleus and its electrons. This in turn corresponds to monopolium (a completely speculative form of matter composed of two different types of oppositely-charged non-annihilating monopoles) being stronger than atomic matter.

The reason why monopoles would cause protons to decay into positrons is due to the Grand Unified Theories in which they originate. In these theories, all different types of fermions are merely different states of the same particle, and so there exist modes of the grand unified force that can convert (most relevantly for this) up quarks into positrons and down quarks into up antiquarks. This force isn't usually visible because there's a scalar field that gives mass to these modes and thus makes them very short-ranged (the Higgs mechanism), but a monopole is a region of space where the strength of this field goes to zero. Thus, when a proton wanders into the core of a monopole, it then becomes exposed to the full strength of the grand unified force: its down quark becomes an up antiquark which annihilates with one of the up quarks, while the other up quark becomes a positron and flies away. The monopole is unchanged, and lives to convert the next proton that comes across its path.

Monopoles will not convert any protons that don't hit its core, so monopolium can exist inside matter as long as it's kept away from the atomic nuclei. The idea is then that ferromagnetic materials such as iron, due to the magnetic fields produced by their electrons (and not the nuclei), can safely chemically bond to monopolium.