Science: Detecting a Twist of Space

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Many other scientists were understandably cautious. In 1975 Berkeley Physicist P. Buford Price also thought he had found a monopole. Looking for cosmic rays, Price and three colleagues developed a multilayered plastic sandwich to record the tracks left by subatomic particles and launched the contraption over Iowa in a helium balloon. During three days, the particle detector recorded 75 hits, one much different from the rest. When Price published a paper claiming to have found a monopole "candidate," the scientific community's excitement soon gave way to skepticism. In the end, Price admitted he had been a bit hasty. Says Price of Cabrera: "His technique is extremely sophisticated. It looks just like a monopole going through the loop."

Nevertheless, some theoretical chinks remain. According to "Parker's Limit," a theory developed by University of Chicago Astrophysicist Eugene Parker, monopoles would draw energy from nearby magnetic fields as they traveled through the galaxy. Cabrera's one event in only 185 days is a very high rate of detection. It suggests that there are many more monopoles zipping around than our galaxy's magnetic field can properly support.

Cabrera and others are now rushing to build larger devices in the hope of expanding his approach. Armed with a three-coil device, Cabrera expects to record as many as 100 events in a year. Says Harvard Physicist Sheldon Glashow: "If Cabrera is right, this will be one of the most important physics discoveries in this century. It's been a long quest." ∎