1 research outputs found
Classical Monopoles: Newton, NUT-space, gravomagnetic lensing and atomic spectra
Stimulated by a scholium in Newton's Principia we find some beautiful results
in classical mechanics which can be interpreted in terms of the orbits in the
field of a mass endowed with a gravomagnetic monopole. All the orbits lie on
cones! When the cones are slit open and flattened the orbits are exactly the
ellipses and hyperbolae that one would have obtained without the gravomagnetic
monopole.
The beauty and simplicity of these results has led us to explore the similar
problems in Atomic Physics when the nuclei have an added Dirac magnetic
monopole. These problems have been explored by others and we sketch the
derivations and give details of the predicted spectrum of monopolar hydrogen.
Finally we return to gravomagnetic monopoles in general relativity. We
explain why NUT space has a non-spherical metric although NUT space itself is
the spherical space-time of a mass with a gravomagnetic monopole. We
demonstrate that all geodesics in NUT space lie on cones and use this result to
study the gravitational lensing by bodies with gravomagnetic monopoles.
We remark that just as electromagnetism would have to be extended beyond
Maxwell's equations to allow for magnetic monopoles and their currents so
general relativity would have to be extended to allow torsion for general
distributions of gravomagnetic monopoles and their currents. Of course if
monopoles were never discovered then it would be a triumph for both Maxwellian
Electromagnetism and General Relativity as they stand!Comment: 39 pages, 9 figures and 2 tables available on request from the
author