Recent comments in /f/askscience

taphead739 t1_j4prqlo wrote

Reply to Why does the existence of magnetic monopoles imply quantized electric charges? by Speterius

First of all, there has been no evidence that magnetic monopoles exist. At least none so far. Everything we have observed in the universe can be explained without the existence of magnetic monopoles.

As to Dirac‘s statement about quantization: In a hypothetical system that contains an electric point charge (like an electron) and a magnetic point charge, the electromagnetic field generated by them has an angular momentum that is proportional to the product of the value of those two charges. Since quantum mechanics dictates that angular momentum must be quantized, this means that the electric and magnetic charges must also be quantized - if they weren‘t you could get a continuum of angular-momentum values.

To answer your questions: 1) If magnetic monopoles exist, their magnetic charges must be quantized. 2) There probably is no satisfying answer to the question why quantum mechanics describes our universe so well. It‘s just the way it is, at least the best description of it that we currently have.

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mfb- t1_j4posh4 wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in If nuclear fission in U-235 causes the atom to be split into 2 smaller atoms (such as Kr-92 and Ba-141) then how is it that U-236 is produced as waste since the U-235 was just split into smaller peices? by Ian98766

The ratio of the two processes doesn't depend strongly on the energy. Here is a plot (from here), the upper red curve is fission, the lower green curve is capture and U-236 production. It's a logarithmic plot, so a constant offset between the curves means a constant ratio (of ~3).

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