• Whereas with the electric dipole it is possible to isolate the positive and negative charges, experimentally it is not possible to separate the North and South poles of a bar magnet.  Break a magnet in two and you get two magnets, each with a North and South pole.  Continuing this splitting process down to the atomic level we find that even elementary particles behave as magnetic dipoles, each with a North and South pole.  It appears that nature does not allow us to create magnetic monopoles in this way.

•   However, theoreticians developing unified quantum theories of the Universe,  so-called "Theories of Everything", are almost unanimous in the necessity for magnetic monopoles as elementary particles created shortly after the birth of the Universe.

The belief is that shortly after their creation, magnetic monopoles were "frozen out" - meaning that their interactions with the rest of the matter in the Universe is highly suppressed.  This does not prevent physicists from searching for evidence for the existence of magnetic monopoles.

Gauss' Law for Magnetism

• So far we have discussed three basic equations describing electromagnetic phenomena - the first three of Maxwell's equations.

Gauss' Law:  

Ampere's Law: 

Faraday's Law: 

• Gauss' Law involves the flux integral for the electric field.  To complete the correspondence between electricity and magnetism we expect a fourth equation involving the magnetic flux - "Gauss' Law for Magnetism".

• The right hand side of Gauss' Law includes a summation over electric charges.  Therefore, for magnetism, we expect a summation over "magnetic charges".  But magnetic charges, North and South poles (equivalent to positive and negative electric charges) always exist in pairs, the net "magnetic charge" is thus always zero.  Gauss' Law for Magnetism must therefore take the form,

the flux of B through a closed surface is zero.

Note that the fact that the surface is closed is very important !  A magnetic flux integral  appears in Faraday's Law - in this case the surface is generally not closed.

Electric field lines begin (positive) and end (negative) on charges.  Since there are no magnetic charges magnetic field lines form closed loops.