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“A magnetic monopole is a ‘hypothetical’ particle that is a magnet with only one single magnetic pole,” says UCD Theoretical Physicist, Professor Hans-Benjamin Braun from the UCD School of Physics, who co-led the study with Dr Laura Heyderman from the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland.

“Some of the most important theories explaining how quantum matter behaves in the universe are based on their existence, but they have eluded direct imaging since they were first theoretically conceived in the 1930s.”

Initially conceived by the British-Swiss theoretical physicist Dirac in 1931, monopoles were proposed to occur as emergent quasiparticles in so called pyrochlore spin-ice systems by Castelnovo, Moessner and Sondhi in 2008.

PhD students and contract staff known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia”, do much of the research these days.

In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.

About one-third of Austria’s PhD graduates take jobs unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of all PhD graduates end up in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the proportion is 21%.

In America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrolment. In the humanities, where most students pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%.

in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs in America were awarded to students born outside the country. By 2006 that proportion had increased to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate poorer working conditions, and the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign labour also keeps wages down.

The earnings premium for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master’s degree, which can be accomplished in as little as one year, is almost as high, at 23%

PhDs in maths and computing, social sciences and languages earn no more than those with master’s degrees

the skills learned in the course of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses.

In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting.

The more bright students stay at universities, the better it is for academics. Postgraduate students bring in grants and beef up their supervisors’ publication records.

Writing lab reports, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month literature reviews can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented simply to a wide audience.

Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else.

Should remix be outlawed as a violation of an artist’s or photographer’s copyrigh

Roads and canals were built that enabled Americans to travel and the Cumberland Road, the Erie Canal were constructed

The American System helped to fuel the belief in the Manifest Destiny of the United States

● Henry Clay's American System eventually ran out of steam during the administration of President Jackson