[Steuard]

I just came here to say pretty much exactly what you've already said (both paragraphs, in fact). So I'll just chime in (as a physics professor and string theorist) to endorse your take on the article.

This is a cool result, and it's neat to see a realization of the Dirac monopole in a thoroughly quantum field. But it's not a detection of a Dirac monopole for the usual electromagnetic field (which would be an amazingly big deal, and which I think most people don't ever expect to see).

[officialjunk]

The existence of a magnetic monopole would make maxwell's equations so much prettier. Plus validate dirac's proof of why electric charge is quantized. Sigh...